Marvel Comics/Headscratchers

For Marvel 'verse comics and characters that don't have their own Just Bugs Me entry.

How advanced are the Atlanteans? Some stories present them as having stone age technology, others present them as more advanced than humans and capable geneticists.
- Atlanteans are more advanced than humans. I can't think of any instance where they were portrayed as being stone age level, but the tech level does vary pretty wildly. Part of that is just inconsistent writing, but given that Atlantean settlements are constantly being blown up or disassembled or whatever, it may just be that they don't get to stick around in one place long enough to build anything significant.
It's well established that the Iron Man armor makes the otherwise non-superpowered Tony Stark a heavy hitter among Marvel superheroes. It's also established that Tony has built hundreds of different armors throughout the years, and keeps on building new ones. Why, then, doesn't he give other superheroes similar armors to his own? Surely many of the non-powered heroes would appreciate the huge power boost the armor would give them? It seems that so far Tony has given an armor only to two of his closest friends, James Rhodes and Pepper Potts. Of course you could say it's a matter of trust, but surely Tony trusts his old superhero pals like Captain America or Hawkeye? And even if were to give an armor to someone he doesn't know as well as those two, surely he could put a backdoor system to the armors that would allow him to deactivate them if they are used for something he doesn't approve? (It's true that after the events of Secret Invasion Tony has fallen from grace, but before that he would've had years and years to do this.)
- Well, in Civil War he does give Spider-Man armor. It's possible some of the others might not want a full-scale suit- Hawkeye, Captain America (comics), Black Panther and others use fighting styles that require a certain amount of grace- they might not want to be at the whim of the armor's power supply. And it's certainly possible that Pym particles might have anadverse affect of his tech-that would leav Han Pym, etc. out. He's also been shown to be very careful with his tech, moreso in recent years- yeah, he may trust these folks, but maybe not quite that much.
- I like to think of Iron Man as Marvel's nearest equivalent to Batman. Anyway, have you read Armor Wars? Or the early stuff in his first solo series with the Guardsman turning kinda bad? That probably has something to do with the whole "I won't give you any of my damn armor" business, because when he does it usually leads to unnecessary deaths. And in Armor Wars, because armor designs of his had been stolen and used by criminals, he went around disabling each and every armor, including those used by "good guys" like SHIELD. He could've gone about the whole Armor Wars thing better, instead of basically causing multiple villains to escape from the Vault, but for the most part he was in the right.
  - Both these replies note that Stark has to be careful with his technology, since it's fallen into the wrong hands more than once. And again, other characters wouldn't need or even want suits of armor-The Mighty Thor would probably consider using human technology to be beneath him as a warrior of Asgard, while The Incredible Hulk obviously wouldn't think he'd need a stinking suit of armor when he's already the strongest being on the planet. Other heroes would have similar problems-Sleepwalker would disappear whenever Rick Sheridan woke up, and the armor would be left behind for anyone who wanted to scavenge it. Could the Ghost Rider make use of a suit, or even transform while his human host was wearing something like that? And then there's Wolverine, who'd probably be weighed down by the armor more than anything else.
    - This still does not explain why many of the other brilliant scientists in Marvel don't equip people with human level durability and strength with at least some form of non-magnetic powered armor. Certainly Cyclops would be a lot more useful if a guy with a baseball bat couldn't kill him.
      - When all else fails, chalk it up to Cut Lex Luthor a Check Syndrome-many of Marvel's scientists simply aren't interested in it, or would rather keep their technology to themselves.
  - Isn't Stark Enterprises the company that mass-produces those suits of Guardsman armor for the government to use for the guards at its superhuman prisons? Or is that another company? So in some respects, Stark actually does distribute his armor technology on a large scale, namely to governments that can use it to even the odds against super-powered villains or aliens.
- Apparently the "Armor Wars" story made Tony unbelievably paranoid about spreading his armor tech around. Tony wants total control over how his armor technology is used and that means not giving it to any person he can't control. No matter how much he trusts Captain America, Tony doesn't control him and would have no say in how he used the armor.
  - Supporting the above, there was a comic (Invincible Iron Man #1 from 2010 for the curious) in which Tony lists his 5 greatest fears and 3 are that Iron Man (the suit) becomes easily replicable, that the suits start getting piloted by someone besides himself and Jim Rhodes (War Machine) and that it would become disposable, as in cheap and replaceable. It's also shown that he tracks all the other powered armors that are in the world, just because they're similar to Iron Man (this is while he's director of SHIELD). The 1st listed is that he lapses back into alcoholism, and the last is that it's not him that makes the armor fit any of the other 3. I'd say he's pretty paranoid about who gets to use it.
Deadpool: Cancer is described as groups of cells exhibiting uncontrolled muscle growth. How does Wolverine-level regeneration (increasing cell growth in a specific area in order to replace damaged tissue) solve for this?
- Remove or kill cancerous cells by means of your choice. The surrounding normal tissue regenerates, filling the hole with normal tissue. Repeat until cancer is gone. Radiation and chemotherapy, not to mention surgery, gets far simpler if you no longer have to worry about accidentally killing the patient. You can just load up the dosages to well beyond lethal OD levels (or just saw off limbs) and he'll be fine next week anyway.
- Canon answer: it doesn't. Deadpool's cancer is described as being simultaneously accelerated and attacked by his artificial healing factor. It's constantly growing, metastasizing to other parts of his body, going into remission, and recurring. On top of that, he was booted out of the Weapon X program and dropped into the Hospice because his healing factor only served to worsen his cancer. It didn't start healing him until someone tried cutting out his heart (or alternatively until someone gave him a reason, and thus the will, to live).
- Furthermore, healing factor is a lot more than tissue regeneration. Ever seen Wolverine get sick?
X-Men: Nothing explains how Magneto was able to kill Jean after she merged with the Phoenix Force again (Grant even admitted it was an Ass Pull, as he was ordered to get rid of her somehow). The Phoenix Force had resurrected Rachel dozens of time, yet one tiny little magnetic pulse and he downs one of the strongest cosmic entities in their universe. (And yes, while a laser cannon did kill the Phoenix Force the first time it wore Jean's body, it was more plausible as it was suicide and the Phoenix Force didn't want to resurrect. But it didn't even kill her, as she just popped up elsewhere and had a nice conversation with Death.)
- Now, I haven't read all of Morrison's run, but I did get the impression from Planet X that Magneto's EMP was far from 'tiny', for what it's worth. It was in fact referred to as a "planetary level stroke" and considering that Magneto's abilities were being enhanced to the point where he even appeared to be influencing the flow of time, I severely doubt this was hyperbole. As bizarre as this might be to say, being gutted is not on the same level as the simultaneous death of every cell in the body. Now, anything I say beyond this point aren't 100% confirmed, but as powerful as the Phoenix appeared to be it still appeared to be confined to Jean herself... At least for the time being. At any rate, the Phoenix Force actually did ressurect her, though not straight away (I've yet to read Endsong, but from what I saw it all the actions of the Phoenix were pretty intertwined with Jean as a person).
Wolverine: If his claws have to cut through his skin to come out, why don't they come out with blood on them?
- I think they heal too fast to really bleed and there's 'passages' with no blood that the claws are actually in. But yes, that is kinda crazy when you think about it.
  - I may be mistaken, but since the claws are actually a part of his physiology (being bone), perhaps his hands are naturally missing the proper tendons, veins, blood vessels etc. as a part of his mutation.
    - I'm pretty sure there have to be veins there in order for blood to reach the cells.
    - There were varying ammounts of blood depicted in periods when Wolverine had no adamantium over his claws. This troper's guess is that the adamantium claws are so sharp that they make very clean cuts with little actual damage, so the wounds heal before any significant bleeding can occur.
    - Back when Genyosha (sp?) was first introduced and Wolverine ended up with his powers nullified for an issue or two, he had to bandage his hands to stop the bleeding after using his claws because he obviously didn't have his healing factor anymore either. Make of that what you will.
    - No-one seems to agree where do they pop out from....either backhand or between knuckles or...
- Also, did his teeth get some of the adamantium from the rest of the skull?
  - I'm going to guess that yes, they did. As many times as The Hulk has punched him in the head I've never seen him lose any teeth, so it seems likely.
- People, look at Astonishing X-men issue #1, the penultimate page, fourth panel. You clearly see some blood coming out,

The Incredible Hulk: Granted, in most of his rampages, he's pretty dangerous, but you would assume by now most of the Marvel heroes realize that if he's going nuts, someone or something has usually been the catalyst, he doesn't just fly off the handle on his own. Yet, they always assume he's just rampaging for no reason as opposed to determining WHY he is, and shoot first, and ask questions later....which just makes him even stronger.
- I doubt they see much of a difference. Whether he's just flying off the handle for no reason or he's been "set off", so to speak, by some outside force or catalyst, he's still on a deadly rampage. They'd probably argue that being so easy to "set off" is precisely the problem.
- Yeah, you don't go attacking Taco Bell just because they forgot Bruce's fire sauce.
In World War Hulk: Frontline, there's an ongoing thread of people in the poorer neighbourhoods being left behind because - um - why again? Yes, it happens in our world, but our world doesn't have super heroes helping with the evacuation.
- Reference to Hurricane Katrina, presumably, during which a lot of people in the poorer regions were either left behind or refused to leave.
  - Yes, but references like that should still make sense in the context of the universe, and it...doesn't. The latter would, but not the former.
- If memory serves, and it has been a while since I read WWH: Frontline, a lot of those people simply refused to leave their homes. Which also happened during Katrina. I mean, yea, technically the superheros(or the army, for that matter) could have forced them to leave, but they didn't.
  - Its also worth noting in the Initiative tie-in, they distinctively mention that they were completely stretched thin building a parameter around the entire city. Yeah, Hulk wanted everyone out, but the heroes themselves were also pretty concerned about keeping him in, lest it become a literal World War Hulk. Anyone who wasn't part of the parameter was on the front line. It's important to remember that this was not a complete comparison to the hurricane in the sense that this wasn't purely a rescue and clean up deal, there was a battle going on. They were not going to let the Hulk thing slide or spread, any rescues taking place were happening completely on the fly, if any occured after the initial evacuation at all (they sent a covert ops team to rescue some POW's, but even then it was only because they didnt want said POW's defiance of orders to leak and worsen their already bad post-stamford reputation). Wherever you agree with their decision to focus so heavily on the battle itself, they very well had a valid reason to do so. It got to the point where the Punisher of all people came to rescue those who were left behind, and even then he still had to fight his way through the task.
So, in Secret Invasion: Frontline, Spidey crashes into a guy's taxi, which will come out of his paycheck, and the driver's boss said they could get compensation if Spiderman were registered. I think that's daft, but it isn't my point. Peter WAS registered. He defected to the anti-reg side afterwards.
- While Spidey is technically registered, he was also an outlaw and actively working against SHIELD and the Registration movement. So he probably didn't get those work benefits anymore.
- Why on Earth-616 would a New York cab company in Marvel's New York not be insured against damages caused by superhumans?
  - Exactly. What, did all the property damage that supervillains caused in every prior comic never get paid for by any insurance company ever? After all, villains don't register!
In the first Fantastic Four movie, Reed squeezed his hand under Ben's locked door to open it from the inside; what happens to his bones when he does something like that?
- He either deson't have any or they're rubbery like the rest of his body.
  - In the very first Doctor Doom arc in Fantastic Four (and I mean the very first, back when the FF comic was still in single-digit issue #'s), Reed successfully squeezed his entire body through a rivet hole. His skeleton has always been as flexible and compressible as the rest of him.
- What about the rest of his organs? How can his heart and whatnot support all that stretching and extreme squeezing? One explanation is that he doesn't have them anymore but given he's been able produce a offspring....
  - In the first and second versions of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, his entry says "How his respiratory and circulatory systems can function at these distorted extremes is at yet unknown." In other words, "We have no idea how this would be possible, so please, don't ask."
    - I sometimes wonder about Reads power being about warping the molecular structure of his body(Reality warping limited to his own structure). Internally nothing changes but externally his bodies relation to the outside world changes. It would go a long way towards explaining Franklin's powers.
    - His respiratory and circulatory systems can function at those distorted extremes for the same reason that his skin and muscles function that way, because his physiology was mutated by the cosmic rays to enable them to do that. Seriously, why is this so hard to understand?

As one of the people who isn't bugged by Squirrel Girl's absolute power level, I still can't help but think her relative power level seems a bit overplayed. More specifically, why isn't Spider-Man considered more powerful than her, given that they're both very strong, very fast, and capable of taking Thanos in a fair fight, and that Spiderman's web-shooters have a greater reach and more potential applications than Squirrel Girl's claws and, er, squirrels? Is Peter Parker just that much of a loser?
- To the fans, no. To others, yes. any happiness he obtains will be undone or destroyed before it becomes the status quo. And even that won't stop them some times.
- And Squirrel Girl's alleged power level is entirely intended for comedic value. Remember that she defeated Doom and MODOK by simply siccing squirrels on them, and defeated Thanos off-panel as a Take That for having the Doom she fought retconned to be a robot. When the joke started, she wasn't supposed to be very powerful, just clever, resourceful, and lucky (actually, it was supposed to be funny to see villains being beaten by squirrels, but the clever etc. is how it's explained in-story). Eventually some a writer who may not have entirely gotten the joke had her S.H.I.E.L.D. file say she may be one of the most powerful mutants alive, but she's never actually displayed that power level.
- Yeah, like a lot of Rule of Funny SG's powers work a lot better the less people try to justify it in-universe. Personally this troper always thought the best way to make her not totally OP would be to have her likelihood of winning be proportionate to how badly someone needs to get made to look like a chump. So you'd have her pull up more or less even against Spider-Man or Beast, because nobody really needs to see Beast catch a beating, but then she'll beat the tar out of Thanos / Deadpool / Namor because hey, if anyone in the MU needs to get the tar beaten out of him by someone whose superpower is "squirrels", it's Namor.
How the hell is Norman Osborne able to get away with what he does? I know it applies to pretty much all of Dark Reign (is there no investigative media or congressional oversight?). But specifically, in siege he is attacking Asgard against presidential orders and, apparently, the commander in chief has no way to communicate with anyone at HAMMER to order that Osborne and, for that matter Hand be relieved of command and arrested.
- In the Marvel-verse, you could be a mass murdering supervillan that kicks puppies down stairs, but if you do one remotely "good deed" or can cater to the masses, you get a pass.
- I think the point of siege is how its all gonna come crashing down on him.
  - And it did. One thing to remember- and this is a good point to remember, particularly in comics, where it can take months to tell a story- is the time issue. From the time of the assault on Asgard to the end of Siege was just a few hours- probably fewer than 6. That's not much time for the president to do much- and Osborn probably (I can't recall if this was mentioned, but I think it was) put the HAMMER units on a communications blackout.
- Really, Marvel missed an incredibly easy out on this one: just say that One More Day made everyone (or at least the general public) forget that Osborn was the Green Goblin when it reset Spider-Man's status quo. While they never quite took that route, a lot of Dark Reign stories seem to be written with the idea that most people either don't know or don't believe that Osborn was the Goblin (althought the federal government clearly does).
  - Osborn was indeed pushing his luck and his reputation was already getting a bit shakey long before Seige begun, unless he drastically changed the way he operated, there was no way it was gonna last. Many of the Cabal did indeed predict this. Of course, Osborn did often seek a valid excuse for his actions, even though they were engineered much of the time... He attempted to create an Asgardian version of the Stamford incident to justify the Seige, but barely even waited for anyone to even notice the incident, let alone get approval. The President was indeed pissed if I remember, but by that point he was already there attempting genocide. The genie was out of the bottle, it didn't matter if anyone approved or not, he didn't wait long enough to check or just simply stopped caring over the Cabal insulting him.
They have noticed that in spite of the fact that almost they all know that Deadpool is a mercenary, it seems to nobody to matter for him , neither the policemen nor the superheroes try to arrest it.
Red Sonja: "To avenge your rape, from now on you can only have sex with a guy after he beats you up."
- "Why would a goddess who concerned herself with the rape of one teenage girl make the same girl take an oath that would almost certainly insure that she'd risk being raped again?" Doesn't it make more sense that the oath is a test of Sonja's resolve to stay committed to The Quest rather than giving up the warrior's path for the pleasures of the flesh or a family?
- An alternative explanation is that the goddess in question didn't want her avenging angel to lose all her powers just because a man beat her and forced her to have sex. Without the "unless he beats you in a fight" clause, then Red Sonja would be put in a position where -- in the middle of her quest to avenge wrongs done to women -- she gets raped and consequently loses her power, which would be hideously unfair.
  - Having never actually read the Red Sonja comics, wasn't a clause of it that it had to be a fair fight? Presumably someone intending on raping her wouldn't fight fair.
    - IIRC, the clause was that it had to be a serious fight -- in other words, that she wasn't allowed to just spar with someone and then take a dive, if she wanted to have sex. She actually had to fight to the best of her ability and still lose. But it didn't necessarily have to be fair or honorable.
The behavior of people in the Marvel universe perplexes me sometimes. On the one hand there is a massive dislike for mutants, specifically the X-Men who had done nothing but saved lives and such and the hatred seems to stem from the fact that they're mutants, they have powers and they're different. Yet in the same universe there were adoration and admiration for groups like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, who weren't mutants per se but they still had friggin powers much like the X-Men. Why such polarizing opinions of these very similar groups?
Because an immortal prokaryosentience has been manipulating the populace into mindless paranioa against metas and, in particular, mutants.
- It's somewhat of a Fantastic Racism thing, similar to, honestly, something like miscegenation or even immigration. They view them as another race that could eventually become the majority on the planet. Other heroes who got their powers on accident or are more supernatural by birth aren't as plentiful.
  - Even if it's Fantastic Racism, how do regular people even know which superheroes are mutants, and which ones are just "normal" superpowered beings? It's not like the difference is obvious in any way to a random observer. In an early issue of X Factor J. Jonah Jameson hired the X-Factor to hunt down Spider-Man, using the very logical excuse that he could be a mutant under his suit. Yet the X-Factor seemed to intuitively know that Spider-Man is not a mutant, despite the fact that none of them knew who he was or what he looked like under the costume. It makes sense that superheroes like the Fantastic Four, whose identity and origin are known to the public, are not hated the way mutants are. But what about all the heroes with a secret identity? How does the public know which ones are mutants and which ones aren't?
  - Same way people "know" which celebrities are gay. Sometimes they're open about it, sometimes they're "outed," sometimes people just assume (and sometimes they're wrong). There are probably people in the Marvel Universe who insist that their "mutantdar" is never wrong. Some assume all superhumans are mutants until proven otherwise (and what constitutes "proof" varies from person to person - some probably assume that if you join the Avengers, you must be "okay") some assume they're all non-mutants until proven otherwise (joining the X-Men is a dead giveaway). If it helps, think of it like skin color - a white supremacist hates black people, but doesn't (at least on racial grounds) hate white people with dark suntans. In their mind, it's okay to have brown skin, just not to be born with brown skin.
    - I guess the above explanation would make sense if the people in Marvel universe were shown acting that way, but most of the time they aren't. The "common people" in the mutant comics just seem to be completely different from the "common people" in other Marvel superhero comics.
  - For the record, X-Factor were the original X-Men in disguise; they'd met and worked with Spider-Man many, many times and even invited him to join the team back in the Silver Age. He's point-blank told them he's not a mutant, which Professor X could easily confirm. Plus, he's on good terms with them - they wouldn't want to hassle him one way or the other, and if they did he'd probably have recognized them and blown their cover (he'd recognized Cyclops in his civilian ID before).
- The people of the Marvel Universe are the most easily suckered idiots to ever exist. A guy who just started a brand new religion based on worshiping him says the Avengers are bastards? Who gives a fuck that they've saved us countless times, we believe him! The guy who unleashed killer robots on Congress and the general population and couldn't control them is still trying to foster mutant hatred despite his own fuckups? Hell, yeah, he's right, mutants suck! The guy who bombed his own arraignment hearing wants to have all aliens booted off the planet? Get those offworld freeloaders outta here! I don't know why any villains even bother with mind control anymore. It's not like they'd need it, as stupid as the general population is.
- Why do people hate black people, even though they have powers and abilities that are the same as those of white people? Racism wouldn't be racism if it made sense.
  - No. Just No. It's not "White people hate black people even though they can do the same as white people" (where the problem is, precisely, that you're not white), it's "Normal people hate people with super powers even though they can do the same as other people with super powers". If you lived in the Marvel Universe, you just wouldn't be able to know why Cyclops is a mutant but Mr. Fantastic isn't, yet Cyclops would be hated and Mr. Fantastic would be a celebrity. You could argue that, for some reason, they hate mutants for being born with their powers instead of getting them later (which is completely ridiculous) and if that were the problem, all mutants could just make up some weird backstory to explain how they got their super powers. I mean, it's the Marvel Universe, you could probably just say that you just were hit by lightning and suddenly you could manipulate the weather.
  - The thing is, mutants are mutants. That's what you're overlooking. These people are, by definition, freaks of nature, and that's an easy kind of fellow to be prejudiced against. Someone who's gained super-speed when lightning caused a chemical explosion has just been in an accident, and that could have happened to anyone. He wasn't born a genetic variation of an ordinary human being, like racist people think those of the "inferior" races are. (Of course, that could happen to anyone too, but that's prejudice for you.) A man whose face is deformed because of a car crash is never as likely to be shunned by his peers as a man who was born with such a face.
- For most of their history (or Retcon when necessary; the "mutant-hating" stuff wasn't played up much at all in the original Lee/Kirby issues) the X-Men and other mutant groups have operated with a greater deal of secrecy than the FF, Avengers, or Spider-Man. Don't forget also that many mutant villains, as opposed to the standard "rob this bank" or "take over the world" motivations of regular villains, make "mutant supremacy" a standard part of the package.
Whats with the "typical Christians" of the marvel universe also being mutant haters? I understand the analogy to racism and gay bashing (cough) but the correlation doesn't actually make any sense if applied realistically.
- It isn't a very shallow parody, far too often it is Truth In Comicbooks. Currently the most vocal antagonists against Homosexuals in the United States are conservative Christians. The concept of Mutants being able to hide among the regular populace and people being closet mutants is an allegory for Homosexuality started in The Eighties. It is only logical to keep going with the narrative as written by real life. Also, Mutants are derived through Evolution, a topic of which conservative Churches are not very fond. No, it is not very fair. Really the best way for Christians to counteract the negative stereotype of Christians vocally denouncing gay rights is to create a large and vocal counter-movement of Christians supporting them.
  - Its not a realistic narrative though, its more of a poorly conceived Take That which isn't historically or theologically justified. In the case of anti-gay rights, though there is some debate among scholar's as to whether or not the interpretation of the anti-homosexuality verses are properly interpreted on homosexuality, its justifiable where that sentiment came from (Leviticus OT/ Romans NT). Racism is also somewhat justifiable (Genesis) though to a significantly lesser extent, and one must also apply the secular roots for that sentiment. Mutant hating though really makes no sense, if applied realistically. They seem to look at it more like this: "Christians have a history of hating people who are different so they'll probably hate mutants too."
    - As Shakespeare once wrote, "Even The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose." Someone who is duly motivated can find a scripture to oppose anything that he/she wants, and if such scripture cannot be found he/she is free to misinterpret anything else. Biblical verses have been used to justify slavery (like I Peter 2:18-21), to justify the persecution of the Jews (Matthew 27:22 and 25, John 7:1, Acts 7:51-52), to keep women from voting or being able to work (I Timothy 2:12-15, I Corinthians 11:3, Ephesians 5:22-24, I Corinthians 14:34-35), to dictate hairstyles and clothing (I Corinthians 11:13-15, I Timothy 2:9-10), to justify child abuse (Proverbs 22;15, Proverbs 23:13-14), to justify discrimination against African Americans (Genesis 9:20-27, Jeremiah 13:22-25), to prevent interracial marriage (Genesis 11:8), and for the prohibition of Alcohol (Daniel 5:1, 3-4, Matthew 11:10). (People have also used Biblical verses to refute many of those things as well, but the kind of people who would trade in anti-mutant hysteria are not exactly reasonable.) Honestly, it is not a huge leap to go from any of those to anti-Mutant bias. Most likely (if the writers wanted to do the research), they would probably have the Mutant hating Christians use the argument that since there God created man in his image there cannot be evolution, therefor Mutants must be the work of the devil, then use I Timothy 6:20-21 to bash Science in general. It is not a "all Christians will hate Mutants" thing, it is more of a "bigots who hate Mutants and happen to be Christian will use anything at their disposal to justify their hatred including their religion" thing. As far as I remember, there are plenty of anti-mutant individuals who aren't Christians in the X-Men books as well.
  - That argument is still weak because if Christians in the Marvel universe hated Mutants because it "proves evolution" by that same strain of thought, if they REALLY did their research Christians in the marvel universe should have more issue with characters like Thor or Ares or extraterrestrials like Mar-Vell, Silver Surfer or Hulkling who really "prove evolution" among other things, and Doctor Strange (nuff said). Mutants should be the least of their problems, even in the case of the non-christian bigots. As I've said before, I understand the analogy but its weak. It works as a Fantastic Aesop analogy of race and sexual orientation, but not for realism. But it IS just a comic....
  - Furthermore, the above troper should really go out and talk to some of those "conservative Christians" and learn what they really think before judging them. Because I guarantee you, only a teeny-tiny, barely-even-visible minority of conservative Christians actually behave like the so-called "conservative Christians" portrayed in the 616 universe.
  - There was also at least one pro-mutant preacher, William Conover, who used his pulpit to drum up support for mutant rights. Naturally, he ended up being targeted by human bigot groups, although ironically enough it was the Punisher who ended up protecting him.

How the hell can Marvel Zombies talk if some are just heads!? In fact, how can they pronounce words if they have no lips? Take Headpool for example, at one point in MZ 4, he whistles. He would need lips, lungs, a windpipe, etc.
- Here is a better question. One of the jobs of the Phoenix Force is to burn away that which does not work. A universe full of zombies wrecking the cycle of life and deaths is pretty much a solid definition of something that does not work. Why has the MZ universe Phoenix not razed the whole universe to start over? Seriously, is there any good answer besides the obvious one?
  - Does the Phoenix Force even exist in the MZ universe?
    - It's made pretty clear beyond the inital series that this infection is far more than just a resident-evil style virus. Have they ever found a cure for it? It even goes so far as to infect cosmic entities and other people who has entire powers for not getting infected by viruses, Phoenix hosting Jean included. Not to mention that this sorta comes from the Sentry... That alone opens a whole new can of worms. Anything related to him is liable to bypass onlything that might have been an exception.
Magneto is a violent Holocaust survivor who from time to time is perfectly willing to kill large quantities of people to reduce the odds of mutant persecution. Why doesn't he seem to care about the Red Skull? He's an active and influential ex-Nazi, which seems like something that would concern him. Yes, when they met Magneto did bury him, but you'd think he would still want to do something since that, you know, didn't stick.
- He was probably satisfied with the one victory, and after that point the Skull went into more nihilistic villainy, although his Nazism does show up in later comics. Perhaps Magneto saw no need to further his agenda. Now, if you want the real reason, it's because the writers have probably forgotten about it. Not the best answer for your question, but an answer nonetheless.
- A more depressing reason, Red Skull should be at the top of Magneto's "To-Do" list. Unfortunately Red Skull gets to Karma Houdini his way out of Magneto's wrath for the same reason that every villain gets to kill billions of people every month and live- Joker Immunity.
- My guess is that in the Marvel Universe, there's more prejudice against mutants than against Jewish people, and thus Magneto sees anti-mutant people as his number one enemies, with Nazis something of an afterthought, given that Nazism is not exactly an influential movement any more.
- In his early backstory, during his and Xavier's days in Israel, it was made fairly clear that Magneto doesn't consider himself beholden to human distinctions; he's not "Jewish", he's "Homo Superior".
- Well, after the "Acts of Vengeance" arc, in which he sided with the Red Skull, he remembered all this Nazi background and kidnappend him, left him in a hole in the ground with no food and just a little water. It didn't seem to last though.
- Should be noted that while the Skull was a Nazi, he was never directly involved with the Holocaust. He was in charge of espionage, terrorism, and occult activities. As much as Magneto hates the Nazi party, and as much as he may hate the Skull for every single aspect of his personality that makes him a detestable human being, he can't pin the blame for the everything the Nazis did on Red Skull's head. Magneto's never been the kind to personalize his issues like that; it's all part of a larger whole. Skull was a cog in a machine, and Magneto has bigger problems these days.
What exactly did Selene Gallio ultimately hope to accomplish in the recent "Necrosha" story arc/series crossover? What was her end-game, besides "godhood" and bagillions of vampire-like followers? Admittedly, it's been a few years since I've steadily followed any series (the conclusion to "Civil War" was the last I read), and I probably haven't done the research necessary to understand the peripheral story buildup to the arc. Be that as it may, didn't she realize that she loses more than she wins with her plan? First of all, she was apparently in possession of immortality already?! Secondly, did she honestly think that the other long-lived baddies of the Marvel Universe would sit idly while she basically makes herself an in-universe female Expy of Apocalypse?
In the 90s, Captain America lost his mighty shield at the bottom of the ocean. During the time before he (inevitably) got it back, he used an energy-shield which could also be adjusted into an energy sword and an energy force-blast, conveniently packed inside his glove. Now that Steve Rogers is no longer Captain America, having given the shield to his former sidekick, he's using the energy shield again. What doesn't make sense is -- why did he STOP using the energy shield? Sure, we all wanted him to have the classic shield back, but was there some sort of Avengers rule that says he couldn't have both? What if he dropped the metal shield? And was there never again going to be a situation where a sword or energy blast could come in handy?
- There is no in-universe reason, it's just that the metal shield was iconic, and the energy gauntlet not. If you really need to cope with it, mind that Cap has almost unlimited access to every technology in his universe, and never used it if his shield and a Swiss army knife are disposable. It's his mentality.
- The energy shield was destroyed by Ultron at some point, which was what led Cap to reacquire his original shield. Either the technology could not be reproduced or Cap just didn't think he needed anything more than his classic shield.
- You sure he didn't carry both? I believe there was in fact one story where, after being separated from his real shield, he clicked on the energy one. The technology's underneath the glove so it wouldn't be visible, and it really wouldn't come up in most circumstances.
  - "You sure he didn't carry both?" Well...no, to be perfectly honest. But that's what I pieced together from Cap's Wikipedia entry.
Siege: Starting with Straczynski's Thor and all the way through Dark Reign we see that Loki is manipulating the events behind the scenes, and all this leads to the attack on Asgard. Loki is using Norman Osborn to instigate the siege, but then when it's actually happening he suddenly changes his mind and actually dies defending Asgard. The explanation Bendis gives for this is that Loki didn't realize how powerful Sentry was, and he didn't want Asgard to be completely destroyed. But there's still a couple of big questions left unanswered: 1) Loki has been observing the Dark Avengers for a quite some time, plus he's a freakin' god, so shouldn't he have known the extent of Sentry's power? 2) If Loki didn't plan the outcome the Siege had, then what was his plan? Why did he manipulate Osborn into attacking Asgard? This question was never properly answered, and considering Siege was the culmination of a huge crossover that lasted over a year, you'd think explaining the motives behind it would've been something Bendis & co. wanted to do? Also, in the Siege: Loki one-shot we see Loki manipulating Hela so that she promises Loki won't go to Hel when he dies. You'd think this was an important plot point (maybe Loki planned his heroic sacrifice in advance?), but as far as I know nothing comes out of it.
- He did talk over with Osborne that Asgard "didn't belong" in Midgard. Perhaps if, during the seige, the current ruler were killed, then Loki would take power and take Asgard elsewhere (my theory, anyway, but you're right, it wasn't explained). Also...remember that Sentry turned into a freakish monstrosity that a lot of heroes had trouble taking on. Probably not something that happened while he was "saving the day" in Norman's faux-super team.

The symbiots
- The bonding thing. To explain how it (Venom and Carnage) stayed with their hosts so long was retconned that both Brock and Cassidy both had conveniantly cancer the symbiot could feed from. That doesn't explain every other host. A what-if told that if spider-man had kept it it would have drained him to a skeleton. Brock and Cassidy were both normal so that's propably the reason for the retcon...BUT! None of the other hosts suffered from this and could live with them relatively normally aside from having to fight them over control (there's also the few temporary background characters that got dried quite quickly. Also, it was stated over and over how separating symbiot and Brock could kill them both after the complete bonding but they've been separated more times than I can count and the last time he actually gave fully away with only ill-effects coming from growing cancer
- The weaknesses. No one seems to agree how vulnerable they are to fire and sonics. Carnage evolved to a point where even the soundblaster did nothing but fire was still bad. Venom ranged from being deadly afraid of a burning stick to standing just fine in a burning building and even at one point took a thermal bomb right at pointblank range with no ill effects.
  - It's not so strange. The symbiotes simply get stronger and more resistant to fire and sonics over time. They're never completely immune, but just like people acquire a greater threshold for pain as they grow older, symbiotes get stronger too.
    - Which would be valid if it didn't seem to work in reverse sometimes. In a fairly early appearance Venom put up a good fight against Spiderman and the Human Torch at the same time. Years later and Spidey can scare off Venom with a cigarette lighter.
      - Venom being scared a cigerette lighter was a psychological thing rather than the physical thing that it was in previous circumstances. This might not seem like much, but do keep in mind that Eddie's symbiote had been spending a long damn time tracking Eddie down, had been pretty much starving to death and actually rebonded against his will. In other words, when considering how desperate that thing was to find its host again and knowing that Eddie could reject it again at any time, it's reasonable to assume that it could have developed an intense fear of being reseperated, represented here as it is psychologically repulsed by fire, one of the agents that can be used to initiate said seperation. I don't believe it's stated outright, but it's a logical explanation I believe. Especially when not long after this incident, Venom attempts to murder his Sinister Six teamates all because one of them mocked his weakness to flame, in-passing. The symbiote could have overcome its phobia since, possibly related to the fact that this was one of Eddie's last ever ventures as Venom before the symbiote switched hosts.
Okay, people born with these special abilities and other diformities are classified as mutants. What about people that got same properties throught other methods, like ie. bite from a radioactive spider? They are mutated, right?
- People in the Marvel Universe discriminate against people born as mutants, as opposed to people who get their powers later in life. Not sure why, but it's pretty consistently that way.
- It's important to remember that the prejudice against mutants originally was based on the belief that they were the "next evolutionary step" that would replace homo sapiens. Yeah, I know, evolution doesn't work that way, You Fail Biology Forever, and so on. But that's what the X-Men stories said back in the day. Essentially, mutants were to humans as humans were to neanderthals. Or so went the theory at the time. I would guess that that's where the anti-mutant types draw the distinction. Mutants are bad because their children will always be mutants and the more they breed the more they out-breed normal humans. People who've been artificially mutated like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four are assumed (for some reason) to not pass on their mutation...because it's artificial. Or something.
  - Which(while fairly sound as far as bigot logic goes) isn't accurate in the marvel universe. There are several examples of mutants having normal human children, where as the children of people who got their powers through accidents have a fairly high chance of having mutant children. The reason given is that some people, due to meddling from the celestials, have a latant X gene, which is why getting hit with cosmic rays, gamma rays, or bit by radioactive spiders gives them powers rather than kills them. The trigger pretty much turns on the x gene, making it likely to pass onto the child. As for why non-mutant supers aren't discriminated against, people in the marvel verse may look on them more as badass abnormals rather than supers; they were regular people who got powers rather than a different species. Though this raises the question(one that's been brought up here before) about how the general public knows some heroes are mutants and others aren't. There's no real reason to to think Spiderman isn't a mutant; he has a secret identity and all. Which was actually a plot point in House of M where everyone thought he was a mutant when he wasn't.
- According to The Other Wiki, mutants are individuals who develop powers naturally as a result of an x-gene. People like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four who are changed by some outside source are known as "mutates". Interestingly, Beast is both a mutant and a mutate, since his blue fur and claws were caused by a serum that he drank (for some reason).
- The idea that Celestials are the reason for mutants is questionable, as mutants have appeared in races not tampered with by Celestials and mutants have appeared in races already modified by Celestials(Eternals).
Who is Galacta's mother, and who is "the cosmic tapeworm"'s father?
- The Power Cosmic cannot be comprehended by mere mortals.