Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and I'm back with
Speaker 2: another omnibus episode of The Monster Fact, collecting the four
Speaker 2: most recent Marvel Comics themed episodes all rolled up into
Speaker 2: a single convenient package. Up first, let's consider the terrifying
Speaker 2: man Thing. Let us return to the pages of Marvel
Speaker 2: Comics to consider a true monster. Man Thing. It's not
Speaker 2: to be confused with DC's swamp Thing, but he stands
Speaker 2: as something of his spiritual twin sibling. So both man
Speaker 2: Thing and swamp Thing are hybrid swamp based humanoids created
Speaker 2: through an explosive collision of humanity, mad science and swamp water.
Speaker 2: Both characters hit the comics for the first time in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one. However, most commentators seem to see it
Speaker 2: merely as coincidence and point to various differences in the characters,
Speaker 2: plus Marvel's walking swamp creature The Heap predates both of them,
Speaker 2: dating back to the early nineteen forties, as does the
Speaker 2: muck Monster It from Street and Smith Comics. Still, these
Speaker 2: various swamp beings become linked. They have a kinship, and
Speaker 2: you'll even find a panel in Alan Moore's swamp Thing run,
Speaker 2: visually suggesting kinship between swamp Thing, man Thing, the Heap,
Speaker 2: and others. But I've already talked about swamp Thing on
Speaker 2: the Monster fact, so let's get serious about man Thing.
Speaker 2: As pointed out by Kelly Knox in the book Monsters
Speaker 2: Creatures of the Marvel Universe, man Thing started off as
Speaker 2: a human scientist named Ted Sallus. Now, like a lot
Speaker 2: of Marvel comic books, scientists, Ted worked on super soldier serums,
Speaker 2: at least until enemies tried to take it from him.
Speaker 2: Ted then injected himself with the serum and accidentally wrecked
Speaker 2: his car in the Everglades, and was also exposed to
Speaker 2: extra dimensional forces in the process. So what emerged from
Speaker 2: the swamp was neither man nor Thing, but man Thing,
Speaker 2: a humanoid swamp creature that would become the guardian of
Speaker 2: the Nexus of Reality, where science and magic converge. Man
Speaker 2: Thing boasts incredible strength and can throw down with the
Speaker 2: toughest of physical opponents, but some of his most impressive
Speaker 2: powers are due to his empathy. Manthaning is so empathic
Speaker 2: that negative emotions in others can cause him physical pain
Speaker 2: and distress, especially when he senses fear. This will also
Speaker 2: cause him to lash out violently at individuals in the
Speaker 2: throes of fear and lay his burning hands upon them.
Speaker 2: Man Thing's burning hands are a fascinating superpower, brought to
Speaker 2: life most wonderfully in the twenty twenty two MCU Werewolf
Speaker 2: by Night special, which captures it as a kind of
Speaker 2: holy fire than incinerates Ted's victims. On one level, this
Speaker 2: seems to be just another version of various magical tales
Speaker 2: in which creatures feed off of fear or sense fear
Speaker 2: in others as if it is an actual energy or
Speaker 2: a quantifiable substance. Man Thing's abilities, however, are frequently explained
Speaker 2: in terms of chemistry. NOx attributes his burning touch to
Speaker 2: chemicals in man Thing's body and sumeric and wallace in
Speaker 2: marvel anatomy. The authors here presume that this chemical secretion
Speaker 2: is something akin to sulphuric acid, that it's excreted through
Speaker 2: man Thing's pores. I suppose we might compare this ability
Speaker 2: to these self defensive secretions of various natural world organisms,
Speaker 2: and given man things plant based physiology, we have to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that certain plants do secrete acidic substances. Through their roots,
Speaker 2: in some cases to dissolve rocky soil and in other
Speaker 2: cases to eradicate competition. But what about this notion that
Speaker 2: a monster like man, thing, or even a natural world
Speaker 2: organism can quote sense fear. It's a common trope, but
Speaker 2: is there anything to it. Certainly there is no true
Speaker 2: sixth sense for fear in which humans or other animals
Speaker 2: can tap into an otherwise invisible video game fear meter. Fear,
Speaker 2: like other human defined emotional states, is hard to quantify
Speaker 2: in animals and subject to human testing bias, as Ralph
Speaker 2: Adolf's discussed in the twenty thirteen Current Biology article The
Speaker 2: Biology of Fear. Some argue that fear is a mere
Speaker 2: psychological construct and something we can't apply to animals as
Speaker 2: we cannot truly know their minds. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: neuroimaging in rodents would seem to reveal a clear fear
Speaker 2: network in their brains at all. Stressed a distinction to
Speaker 2: be made between the conscious human feeling of being afraid
Speaker 2: and fear as a functional state of an organism. This
Speaker 2: state exists in relation to fear inducing stimuli, which for
Speaker 2: humans at least can be in the present past or
Speaker 2: in imagined future and induces fearful behavior. Fear in both
Speaker 2: cognition and behavior is largely adaptive, and it's because fear
Speaker 2: can help us survive, though of course, all of this
Speaker 2: can become maladaptive as well. Now, man things relation to
Speaker 2: fear is interesting in light of all this. He acutely
Speaker 2: fears the effects of another organism's fear, but the source
Speaker 2: of his own emotional distress in this scenario is not
Speaker 2: the fear inducing stimuli that caused the original distress, but
Speaker 2: the distressed organism itself, which he may then incinerate with
Speaker 2: his burning hands due to a fear response chemical secretion
Speaker 2: in his own body. So there's a lot to unpact there.
Speaker 2: But hey, still a pretty great swamp monster, and I'm
Speaker 2: always down for a cool swamp monster. All right, let's
Speaker 2: insert a fresh quarter into the nineteen ninety two X
Speaker 2: Men arcade machine and tag in Colossus. I've been plowing
Speaker 2: through old episodes of The X Men, the animated series
Speaker 2: from the nineties with my son in anticipation of eventually
Speaker 2: diving into the X Men ninety seven series. This show
Speaker 2: is a lot of fun, packs a lot of nostalgia
Speaker 2: for me, and leads to some interesting conversations with my
Speaker 2: son about the various themes. Some of our favorite characters
Speaker 2: include Rogue and Wolverine, but Colossus is always a treat
Speaker 2: as well. If you're not familiar with this particular mutant,
Speaker 2: we're talking about Russian X men Peter Resputant, an already
Speaker 2: intimidatingly muscular man who is able at will to assume
Speaker 2: an impenetrable steel form. Sometimes, as in his Marvel dot
Speaker 2: Com profile, Colossus's transformation is said to convert his entire
Speaker 2: body into an organic steel like substance. Other times, the
Speaker 2: transformation is interpreted as something that occurs only at the
Speaker 2: dermal level, so only at the skin level. Either way,
Speaker 2: the transformation generally looks as if a segmented stainless steel
Speaker 2: coating flows over his entire body. We're going to approach
Speaker 2: it here as a dermal transformation because the idea of
Speaker 2: a full body transformation leaves us less room to wonder
Speaker 2: over the scientific details of the feet. But just the
Speaker 2: idea alone has always been a captivating one, because here
Speaker 2: is Peter Resputen, a powerful but peaceful man who would
Speaker 2: far rather pursue art than conflict, but who for the
Speaker 2: greater good can literally grow the thickest, most impenetrable skin
Speaker 2: imaginable to throw down against adversity. For Colossus, this might
Speaker 2: mean the grasping tentacles of Omega Red, always a favorite
Speaker 2: of mine, or the machinations of the Shadow King. Once
Speaker 2: the threat is dealt with, Peter reverts to his normal
Speaker 2: form and continues on in his peaceful creative pursuits. Lynn
Speaker 2: Ween and Dave Cockrum created Colossus back in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: and he remains a popular character to this day. So
Speaker 2: how might we think about Colossus from a scientific and
Speaker 2: biological standpoint? Turning once more to marvel Anatomy by Mark
Speaker 2: Sumerac and Daniel Wallace, the authors here discuss his ability
Speaker 2: in terms of a transmutation of his dermal layers or skin,
Speaker 2: into an organic steel, with his underlying body retaining its
Speaker 2: flesh and blood form. Their explanation details a process by
Speaker 2: which each individual's skin cell draws on metallic extra dimensional
Speaker 2: mass to become an activated organic steel cell. So, in
Speaker 2: other words, each cell of Colossus's dermal layer coats itself
Speaker 2: in biological metallic material, and this translates into the transformation
Speaker 2: of the entire epidermis but at the cellular level. Thus
Speaker 2: his mobility is not compromised, and his already incredible baseline
Speaker 2: strength no doubt, helps out as well. Now, by this explanation,
Speaker 2: we may not be dealing exactly with something like steel
Speaker 2: shutters from nowhere flowing over his entire body, but that
Speaker 2: metallic cellular coding has to come from somewhere if we're
Speaker 2: to adhere to the law of conservation of mass. And
Speaker 2: the answer they provide is that the ability draws on
Speaker 2: another spatial dimension. That's where the metal comes from. And okay,
Speaker 2: that works for me. Now. I also ran across an
Speaker 2: excellent twenty eighteen paper in the journal Advances in Physiology
Speaker 2: Education titled the Physiology of Impenetrable Skin Colossus of the
Speaker 2: x Men by Barry W. Fitzgerald. His whole point is
Speaker 2: the Colossus is a great example of how a fictional
Speaker 2: character can promote multidisciplinary se scientific discussion in a classroom. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to summarize everything Fitzgerald has to say,
Speaker 2: but he makes some great points about Colossus and thermoregulation. Basically,
Speaker 2: we have to think about what human skin does for
Speaker 2: the body and how that might be impacted by a
Speaker 2: shift into a steel form. One key area of concern
Speaker 2: is thermoregulation of body temperature, which the skin plays a
Speaker 2: role in via such responses as vasodilation, vassal constriction, and
Speaker 2: of course sweating. Can Colossus his steel skin do any
Speaker 2: of this well? The author here contends that his body's
Speaker 2: ability to thermo regulate would be severely impacted via this
Speaker 2: steel or organic steel, or otherwise metal coating, and specifically,
Speaker 2: during a heated battle, he would simply overheat. He wouldn't
Speaker 2: be much good battling the Juggernaut if he passes out
Speaker 2: from overheating just a few minutes into the struggle. Fitzgerald
Speaker 2: isn't here to yuck everyone's young, though with science he
Speaker 2: presents a possible path forward. Perhaps he says Colossus's organic
Speaker 2: steel skin is actually graphene due to its protective capability
Speaker 2: and its biocompatibility. It's carbon, after all, like we are,
Speaker 2: and it's super thin, consisting of a single layer of
Speaker 2: atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure. This biographene honeycomb
Speaker 2: lattice layer hypothesis would therefore solve a number of the
Speaker 2: key problems with Peter's mutant power from thermoregulation to mass conservation,
Speaker 2: the layer would swiftly form via protein folding and self assembly,
Speaker 2: and bam, Colossus is ready for action. I highly recommend
Speaker 2: checking out Fitzgerald's paper here of the topic interest you
Speaker 2: in or out of the classroom, because hey, presumably Colossus
Speaker 2: is headed back into theaters and back into action this
Speaker 2: summer in the next Deadpool movie, so it's a perfect
Speaker 2: time to embrace both sieians and mutant powers. Next, let's
Speaker 2: consider a deeper cut with puff Adder. I recently picked
Speaker 2: up a kind of ragged copy of the official Handbook
Speaker 2: of the Marvel Universe Master Edition from I believe nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: though this also might have been a reprint from years later.
Speaker 2: I'm not entirely certain, but it's filled with various Marvel
Speaker 2: characters from the famous to the obscure, each with profile
Speaker 2: data and standardized character illustrations in this kind of glorious
Speaker 2: retro style. Amid all the capes and tights, and there
Speaker 2: are a lot of tights, there are some gloriously weird
Speaker 2: entries in the book. There's the spiky faced skeleton man
Speaker 2: terror Ink, with his ability to steal limbs and attach
Speaker 2: them to his own body. I was also fascinated by
Speaker 2: Quasi Modo or quasi motivational destruct organism. He is a
Speaker 2: superpowered cyborg hunchback, and presumably he's quite motivational. But in
Speaker 2: this episode, I want to focus in on the villain
Speaker 2: poff Adder real name Gordo Freeley and apparently a native
Speaker 2: of Atlanta. Physically, he appears to be a very large,
Speaker 2: muscular man in a snake costume. He is a mutant
Speaker 2: in the Marvel comics, with the ability to engorge his
Speaker 2: entire epidermis with blood, thus making himself appear more powerful
Speaker 2: and menacing. Now, he's already a very capable fighter with
Speaker 2: enhanced strength, but it's curious that his mutant ability doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to actually boost his fighting power in the way
Speaker 2: that many other mutant powers do. Instead, it just allows
Speaker 2: him to better bluff and better intimidate. Oh and he
Speaker 2: also has another weapon, a noxious gas canister in the
Speaker 2: mouth like cowl of his snake man. His namesake is,
Speaker 2: of course, the puff adder snake, consisting of several species
Speaker 2: native to Africa in parts of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.
Speaker 2: The snake in question is able to puff itself up
Speaker 2: to look larger as a predator deterrent, and it does
Speaker 2: this by inflating its body with air and then hissing loudly.
Speaker 2: And like the Marvel character, the snake can also back
Speaker 2: up that threat. It packs a powerful venomous bite, and
Speaker 2: the force of its strikes alone is enough to kill
Speaker 2: small prey. Various natural world creatures make themselves look bigger
Speaker 2: as a defensive or mating display. Some the imposturing or
Speaker 2: the manipulation of fur or feathers, while others actually inflate
Speaker 2: tissues with air, water, or blood. These actions also frequently
Speaker 2: enhance the colors or patterns of such a display as well.
Speaker 2: While Gordo's mutant nobility may appear at first to buck
Speaker 2: the general theme we see in comic book Superpowers, it's
Speaker 2: certainly in keeping with actual real world aptations. There is
Speaker 2: a survival advantage in not actually having to fight a
Speaker 2: predator or competitor, and the same holds true with not
Speaker 2: having to fight every x Man or avenger you encounter
Speaker 2: on the pages of Marvel comics. And finally, let's comb
Speaker 2: the powerful scarlet locks of Medusa unstuffable your mind. We've
Speaker 2: discussed the mythical gorgon Medusa at length, But today I
Speaker 2: want to look at the character with the same name
Speaker 2: from the Marvel Comics universe. This Medusa is an inhuman,
Speaker 2: a branch of Homo sapiens descended from experiments conducted on
Speaker 2: primitive humans by the alien Cree to give them various
Speaker 2: emergent powers. While other inhumans boast devastating offensive powers or
Speaker 2: highly augmented physiologies, Medusa's power is all about her long
Speaker 2: red hair, which she can extend to double its normal
Speaker 2: six foot length, and most remarkably, of all, control each
Speaker 2: strand as if it were a highly prehensile arm or tentacle.
Speaker 2: She can cause her scarlet locks to bundle together into
Speaker 2: reinforcing strands and accomplish everything from minor tool manipulation to
Speaker 2: intense physical combat with other superpowered individuals now As the
Speaker 2: excellent book Marvel Anatomy by Mark Sumarak and Daniel Wallace
Speaker 2: with illustrations by Jonah Loebe points out, Medusa's hair is
Speaker 2: just normal hair. It's perhaps fuller and longer than most
Speaker 2: human heads of hair, but its prehensile power stems not
Speaker 2: from its internal structure, which is just the standard cross
Speaker 2: link kerat and protein filament, but from her own powerful
Speaker 2: psionic abilities. Yes, she has telekinesis, but can only control
Speaker 2: her own hair, and that's no slight against Medusa here.
Speaker 2: Think about it. The average human head, according to Harvard's
Speaker 2: Bio Numbers website, consists of between ninety thousand and one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand individual hairs, and we might position
Speaker 2: her at the upper end of that spectrum, even allotting
Speaker 2: for thicker hair shafts, as Sumac and Wallace suggest, even
Speaker 2: being rather conservative, Let's say she's using her brain to
Speaker 2: minutely control one hundred thousand strands of hair as if
Speaker 2: they were one hundred thousand additional arms. Assuming that her
Speaker 2: sonic powers emerged primarily through neural tissue, her brain is
Speaker 2: putting in quite a lot of work here, in addition
Speaker 2: to controlling her human limbs. Of course, remember that an octopus,
Speaker 2: in order to control its own sophisticated system of grasping arms,
Speaker 2: depends in part on intramuscular nerve cords that act as
Speaker 2: sort of many brains to provide partially independent action. So
Speaker 2: perhaps Medusa as well benefits from something akin to this.
Speaker 2: We might well assume her telekinetic powers rival those of
Speaker 2: century or even those of the mighty e gene gray,
Speaker 2: only much more localized in range. But if telekinetic hair
Speaker 2: strand control is a heavy lift, what about the actual
Speaker 2: physical lift of picking up various objects and even superheroes
Speaker 2: with her telekinetically manipulated hair. This question is a good
Speaker 2: bit easier to nail down, as we know exactly how
Speaker 2: strong human hair is. As Tim Radford pointed out in
Speaker 2: a two thousand and four article for The Guardian Secrets
Speaker 2: of Human Hair Unlocked at Natural History Museum in London,
Speaker 2: a single human hair strand can only sustain a weight
Speaker 2: of one hundred grams or three ounces, but when hair
Speaker 2: is woven together, it can sustain much more, a fact
Speaker 2: that hair hangar aerialists have long exploited. In fact, if
Speaker 2: all the strands of hair on a typical human head
Speaker 2: were woven together, the resulting megabraid could hold twelve metric tons,
Speaker 2: or the weight of two elephants. So the idea of
Speaker 2: Medusa coiling her braids and holding say iron Man in place,
Speaker 2: is isn't that far fetched, at least from a material standpoint.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, in the comics, as Queen of the Inhumans,
Speaker 2: Medusa's greatest strength is perhaps her diplomatic abilities. A reminder
Speaker 2: that while superpowered hair can move around superheroes, a well
Speaker 2: placed word can move mountains. Tune in for additional episodes
Speaker 2: of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Automalius Dupendium each week.
Speaker 2: As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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