For those who thought that the All-New, All-Different X-Men could’ve had better names… Apparently, you weren’t alone, as Jim Shooter reveals as he describes Stan Lee’s reaction to seeing the characters for the first time:
“This one,” he said, pointing at Storm, “must be Banshee.”
“No, that’s Storm,” I said. “Here’s Banshee.”
“Jim, don’t you know that banshees are female?”
“Yes, but, you should take that up with Roy [Thomas]. He created this guy a long time ago.”
“Roy?!” Stan had that look of horror and incredulity you get when you discover that the guy who’s been doing your taxes can’t add or subtract.
“Roy doesn’t know banshees are female?!”
“I guess he thought it didn’t matter.”
Stan pointed at Wolverine. “This one, I guess, is Colossus.”
“No, this one is Colossus,” I said, pointing. In Stan’s defense, each character was on his or her own board, they were all the same size and Wolverine’s claws were not extended.
“But this guy looks like he’s made of metal.”
“Yes, but, he’s big, and….”
“Shouldn’t his name have something to do with metal?”
“Um….”
“Who’s this?”
“Nightcrawler,” I said.
“What does he do?”
“A lot of things. He can climb walls like Spider-Man. He turns invisible in shadows. He’s strong and fast and agile. He has a prehensile tail…oh, and he can teleport short distances. With a puff of smoke that smells like sulfur. Bamf.”
“A ‘nightcrawler’ is a worm,” Stan grumbled.
He looked like he had a headache.
Don’t you kind of wish that Stan had chosen names for all of those characters now, just to see what he would’ve come up with?
August 12th, 2011 at 9:13 am
No, because Banshee would have Scream Man, Nightcrawler would be Blue Devil, Colossus would be Metal Man and Wolverine would be Wolverine Man.
August 12th, 2011 at 9:56 am
Well, there’s 3 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. Plus the 20 seconds it took to type this. dammit.
August 12th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Not really. I don’t really like Stan Lee. He had good ideas but mostly he’s a hack.