| Posted: 08 July 2012 at 4:10am | IP Logged | 9
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The "secondary mutation" nonsense is basically an institutionalizing of one of the main things that has gone wrong with the X-Men over the years: the core concept has been forgotten.Stan's idea was that a mutant was someone with AN "extra" power or ability. As with most super-power concepts, this was a bit fuzzy right from the start, since so many powers tend to imply others to make them work. The Angel, for instance, would need some degree of super strength and invulnerability to accomplish his flying stunts. But, as was common and even "traditional", these implied "other powers" were not addressed, and readers in general gave no thought to them. (We didn't ask how the Flash could run so fast without burning his skin off from friction, we just accepted that he could.) Characters like the Mimic stretched the definition considerably. His "extra power" was that he could have ALL the powers! Jean Grey briefly "shared" Xavier's telepathic powers, but somehow this turned into her being both a telekinetic AND a telepath all the time -- two separate and distinct abilities. By the time Nightcrawler came along, all bets were off. Here was a character who was a virtual grab-bag of super powers -- and chief among these seemed to be the ability to develop new ones whenever the story demanded it! So, sure! We're just producing pricey fanzines now, and have been for decades, so why not treat the characters they way experience has shown us the fans would, given the chance? Make Cyclops a jerk. Xavier, too! Make Wolverine Mr. Cool. Have everybody having sex with everyone and everything in sight. Oh, and, sure, "secondary mutations".
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