Meet The X-Men ‘B’ Team

Everyone loves the X-Men, those plucky youngsters at Professor Xavier’s School of Gifted Mutants and Wizardry. But have you ever noticed that the so-called ‘mutations’ that these superheroes get are always completely awesome things like laser eyes and knife hands and super jumpy legs?

That’s not really how mutations work, according to my knowledge of science (read: watching a bunch of movies where Jeff Goldblum plays a scientist). It’s far more likely that, tucked away in a forgotten wing of Mutant High, is the X-Men ‘B’ Team, who suffer from far more believable mutations and fight super-villains like gum underneath desks. Here are some of their depressingly realistic powers.

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Infertility Man:

Buck Cliffson was a regular all-American teen, who loved bran cereals and guns and was a linethrower for the high school football team. That was until the day that his startling mutant power manifested itself on his 18th birthday: the complete inability to ever sire children. Now as the captain of the X-Men ‘B’ Team, he is known for his leadership skills and tendency to get drunk and proclaim the team are ‘all the children he’ll ever need’. His tactics in battle include getting teary around daycare centres and yelling ‘unlike me, this doesn’t shoot blanks’ before firing at people with a shotgun.

Dr. Fun:

What, what? Is that the irredeemable prankster and lovable rogue, Dr. Fun? Known for his endless barrage of ‘Your Mama’ jokes in tense situations, for Dr. Fun the glass is always half full! This is mostly because he was born with a genetically stunted liver, meaning the slightest amount of alcohol gets him truly and utterly trashed. The most beloved member of the ‘B’ Team, his powers include pissing blood and probably dying before he reaches thirty.

Sally Spectrum:

Sally ‘Spectrum’ McPherson looked at a solar eclipse once, which activated her mutant ability: to be completely and utterly colourblind. Sally is the youngest member of the ‘B’ Team and is known for her ‘eccentric’ outfits and her inability to drive due to Federal law. Not really able to contribute offensively, she mostly runs the team’s social media strategies, and has a really good eye for black and white Instagram filters.

Mr Aerodynamic:

The wildcard of the team, Mr Aerodynamic – or Caelum Murphy-Stokes, as he was born – is like a cat, in the sense that he answers to nobody, bites the hand that feeds him and likes to kill small birds. More specifically he’s like one of those godawful hairless cats, due to his mutant ability to be completely hairless. It is believed his power might give him a slight increase in speed when it comes to swimming or chasing bad guys in a hang-glider, providing he is completely naked.

Fallout Girl:

Born uncomfortably close to Chernobyl, Svetlana Moscow-Vodka has the deadly mutant power of being lightly irradiated. She worked for many years as an assassin with the KGB; for the advancement of the USSR, she was asked to seduce the target and then live with him for several years, lowering the target’s immune system and making him far more susceptible to colds and things. She was known as ‘The Subtle Assassin’ or ‘The Waiting Game’. But after a crisis of conscience, she fled to Xavier’s mansion where she now uses her powers for good. Her tactics include losing her hair slowly, and scattered lesions.

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Patrick Lenton is a writer of theatre and fiction. He blogs at The Spontaneity Review and tweets inanity @patricklenton.

Illustrations by Matt Roden