I almost titled this article “15 X-Men You’ll Never See On the Big Screen,” but Hollywood being the strange, inexplicable place that it is, you never know. (And at least two of them appeared in X-Men: The Last Stand.)

Marvel likes to boast that it has a roster of more than 5,000 characters, but did you know that over two thousand of them are mutants? Over the many decades of Marvel Comics, some pretty bizarre mutants have been created. Here’s my picks for the top 15 most outrageously weird X-Men ever.

Note that I’m using the term “X-Men” here as a broad term to describe all mutants — whether members of the X-Men team of superheroes, or not.

Absalom

Real name: unknown

Powers: Absalom could control and change his skeleton, and often used this power to grow bony spikes out of his body (which were purple, for some reason). That hair metal mane was apparently unrelated to his abilities.

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Bling!

Real name: Roxanne “Roxy” Washington

Powers: Bling! (yes, the exclamation point is part of her name) had bone marrow that created diamonds. Uh-huh. She used this ability to shoot diamond shards at her enemies super-fast. The diamond also made her nigh-impenetrable, like Emma Frost.

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Chamber

Real name: Jonothon “Jono” Evan Starsmore

Powers: This rather popular character had most of his chest and half his face blown off by the psionic energy contained within his body when his powers first manifested. Um… gross much?

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Dirt Nap

Real name: unknown

Powers: The villainous Dirt Nap absorbed others into his own body, taking on their powers and memories. The weirdness comes from how he absorbed people: he ate them. He deployed a huge mouth with a clawed, green tongue and ingested his enemies. He tried this trick once on Wolverine, but Logan’s healing factor made it impossible for Dirt Nap to digest him. The villain barely escaped with his life, only managing it by quickly eating a rat to take on its form. For reasons never explained, he’s been stuck in the form of a rat ever since. The lesson to be learned in all this: never mess with Wolverine.

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Eye-Scream

Real name: unknown

Powers: A villain who could turn into ice cream. Seriously. Any flavor!

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Glob Herman

Real name: Robert Herman

Powers: Put simply: he was a wax-man. Instead of skin and musculature, his skeleton and organs were surrounded by see-through “bio-paraffin.” The stuff gave him added strength and speed, and it was highly flammable.

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Maggot

Real name: Japheth

Powers: Maggot would no doubt get most fans’ vote for weirdest X-Man of all time. Because his bizarre power consisted of a mutated digestive system that took on the form of two giant maggots. The maggots could eat anything, and would then return to his abdomen to disperse the nourishment and energy they’d collected; this gave Maggot super strength and (inexplicably) turned his skin blue. Yeeeeah. The day Maggot was created… somebody was stoned.

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Mammomax

Real name: Maximus Jensen

Powers: He’s an elephant-shaped man. For real. Mega-strong, durable, yadda yadda yadda. So the elephant thing is pretty much all he’s bringing to the table. And his name sounds like an extra strength mammogram.

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Marrow

Real name: Sarah

Powers: Girlfriend has bones that never stop growing, causing them to break through her skin and stick out. Once they’re through the skin, she can break them off and use ’em as weapons.

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No-Girl

Real name: Martha Johansson

Powers: There were a lot of freak shows that joined the ranks of the Xavier’s School when Grant Morrison was writing New X-Men back in 2001. One of his numerous victims was poor Martha, whose brain was removed from her body and kept alive in a floating globe thing. She was telepathic, but that was all she had to offer.

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Skin

Real name: Angelo Espinosa

Powers: Think Mr. Fantastic if he was way grosser. Skin’s body holds about 4 to 6 feet of extra skin, which he can contract and stretch at will, using it in all sorts of ways.

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Stacy X

Real name: Miranda Leevald

Powers: The X-Men’s very own super-hooker. She gave off these super-powered pheromones that could stimulate any and all bodily functions. Including sexual ones. She also had scales covering most of her skin. You know, because reptiles are more alluring than humans. Stacy appeared in X-Men: The Last Stand, though she bore very little resemblance to her comic book counterpart.

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Tar Baby

Real name: unknown

Powers: This member of the sewer-dwelling Morlocks sweated a tar-like substance that caused anything and everything to stick to him. Were Marvel’s editors even awake that day?

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Ugly John

Real name: Steve

Powers: Another Grant Morrison creation, this one a mutant with no powers whatsoever. Just three faces on his normal-sized head. Poor sap.

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Xorn

Real name: Kuan-Yin Xorn

Powers: The poster child for the evils of retconning. Originally he was described as having a star for a brain (hence the metal headgear, needed to protect everyone around him), but then he turned out to be Magneto in disguise. Which was changed some time later to be a brainwashing thing. I can’t begin to explain it all. But a star for a brain? Seriously?

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