This one's for all my comic scientists

Texts in mind: X-Men issues to date (#1-22ish), random Marvel wisdom.

So there's a few things that have percolated over the last few weeks on the subject of scientists in comics.

My Facebook status for the day had me thinking about comic book mad scientists, which quickly drew a reply from a colleague with an interest in such topics. The usual suspects were discussed - Richards, Banner, Doom - but I was mostly thinking about some of the last few scientists to be presented in the pages of X-Men.

The main one I was thinking about - still - isn't really a scientist (regardless of any arguments made about social science), but Bolivar Trask, the anthropologist-turned-Sentinels-inventor, presents a few of these interesting issues most readily.

One is that these science-type guys are just brilliant, in the whole "I just invented a self-perpetuating robot" sort of a way. It doesn't matter what their research is in: once they've got a PhD, they're just a few years away from a technological quantum leap which will not only imperil mankind but also be potentially toyetic. [Note to self: hurry up on this dissertation! And think merchandising, goshdarnit...]

Two, they rarely require any help. Trask doesn't appear to have any assistants or grad students or even a wife to pitch in. (I'm pretty sure he has a son who shows up later, but I can't recall. Still, this doesn't necessarily mean that he had a wife if latter-seasons Simpsons writers were involved in that storyline.) If they need help, they usually invent it.

Three, these robots aren't that bright and they certainly don't have anything like strength of convictions. I'll have to check again, but I'm pretty sure that Professor X uses his telepathic powers to stop the Sentinels a few times. (Something about a highly advanced positronic brain emulating the human brain? We'll have to see how that holds up with re-reading, or if later issues provide a good retcon for that event.)

A side note here about robots and communism: in Savage's Comic Books and America, he discusses the ways in which the communist threats in comic book plots often originated with one key villain who had duped all of the follower-underlings. The heroes then either had to convince the followers of their mistake so that the villain could be defeated or had to defeat the villain to convince the followers of their mistake. To some extent, it may be that there's some sort of corollory present here, except that the robots aren't latent westerners but instead mistaken machinery, programmed to evil yet easily put off task. (And doctrinaire! They just can't adapt to new situations and always require leadership, as was the case when the unexpected X-Men threat led one Sentinel to turn around for reprogramming.)

So if this is the case, then one can usually assume that the technology that modern science creates is not to blame, and that the science itself is not to blame, but that the scientist who creates is. ("Science doesn't kill people - mad scientists kill people.") The good thing about scientists, though, is that they use science, and its rational processes should bring them to the "truth" in the end. And if the scientist in question does not have the adjective "mad" in front, then they may be reasoned with, or may even reason things out for themselves, as was the case with Trask. (If they're not reasonable, then they're mad. Or a brainwashed commie, I suppose, though we've not met him yet here. The Red Ghost, though, provides us with a possible example over in the pages of the Fantastic Four.) Science, then, is on the side of good.

Back to our list, and taking up this previous issue: the fourth item is that scientists can often be trusted to do the right thing. Beyond Trask, another example is found with the Mimic's father in issue 19. Rather than invent a machine which would make his erratic, proto-villain son into a powerful threat, he secretly creates a device which will nullify his son's powers. Alas, the angry mob imperiled this plan and inadvertantly killed him. (Then again, Mimic's also a proto-hero, if I recall correctly - not only in these pages, but also in alternate realities. Or do we call them counterfictionals now?) At the rate by which scientists solve things, I'm really hoping that the "SCIENCE!" guy from that Thomas Dolby song shows up soon with solutions.

Finally, the important thing to keep in mind when evaluating a scientist is whether or not the government approves of him. (I don't think we've seen a female scientist yet.) Professor X occasionally shows up unannounced in the midst of police action or military situations, but once
word comes down from the Pentagon or Washington that he can be trusted, the authorities trust the heck out of him. They may question his long silences/naps - from when he goes astral to examine the situation on a different plane - but they don't turn him away. (And they certainly need the solutions that he divines.) Then again, Professor X has to work in a more circumspect manner than Reed Richards, since the former's got a secret identity to hide. (Not a costume, just a status that he keeps quiet. Oh, the superpowers that dare not speak their name...)