The Monstrefact: The Mercurians of Marvel Comics

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses some of the Marvel Comics creatures associated with the planet Mercury...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
If you've been listening to our core episodes of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind, you know that we've been talking
about our Solar System's innermost planet, Mercury. So I thought

(00:32):
it would be appropriate here to discuss some of the
various fictional alien species and factions and races associated with
Mercury in the Marvel Comics universe. In our core episodes,
I've already talked a little bit about some of the
other sci fi denisons that have been assigned to this world.
But this time I want to take just a close
look at a couple of entries from Marvel Comics. First

(00:55):
of all, dating back to the mid nineteen seventies, we
have a group of Mercurians who are described is a
genetically engineered species of humans who were engineered to thrive
specifically on the surface of Mercury. Their gray skinned, they
have fiery hair, and they factor into the pages of
the Defenders. While the humanoid Mercurians here no relation to

(01:18):
the mutant character Mercury are played for high superhero space
opera Vibes and The Defenders. The basic concept is firmly
rooted in sci fi and even some serious considerations of
humanity's long term future beyond Earth. In broad strokes, we
as humans looking to potentially live beyond Earth, we have

(01:38):
three plays, right. We can change nothing on other worlds. Instead,
we can just live in our own little contained environments. There,
we can tear aform worlds into something more accommodating for
our physiology, or we alter ourselves to better thrive on
these far flung worlds. Again, these are just three broad
categorizations of tactics can have some manner of vision that

(02:02):
involves combining to or even all three. I often think
of this last one, though, this idea of changing ourselves
to live on another world, in terms of Clifford D.
Simmo's nineteen sixty seven novel The were Wolf Principle, which yes,
is a space were wolf story, but it's also a
lot weirder than that, and it centers around an individual

(02:24):
human who has been augmented to rapidly adjust to the
environmental demands of other worlds. In a way, it's the
less stubborn of the three proposals, as it involves self change,
biological compromise, and in its most extreme forms, it asks
us to consider what are the bare necessities that we
really think of when we think of humanity. What of

(02:45):
humanity needs to thrive beyond our world? Does it need
to look like us? Does it even need to be organic?
And so forth. Now, going back to the pages of
Marvel Comics, let's jaunt back an additional two decades to
Space Squadron in nineteen fifty one, where we have the
character Jet Dixon and friends battling the indigenous alien Mercurians.

(03:09):
These are presented as two headed fire resistant giants with
literal mercury for blood. One of their heads is good,
one of their heads is evil, with blood temperature determining
which head is going to be dominant. As you might guess,
the hotter the blood, the more dominant the evil head.
The actual plot of this comic book adventure entails an

(03:31):
evil force that has moved the sun closer to mercury.
I think in reality will be the other way around,
but at any rate, this is said to cause all
of the Mercurians to shift towards evil, that dominant evil
head on most of them becomes the more powerful. As
ridiculous as all of this is, I do wonder if
the good slash bad head duality might be linked to

(03:52):
older pre nineteen sixties astronomical models that consider Mercury tidally locked,
with one half always facing the sun in one half
always facing away, one side always hot and one side
always cold. You know, it just makes sense to them
put some creatures on there that have two heads. One
had always good, one had always bad. Right. Again, this

(04:13):
isn't actually the case for Mercury, though it is the
case for Earth's moon and various other moons in our
Solar system, which are tidally locked so that the same
side always faces the planet in question. Outside of Marvel Comics,
there are also reptilian denizens of Mercury in the pages
of DC Comics. I believe they are subterranean dwellers, and

(04:35):
as outlined in our core Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode,
there are also numerous Mercurian species from the pulp and
Golden ages of sci fi. While more recent science fiction
tends to render the planet inhospitable to native life forms
and maybe only partially hospitable to grim technologically aided human
colonists or miners. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster, Fact,

(04:59):
The Artifact or Animalius tu Pendium each week. As always,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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