As a storytelling concept, the X-Men make an uncanny amount of sense. No longer would Stan Lee and his cohorts be forced to come up with elaborate scenarios to give each and every character their powers. Now, a simple trick of genes and evolution left one primed and ready to join Homo superior, with whatever power set could be imagined. But what does science say on the subject?
But unlike many of the first generation X-men, who seem to have completely internalized their mutations and powers, the story of Hank McCoy begins with his father, Norton. He worked in a nuclear power plant before his son’s conception, even coming into contact with “intense radiation,” which in my mind makes him the Homer Simpson of the 616. Speculation aside, the conception is what really matters since that’s the point at which a father and mother give their genetic material to the child. The supposition is that the radiation Norton was exposed to could have affected Hank’s DNA, and that’s entirely possible. The basics go something like this: radiation damages DNA, the body repairs DNA, sometimes the body screws up the repairs, and you’re left with a mutation. Gonads are especially susceptible so the odds of a mutation being seen in the offspring of the irradiated is somewhat increased. The idea of radiation modifying DNA is explored more fully in Episode 19 of my podcast Science… sort of where I and my other Paleopals interview RyanLipscomb, a medical physicist, on the subject of radiation and how it can damage human tissue. I even bring up the issue of Norton McCoy and the legitimacy of the idea that working in a nuclear power plant could yield a mutated offspring. I doubt it’s the kind of question a medical physicist is often asked, but that’s just how darn tenacious we are when it comes to exploring the “sort of” side of science.
In a word: plausibility. Shooting beams out of your eyes, controlling the fundamental forces of the Universe, or turning into metal are all super cool and (sometimes) lead to great stories, but these all bend or break the laws of physics. Not Beast though, he’s just a dude who’s a little stronger, a little faster and a little deformed. It’s a basic, no frills, and reasonable set of abilities.Ryan Haupt has yet to realize that not everyone cares as much about science as he does. Thus he continues undaunted writing about comics & science, plus hosting the podcast Science… sort of available wherever fine podcasts are sold (for free). He hopes you've learned something, but if not he'll try again next time.
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This is an awesome concept for weekly articles and so well done. Great job Ryan I look forward to reading more in the future.
Beast’s metamorphous from monkey dude to blue cat could make sense too. It might be analogous to patients going through a sex change, where they would take hormones to increase/decrease the appropriate level of hormones. As far as I know, none of Beasts abilities have changed, he is still the smart buff gymnast. The only thing that has changed is his outer appearance.
Great article Ryan, looking forward to more articles from you.
Are these the kind of articles we can expect from now on?
‘Cuz if they are… awesome. I love those shows on the History Channel where they try to explain the science behind people’s powers… and I don’t even like science
No joke, I woke up this morning with an explanation for how he could go from grey fur to blue fur and kicked myself for not including it. Guess they’ll have to be a sequel.
AmirCat: That could explain a lot of that hair, not so sure about the teeth and claws though.
deezer: Yes.
I had no idea gonads were so prone.
Great piece, Ryan! I guess from a storytelling perscpective, it’s almost inevitable that Beast would end up Blue and Furry to make him more dynamic in fitting in with all the other crazy physics-defying powers out there, so this was a nice reminder that Beast’s origin was actually fairly simple and somewhat believable. thanks, man, and I’m looking forward to more of these!
(also: your Iron Man piece on Marvel.com was pretty cool, too!)
Great first article Ryan. Another thing that could have contributed to his mutation and this is a stretch (but hey it’s comics) is that depending on Hanks phenotypic plasticity the environment could influence his gene expression and thus his appearance. This could lead to a good reason for the rise of mutants in a the modern age given that humans have changed the environment so much that some factor that kept mutation down is no longer present and so mutants appear more often.
To me, comics are about excess and so I embrace every form of it wherever found such as the severe unlikelihood of someone walking around with optic beams beneath their eyes. It’s escapism at its finest, away from the cruel realm we know as reality.
Great article but one factual thing.
You said that most mutations are detrimental while really they are likely to have no effect at all. With so much genetic material made up of stuff that never gets coded for (introns for the curious) and the redundancy in the coding process they usally will have no effect at all.
That book sounds pretty cool, how do they explain Cyclops in it?
SCIENCE FIGHT!
Great article, I find this stuff fascinating!
@Josh – I’d be disappointed if someone didn’t try to pick this all apart. That’s science, baby. No holds barred battle to the truth.
@English – I like your thoughts about phenotypic plasticity but unfortunately with a sample size of 1 it’s hard to say how a different environment might have lead to a different Hank McCoy. Maybe we can argue that since Dark Beast seems to have similar mutations plasticity isn’t an issue, thoughts?
@Spoons – You’re right that many mutations are "neutral" or "silent" if they don’t change any gene expression or occur in noncoding portions of the DNA but for purposes of applied genetics those are generally just ignored unless you’re using them as the basis for a molecular clock. Any expressed mutation can’t by definition be neutral or silent, and most of them are detrimental enough to be selected out of the population. And it’s been awhile since I read the book so I don’t remember if Cyclops is covered or not, but I have my own thoughts on him that may come up in a future article. Thanks for bringing up some good points!
@Haupt Thanks for the response. I have always thought of Beast as the most plausible of the X-Men. More like a half step back then the leap forward of the others. The result of some shifted promoters or something.
I love science and I love it when someone who knows his stuff (as @Haupt obviously does) applies it to something nontraditional. I also love well written, interesting articles. Excellent article. Keep ’em coming.
@Haupt I guess what you could do is expand your view out to the multiverse and examine the changes in each Hank McCoy. That would increase your sample size and a variety of environments. Although would it be a independent selection if someone from the 616 had already visited that alternate universe?
@Stulach – Thanks man. I will do my best to continue the quality.
@English – If there are infinite universes then there are infinite Hank McCoy’s and a sample size of infinity is also useless. Even if not every universe has an Hank McCoy: Infinity – A Bunch = Infinity. The best would be to clone him a bunch and raise them all differently but I think his use the serum is a enough of a confounding factor that this would all be moot, too much work, and unethical to try.
Sir you are brilliant. Science and comics combined.
The difference between Kurt and Hank is that Kurt was almost murdered by his hometown for the way he looked when he was born. Hank didn’t get blue and hairy until he was an adult and he did it to himself.
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Cool article!
If you’re up for it, how about an article on the X-Men and Evolution. One of the complaints about the X-Men is they further the idea that evolution is this linear path of development and improvement for a species – in the X-Men comics the mutant’s are the "Homo Superior"s, the next step in evolution. But as I understand it (and don’t want to claim a lot of knowledge here either), evolution works based upon environmental forced/needs/pressures. So the nature of change and go in basically any direction, such as reversing itself. I remember Stephen Jay Gould‘s research on snails showed how populations could favor certain traits and the population would change/"evolve" in that direction; and then later environmental circumstances would changed favoring the traits which had been previously "abandoned", thus these snail populations could go through a circular sort of evolutionary path.
So since you’re the iFanboy Science-Hero-Writer, consider an article on something like this. I would love to be straighten out on this topic.