June 4, 2025 • 19 mins
In this special omnibus edition of The Monstrefact, join Robert for a collection of past Monstrefact episodes about the Marvel Comics characters Man-Thing, Colossus, Puff Adder and Medusa.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and I'm back with
another omnibus episode of The Monster Fact, collecting the four
most recent Marvel Comics themed episodes all rolled up into
a single convenient package. Up first, let's consider the terrifying
man Thing. Let us return to the pages of Marvel
(00:30):
Comics to consider a true monster. Man Thing. It's not
to be confused with DC's swamp Thing, but he stands
as something of his spiritual twin sibling. So both man
Thing and swamp Thing are hybrid swamp based humanoids created
through an explosive collision of humanity, mad science and swamp water.
(00:54):
Both characters hit the comics for the first time in
nineteen seventy one. However, most commentators seem to see it
merely as coincidence and point to various differences in the characters,
plus Marvel's walking swamp creature The Heap predates both of them,
dating back to the early nineteen forties, as does the
(01:14):
muck Monster It from Street and Smith Comics. Still, these
various swamp beings become linked. They have a kinship, and
you'll even find a panel in Alan Moore's swamp Thing run,
visually suggesting kinship between swamp Thing, man Thing, the Heap,
and others. But I've already talked about swamp Thing on
(01:35):
the Monster fact, so let's get serious about man Thing.
As pointed out by Kelly Knox in the book Monsters
Creatures of the Marvel Universe, man Thing started off as
a human scientist named Ted Sallus. Now, like a lot
of Marvel comic books, scientists, Ted worked on super soldier serums,
at least until enemies tried to take it from him.
(01:57):
Ted then injected himself with the serum and accidentally wrecked
his car in the Everglades, and was also exposed to
extra dimensional forces in the process. So what emerged from
the swamp was neither man nor Thing, but man Thing,
a humanoid swamp creature that would become the guardian of
the Nexus of Reality, where science and magic converge. Man
(02:20):
Thing boasts incredible strength and can throw down with the
toughest of physical opponents, but some of his most impressive
powers are due to his empathy. Manthaning is so empathic
that negative emotions in others can cause him physical pain
and distress, especially when he senses fear. This will also
cause him to lash out violently at individuals in the
(02:42):
throes of fear and lay his burning hands upon them.
Man Thing's burning hands are a fascinating superpower, brought to
life most wonderfully in the twenty twenty two MCU Werewolf
by Night special, which captures it as a kind of
holy fire than incinerates Ted's victims. On one level, this
(03:03):
seems to be just another version of various magical tales
in which creatures feed off of fear or sense fear
in others as if it is an actual energy or
a quantifiable substance. Man Thing's abilities, however, are frequently explained
in terms of chemistry. NOx attributes his burning touch to
chemicals in man Thing's body and sumeric and wallace in
(03:27):
marvel anatomy. The authors here presume that this chemical secretion
is something akin to sulphuric acid, that it's excreted through
man Thing's pores. I suppose we might compare this ability
to these self defensive secretions of various natural world organisms,
and given man things plant based physiology, we have to
acknowledge that certain plants do secrete acidic substances. Through their roots,
(03:51):
in some cases to dissolve rocky soil and in other
cases to eradicate competition. But what about this notion that
a monster like man, thing, or even a natural world
organism can quote sense fear. It's a common trope, but
is there anything to it. Certainly there is no true
sixth sense for fear in which humans or other animals
(04:13):
can tap into an otherwise invisible video game fear meter. Fear,
like other human defined emotional states, is hard to quantify
in animals and subject to human testing bias, as Ralph
Adolf's discussed in the twenty thirteen Current Biology article The
Biology of Fear. Some argue that fear is a mere
(04:36):
psychological construct and something we can't apply to animals as
we cannot truly know their minds. On the other hand,
neuroimaging in rodents would seem to reveal a clear fear
network in their brains at all. Stressed a distinction to
be made between the conscious human feeling of being afraid
(04:56):
and fear as a functional state of an organism. This
state exists in relation to fear inducing stimuli, which for
humans at least can be in the present past or
in imagined future and induces fearful behavior. Fear in both
cognition and behavior is largely adaptive, and it's because fear
(05:17):
can help us survive, though of course, all of this
can become maladaptive as well. Now, man things relation to
fear is interesting in light of all this. He acutely
fears the effects of another organism's fear, but the source
of his own emotional distress in this scenario is not
the fear inducing stimuli that caused the original distress, but
(05:38):
the distressed organism itself, which he may then incinerate with
his burning hands due to a fear response chemical secretion
in his own body. So there's a lot to unpact there.
But hey, still a pretty great swamp monster, and I'm
always down for a cool swamp monster. All right, let's
(06:02):
insert a fresh quarter into the nineteen ninety two X
Men arcade machine and tag in Colossus. I've been plowing
through old episodes of The X Men, the animated series
from the nineties with my son in anticipation of eventually
diving into the X Men ninety seven series. This show
(06:24):
is a lot of fun, packs a lot of nostalgia
for me, and leads to some interesting conversations with my
son about the various themes. Some of our favorite characters
include Rogue and Wolverine, but Colossus is always a treat
as well. If you're not familiar with this particular mutant,
we're talking about Russian X men Peter Resputant, an already
(06:46):
intimidatingly muscular man who is able at will to assume
an impenetrable steel form. Sometimes, as in his Marvel dot
Com profile, Colossus's transformation is said to convert his entire
body into an organic steel like substance. Other times, the
transformation is interpreted as something that occurs only at the
(07:08):
dermal level, so only at the skin level. Either way,
the transformation generally looks as if a segmented stainless steel
coating flows over his entire body. We're going to approach
it here as a dermal transformation because the idea of
a full body transformation leaves us less room to wonder
over the scientific details of the feet. But just the
(07:32):
idea alone has always been a captivating one, because here
is Peter Resputen, a powerful but peaceful man who would
far rather pursue art than conflict, but who for the
greater good can literally grow the thickest, most impenetrable skin
imaginable to throw down against adversity. For Colossus, this might
(07:53):
mean the grasping tentacles of Omega Red, always a favorite
of mine, or the machinations of the Shadow King. Once
the threat is dealt with, Peter reverts to his normal
form and continues on in his peaceful creative pursuits. Lynn
Ween and Dave Cockrum created Colossus back in nineteen seventy five,
and he remains a popular character to this day. So
(08:17):
how might we think about Colossus from a scientific and
biological standpoint? Turning once more to marvel Anatomy by Mark
Sumerac and Daniel Wallace, the authors here discuss his ability
in terms of a transmutation of his dermal layers or skin,
into an organic steel, with his underlying body retaining its
(08:37):
flesh and blood form. Their explanation details a process by
which each individual's skin cell draws on metallic extra dimensional
mass to become an activated organic steel cell. So, in
other words, each cell of Colossus's dermal layer coats itself
in biological metallic material, and this translates into the transformation
(09:02):
of the entire epidermis but at the cellular level. Thus
his mobility is not compromised, and his already incredible baseline
strength no doubt, helps out as well. Now, by this explanation,
we may not be dealing exactly with something like steel
shutters from nowhere flowing over his entire body, but that
metallic cellular coding has to come from somewhere if we're
(09:25):
to adhere to the law of conservation of mass. And
the answer they provide is that the ability draws on
another spatial dimension. That's where the metal comes from. And okay,
that works for me. Now. I also ran across an
excellent twenty eighteen paper in the journal Advances in Physiology
Education titled the Physiology of Impenetrable Skin Colossus of the
(09:49):
x Men by Barry W. Fitzgerald. His whole point is
the Colossus is a great example of how a fictional
character can promote multidisciplinary se scientific discussion in a classroom. Now,
I'm not going to summarize everything Fitzgerald has to say,
but he makes some great points about Colossus and thermoregulation. Basically,
(10:11):
we have to think about what human skin does for
the body and how that might be impacted by a
shift into a steel form. One key area of concern
is thermoregulation of body temperature, which the skin plays a
role in via such responses as vasodilation, vassal constriction, and
(10:31):
of course sweating. Can Colossus his steel skin do any
of this well? The author here contends that his body's
ability to thermo regulate would be severely impacted via this
steel or organic steel, or otherwise metal coating, and specifically,
during a heated battle, he would simply overheat. He wouldn't
(10:53):
be much good battling the Juggernaut if he passes out
from overheating just a few minutes into the struggle. Fitzgerald
isn't here to yuck everyone's young, though with science he
presents a possible path forward. Perhaps he says Colossus's organic
steel skin is actually graphene due to its protective capability
(11:13):
and its biocompatibility. It's carbon, after all, like we are,
and it's super thin, consisting of a single layer of
atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure. This biographene honeycomb
lattice layer hypothesis would therefore solve a number of the
key problems with Peter's mutant power from thermoregulation to mass conservation,
(11:36):
the layer would swiftly form via protein folding and self assembly,
and bam, Colossus is ready for action. I highly recommend
checking out Fitzgerald's paper here of the topic interest you
in or out of the classroom, because hey, presumably Colossus
is headed back into theaters and back into action this
summer in the next Deadpool movie, so it's a perfect
(11:58):
time to embrace both sieians and mutant powers. Next, let's
consider a deeper cut with puff Adder. I recently picked
(12:21):
up a kind of ragged copy of the official Handbook
of the Marvel Universe Master Edition from I believe nineteen ninety,
though this also might have been a reprint from years later.
I'm not entirely certain, but it's filled with various Marvel
characters from the famous to the obscure, each with profile
data and standardized character illustrations in this kind of glorious
(12:45):
retro style. Amid all the capes and tights, and there
are a lot of tights, there are some gloriously weird
entries in the book. There's the spiky faced skeleton man
terror Ink, with his ability to steal limbs and attach
them to his own body. I was also fascinated by
Quasi Modo or quasi motivational destruct organism. He is a
(13:08):
superpowered cyborg hunchback, and presumably he's quite motivational. But in
this episode, I want to focus in on the villain
poff Adder real name Gordo Freeley and apparently a native
of Atlanta. Physically, he appears to be a very large,
muscular man in a snake costume. He is a mutant
in the Marvel comics, with the ability to engorge his
(13:30):
entire epidermis with blood, thus making himself appear more powerful
and menacing. Now, he's already a very capable fighter with
enhanced strength, but it's curious that his mutant ability doesn't
seem to actually boost his fighting power in the way
that many other mutant powers do. Instead, it just allows
him to better bluff and better intimidate. Oh and he
(13:54):
also has another weapon, a noxious gas canister in the
mouth like cowl of his snake man. His namesake is,
of course, the puff adder snake, consisting of several species
native to Africa in parts of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.
The snake in question is able to puff itself up
to look larger as a predator deterrent, and it does
(14:15):
this by inflating its body with air and then hissing loudly.
And like the Marvel character, the snake can also back
up that threat. It packs a powerful venomous bite, and
the force of its strikes alone is enough to kill
small prey. Various natural world creatures make themselves look bigger
as a defensive or mating display. Some the imposturing or
(14:38):
the manipulation of fur or feathers, while others actually inflate
tissues with air, water, or blood. These actions also frequently
enhance the colors or patterns of such a display as well.
While Gordo's mutant nobility may appear at first to buck
the general theme we see in comic book Superpowers, it's
certainly in keeping with actual real world aptations. There is
(15:02):
a survival advantage in not actually having to fight a
predator or competitor, and the same holds true with not
having to fight every x Man or avenger you encounter
on the pages of Marvel comics. And finally, let's comb
the powerful scarlet locks of Medusa unstuffable your mind. We've
(15:27):
discussed the mythical gorgon Medusa at length, But today I
want to look at the character with the same name
from the Marvel Comics universe. This Medusa is an inhuman,
a branch of Homo sapiens descended from experiments conducted on
primitive humans by the alien Cree to give them various
(15:48):
emergent powers. While other inhumans boast devastating offensive powers or
highly augmented physiologies, Medusa's power is all about her long
red hair, which she can extend to double its normal
six foot length, and most remarkably, of all, control each
strand as if it were a highly prehensile arm or tentacle.
(16:11):
She can cause her scarlet locks to bundle together into
reinforcing strands and accomplish everything from minor tool manipulation to
intense physical combat with other superpowered individuals now As the
excellent book Marvel Anatomy by Mark Sumarak and Daniel Wallace
with illustrations by Jonah Loebe points out, Medusa's hair is
(16:33):
just normal hair. It's perhaps fuller and longer than most
human heads of hair, but its prehensile power stems not
from its internal structure, which is just the standard cross
link kerat and protein filament, but from her own powerful
psionic abilities. Yes, she has telekinesis, but can only control
her own hair, and that's no slight against Medusa here.
(16:56):
Think about it. The average human head, according to Harvard's
Bio Numbers website, consists of between ninety thousand and one
hundred and fifty thousand individual hairs, and we might position
her at the upper end of that spectrum, even allotting
for thicker hair shafts, as Sumac and Wallace suggest, even
being rather conservative, Let's say she's using her brain to
(17:18):
minutely control one hundred thousand strands of hair as if
they were one hundred thousand additional arms. Assuming that her
sonic powers emerged primarily through neural tissue, her brain is
putting in quite a lot of work here, in addition
to controlling her human limbs. Of course, remember that an octopus,
(17:38):
in order to control its own sophisticated system of grasping arms,
depends in part on intramuscular nerve cords that act as
sort of many brains to provide partially independent action. So
perhaps Medusa as well benefits from something akin to this.
We might well assume her telekinetic powers rival those of
century or even those of the mighty e gene gray,
(18:01):
only much more localized in range. But if telekinetic hair
strand control is a heavy lift, what about the actual
physical lift of picking up various objects and even superheroes
with her telekinetically manipulated hair. This question is a good
bit easier to nail down, as we know exactly how
strong human hair is. As Tim Radford pointed out in
(18:23):
a two thousand and four article for The Guardian Secrets
of Human Hair Unlocked at Natural History Museum in London,
a single human hair strand can only sustain a weight
of one hundred grams or three ounces, but when hair
is woven together, it can sustain much more, a fact
that hair hangar aerialists have long exploited. In fact, if
(18:43):
all the strands of hair on a typical human head
were woven together, the resulting megabraid could hold twelve metric tons,
or the weight of two elephants. So the idea of
Medusa coiling her braids and holding say iron Man in place,
is isn't that far fetched, at least from a material standpoint.
(19:04):
Interestingly enough, in the comics, as Queen of the Inhumans,
Medusa's greatest strength is perhaps her diplomatic abilities. A reminder
that while superpowered hair can move around superheroes, a well
placed word can move mountains. Tune in for additional episodes
(19:24):
of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Automalius Dupendium each week.
As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and I'm back with
another omnibus episode of The Monster Fact, collecting the four
most recent Marvel Comics themed episodes all rolled up into
a single convenient package. Up first, let's consider the terrifying
man Thing. Let us return to the pages of Marvel
(00:30):
Comics to consider a true monster. Man Thing. It's not
to be confused with DC's swamp Thing, but he stands
as something of his spiritual twin sibling. So both man
Thing and swamp Thing are hybrid swamp based humanoids created
through an explosive collision of humanity, mad science and swamp water.
(00:54):
Both characters hit the comics for the first time in
nineteen seventy one. However, most commentators seem to see it
merely as coincidence and point to various differences in the characters,
plus Marvel's walking swamp creature The Heap predates both of them,
dating back to the early nineteen forties, as does the
(01:14):
muck Monster It from Street and Smith Comics. Still, these
various swamp beings become linked. They have a kinship, and
you'll even find a panel in Alan Moore's swamp Thing run,
visually suggesting kinship between swamp Thing, man Thing, the Heap,
and others. But I've already talked about swamp Thing on
(01:35):
the Monster fact, so let's get serious about man Thing.
As pointed out by Kelly Knox in the book Monsters
Creatures of the Marvel Universe, man Thing started off as
a human scientist named Ted Sallus. Now, like a lot
of Marvel comic books, scientists, Ted worked on super soldier serums,
at least until enemies tried to take it from him.
(01:57):
Ted then injected himself with the serum and accidentally wrecked
his car in the Everglades, and was also exposed to
extra dimensional forces in the process. So what emerged from
the swamp was neither man nor Thing, but man Thing,
a humanoid swamp creature that would become the guardian of
the Nexus of Reality, where science and magic converge. Man
(02:20):
Thing boasts incredible strength and can throw down with the
toughest of physical opponents, but some of his most impressive
powers are due to his empathy. Manthaning is so empathic
that negative emotions in others can cause him physical pain
and distress, especially when he senses fear. This will also
cause him to lash out violently at individuals in the
(02:42):
throes of fear and lay his burning hands upon them.
Man Thing's burning hands are a fascinating superpower, brought to
life most wonderfully in the twenty twenty two MCU Werewolf
by Night special, which captures it as a kind of
holy fire than incinerates Ted's victims. On one level, this
(03:03):
seems to be just another version of various magical tales
in which creatures feed off of fear or sense fear
in others as if it is an actual energy or
a quantifiable substance. Man Thing's abilities, however, are frequently explained
in terms of chemistry. NOx attributes his burning touch to
chemicals in man Thing's body and sumeric and wallace in
(03:27):
marvel anatomy. The authors here presume that this chemical secretion
is something akin to sulphuric acid, that it's excreted through
man Thing's pores. I suppose we might compare this ability
to these self defensive secretions of various natural world organisms,
and given man things plant based physiology, we have to
acknowledge that certain plants do secrete acidic substances. Through their roots,
(03:51):
in some cases to dissolve rocky soil and in other
cases to eradicate competition. But what about this notion that
a monster like man, thing, or even a natural world
organism can quote sense fear. It's a common trope, but
is there anything to it. Certainly there is no true
sixth sense for fear in which humans or other animals
(04:13):
can tap into an otherwise invisible video game fear meter. Fear,
like other human defined emotional states, is hard to quantify
in animals and subject to human testing bias, as Ralph
Adolf's discussed in the twenty thirteen Current Biology article The
Biology of Fear. Some argue that fear is a mere
(04:36):
psychological construct and something we can't apply to animals as
we cannot truly know their minds. On the other hand,
neuroimaging in rodents would seem to reveal a clear fear
network in their brains at all. Stressed a distinction to
be made between the conscious human feeling of being afraid
(04:56):
and fear as a functional state of an organism. This
state exists in relation to fear inducing stimuli, which for
humans at least can be in the present past or
in imagined future and induces fearful behavior. Fear in both
cognition and behavior is largely adaptive, and it's because fear
(05:17):
can help us survive, though of course, all of this
can become maladaptive as well. Now, man things relation to
fear is interesting in light of all this. He acutely
fears the effects of another organism's fear, but the source
of his own emotional distress in this scenario is not
the fear inducing stimuli that caused the original distress, but
(05:38):
the distressed organism itself, which he may then incinerate with
his burning hands due to a fear response chemical secretion
in his own body. So there's a lot to unpact there.
But hey, still a pretty great swamp monster, and I'm
always down for a cool swamp monster. All right, let's
(06:02):
insert a fresh quarter into the nineteen ninety two X
Men arcade machine and tag in Colossus. I've been plowing
through old episodes of The X Men, the animated series
from the nineties with my son in anticipation of eventually
diving into the X Men ninety seven series. This show
(06:24):
is a lot of fun, packs a lot of nostalgia
for me, and leads to some interesting conversations with my
son about the various themes. Some of our favorite characters
include Rogue and Wolverine, but Colossus is always a treat
as well. If you're not familiar with this particular mutant,
we're talking about Russian X men Peter Resputant, an already
(06:46):
intimidatingly muscular man who is able at will to assume
an impenetrable steel form. Sometimes, as in his Marvel dot
Com profile, Colossus's transformation is said to convert his entire
body into an organic steel like substance. Other times, the
transformation is interpreted as something that occurs only at the
(07:08):
dermal level, so only at the skin level. Either way,
the transformation generally looks as if a segmented stainless steel
coating flows over his entire body. We're going to approach
it here as a dermal transformation because the idea of
a full body transformation leaves us less room to wonder
over the scientific details of the feet. But just the
(07:32):
idea alone has always been a captivating one, because here
is Peter Resputen, a powerful but peaceful man who would
far rather pursue art than conflict, but who for the
greater good can literally grow the thickest, most impenetrable skin
imaginable to throw down against adversity. For Colossus, this might
(07:53):
mean the grasping tentacles of Omega Red, always a favorite
of mine, or the machinations of the Shadow King. Once
the threat is dealt with, Peter reverts to his normal
form and continues on in his peaceful creative pursuits. Lynn
Ween and Dave Cockrum created Colossus back in nineteen seventy five,
and he remains a popular character to this day. So
(08:17):
how might we think about Colossus from a scientific and
biological standpoint? Turning once more to marvel Anatomy by Mark
Sumerac and Daniel Wallace, the authors here discuss his ability
in terms of a transmutation of his dermal layers or skin,
into an organic steel, with his underlying body retaining its
(08:37):
flesh and blood form. Their explanation details a process by
which each individual's skin cell draws on metallic extra dimensional
mass to become an activated organic steel cell. So, in
other words, each cell of Colossus's dermal layer coats itself
in biological metallic material, and this translates into the transformation
(09:02):
of the entire epidermis but at the cellular level. Thus
his mobility is not compromised, and his already incredible baseline
strength no doubt, helps out as well. Now, by this explanation,
we may not be dealing exactly with something like steel
shutters from nowhere flowing over his entire body, but that
metallic cellular coding has to come from somewhere if we're
(09:25):
to adhere to the law of conservation of mass. And
the answer they provide is that the ability draws on
another spatial dimension. That's where the metal comes from. And okay,
that works for me. Now. I also ran across an
excellent twenty eighteen paper in the journal Advances in Physiology
Education titled the Physiology of Impenetrable Skin Colossus of the
(09:49):
x Men by Barry W. Fitzgerald. His whole point is
the Colossus is a great example of how a fictional
character can promote multidisciplinary se scientific discussion in a classroom. Now,
I'm not going to summarize everything Fitzgerald has to say,
but he makes some great points about Colossus and thermoregulation. Basically,
(10:11):
we have to think about what human skin does for
the body and how that might be impacted by a
shift into a steel form. One key area of concern
is thermoregulation of body temperature, which the skin plays a
role in via such responses as vasodilation, vassal constriction, and
(10:31):
of course sweating. Can Colossus his steel skin do any
of this well? The author here contends that his body's
ability to thermo regulate would be severely impacted via this
steel or organic steel, or otherwise metal coating, and specifically,
during a heated battle, he would simply overheat. He wouldn't
(10:53):
be much good battling the Juggernaut if he passes out
from overheating just a few minutes into the struggle. Fitzgerald
isn't here to yuck everyone's young, though with science he
presents a possible path forward. Perhaps he says Colossus's organic
steel skin is actually graphene due to its protective capability
(11:13):
and its biocompatibility. It's carbon, after all, like we are,
and it's super thin, consisting of a single layer of
atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure. This biographene honeycomb
lattice layer hypothesis would therefore solve a number of the
key problems with Peter's mutant power from thermoregulation to mass conservation,
(11:36):
the layer would swiftly form via protein folding and self assembly,
and bam, Colossus is ready for action. I highly recommend
checking out Fitzgerald's paper here of the topic interest you
in or out of the classroom, because hey, presumably Colossus
is headed back into theaters and back into action this
summer in the next Deadpool movie, so it's a perfect
(11:58):
time to embrace both sieians and mutant powers. Next, let's
consider a deeper cut with puff Adder. I recently picked
(12:21):
up a kind of ragged copy of the official Handbook
of the Marvel Universe Master Edition from I believe nineteen ninety,
though this also might have been a reprint from years later.
I'm not entirely certain, but it's filled with various Marvel
characters from the famous to the obscure, each with profile
data and standardized character illustrations in this kind of glorious
(12:45):
retro style. Amid all the capes and tights, and there
are a lot of tights, there are some gloriously weird
entries in the book. There's the spiky faced skeleton man
terror Ink, with his ability to steal limbs and attach
them to his own body. I was also fascinated by
Quasi Modo or quasi motivational destruct organism. He is a
(13:08):
superpowered cyborg hunchback, and presumably he's quite motivational. But in
this episode, I want to focus in on the villain
poff Adder real name Gordo Freeley and apparently a native
of Atlanta. Physically, he appears to be a very large,
muscular man in a snake costume. He is a mutant
in the Marvel comics, with the ability to engorge his
(13:30):
entire epidermis with blood, thus making himself appear more powerful
and menacing. Now, he's already a very capable fighter with
enhanced strength, but it's curious that his mutant ability doesn't
seem to actually boost his fighting power in the way
that many other mutant powers do. Instead, it just allows
him to better bluff and better intimidate. Oh and he
(13:54):
also has another weapon, a noxious gas canister in the
mouth like cowl of his snake man. His namesake is,
of course, the puff adder snake, consisting of several species
native to Africa in parts of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.
The snake in question is able to puff itself up
to look larger as a predator deterrent, and it does
(14:15):
this by inflating its body with air and then hissing loudly.
And like the Marvel character, the snake can also back
up that threat. It packs a powerful venomous bite, and
the force of its strikes alone is enough to kill
small prey. Various natural world creatures make themselves look bigger
as a defensive or mating display. Some the imposturing or
(14:38):
the manipulation of fur or feathers, while others actually inflate
tissues with air, water, or blood. These actions also frequently
enhance the colors or patterns of such a display as well.
While Gordo's mutant nobility may appear at first to buck
the general theme we see in comic book Superpowers, it's
certainly in keeping with actual real world aptations. There is
(15:02):
a survival advantage in not actually having to fight a
predator or competitor, and the same holds true with not
having to fight every x Man or avenger you encounter
on the pages of Marvel comics. And finally, let's comb
the powerful scarlet locks of Medusa unstuffable your mind. We've
(15:27):
discussed the mythical gorgon Medusa at length, But today I
want to look at the character with the same name
from the Marvel Comics universe. This Medusa is an inhuman,
a branch of Homo sapiens descended from experiments conducted on
primitive humans by the alien Cree to give them various
(15:48):
emergent powers. While other inhumans boast devastating offensive powers or
highly augmented physiologies, Medusa's power is all about her long
red hair, which she can extend to double its normal
six foot length, and most remarkably, of all, control each
strand as if it were a highly prehensile arm or tentacle.
(16:11):
She can cause her scarlet locks to bundle together into
reinforcing strands and accomplish everything from minor tool manipulation to
intense physical combat with other superpowered individuals now As the
excellent book Marvel Anatomy by Mark Sumarak and Daniel Wallace
with illustrations by Jonah Loebe points out, Medusa's hair is
(16:33):
just normal hair. It's perhaps fuller and longer than most
human heads of hair, but its prehensile power stems not
from its internal structure, which is just the standard cross
link kerat and protein filament, but from her own powerful
psionic abilities. Yes, she has telekinesis, but can only control
her own hair, and that's no slight against Medusa here.
(16:56):
Think about it. The average human head, according to Harvard's
Bio Numbers website, consists of between ninety thousand and one
hundred and fifty thousand individual hairs, and we might position
her at the upper end of that spectrum, even allotting
for thicker hair shafts, as Sumac and Wallace suggest, even
being rather conservative, Let's say she's using her brain to
(17:18):
minutely control one hundred thousand strands of hair as if
they were one hundred thousand additional arms. Assuming that her
sonic powers emerged primarily through neural tissue, her brain is
putting in quite a lot of work here, in addition
to controlling her human limbs. Of course, remember that an octopus,
(17:38):
in order to control its own sophisticated system of grasping arms,
depends in part on intramuscular nerve cords that act as
sort of many brains to provide partially independent action. So
perhaps Medusa as well benefits from something akin to this.
We might well assume her telekinetic powers rival those of
century or even those of the mighty e gene gray,
(18:01):
only much more localized in range. But if telekinetic hair
strand control is a heavy lift, what about the actual
physical lift of picking up various objects and even superheroes
with her telekinetically manipulated hair. This question is a good
bit easier to nail down, as we know exactly how
strong human hair is. As Tim Radford pointed out in
(18:23):
a two thousand and four article for The Guardian Secrets
of Human Hair Unlocked at Natural History Museum in London,
a single human hair strand can only sustain a weight
of one hundred grams or three ounces, but when hair
is woven together, it can sustain much more, a fact
that hair hangar aerialists have long exploited. In fact, if
(18:43):
all the strands of hair on a typical human head
were woven together, the resulting megabraid could hold twelve metric tons,
or the weight of two elephants. So the idea of
Medusa coiling her braids and holding say iron Man in place,
is isn't that far fetched, at least from a material standpoint.
(19:04):
Interestingly enough, in the comics, as Queen of the Inhumans,
Medusa's greatest strength is perhaps her diplomatic abilities. A reminder
that while superpowered hair can move around superheroes, a well
placed word can move mountains. Tune in for additional episodes
(19:24):
of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Automalius Dupendium each week.
As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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