Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. In
Speaker 2: considering superpowered comic book characters, we all love to wonder
Speaker 2: what it might be like to fly through the air,
Speaker 2: to shoot laser beams from our eyeballs, or turn invisible.
Speaker 2: Which superpower would we prefer? What does our choice say
Speaker 2: about us as people? How might we change our own
Speaker 2: lives if not the world, if we had these powers.
Speaker 2: We also love to ponder the curse slash blessing dynamics
Speaker 2: of certain superhero abilities, such as the power draining touch
Speaker 2: of X Men's rogue in many other examples where great
Speaker 2: power is achieved but something else is lost. However, we
Speaker 2: also can help but ponder some of the more useless
Speaker 2: seeming superpowers out there, and two of the best examples
Speaker 2: from Marvel Comics concerned the power of ice cream. First,
Speaker 2: there is ice cream that's spelled like eye scream. This
Speaker 2: character was created by Alan Cooperberg in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 2: as a mutant antagonist of the X Men. His superpower
Speaker 2: the ability to transform his body himself into any flavor
Speaker 2: of ice cream. He's a clear cut comedic villain, to
Speaker 2: be sure, as his signature power does him little to
Speaker 2: no good in his vendetta against the X Men, and
Speaker 2: then they're soft Serve. Created by Bob Quinn in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, she's a mutant citizen of the island of
Speaker 2: Krakoa with the power to poop or otherwise excrete any
Speaker 2: flavor of ice cream. She's essentially a background character with
Speaker 2: obvious comedic intent, reminding us that not every mutant ability
Speaker 2: is useful, desired, or certainly Omega level. One character transmutes
Speaker 2: their own body into a sweet, frozen dairy treat, while
Speaker 2: the other excretes it, either as a byproduct of digestion
Speaker 2: or as some other sort of more mystical or extra
Speaker 2: dimensional process. In either case, it does really feel almost alchemical,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. While not as valuable as gold, ice cream
Speaker 2: is certainly novel and almost otherworldly. It's clearly a food,
Speaker 2: but doesn't really feel like a food, does it. It's
Speaker 2: like some sort of mystical manna or pure emotion that
Speaker 2: has phase shifted into a frozen treat that we can
Speaker 2: eat again. Both of these characters were clearly created with
Speaker 2: comedy in the forefront, but they somehow both feel on
Speaker 2: the very cusp of profundity and honestly have trouble working
Speaker 2: out exactly why. I think on one level, I am
Speaker 2: reminded of the line from poet Wallace Stevens, the only
Speaker 2: Emperor is the Emperor of ice cream, invoked in a
Speaker 2: poem of sinister cold sweets dished out at a funeral
Speaker 2: or awake. So maybe it's this poetic connection that stirs
Speaker 2: these feelings when I'm considering ice cream and soft surf.
Speaker 2: Wallace dances lyrically with the idea of sweet treats and death,
Speaker 2: while these characters are a dance between surreal comedy and
Speaker 2: body heart and the hyper desirable properties of ice cream
Speaker 2: itself somehow confuses everything. Again, I'm not exactly sure what
Speaker 2: to make of it, but I'd love to hear what
Speaker 2: you have to say, what your insight is on ice
Speaker 2: cream based superpowers, and hey, maybe there are some other
Speaker 2: ice cream based superheroes out there within the Marvel universe
Speaker 2: or in some of the other comic universes that you
Speaker 2: can share with me. Tune in for additional episodes of
Speaker 2: The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Animalius to Pendium each week.
Speaker 2: As always, you can email us at conduct at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
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