Q: I was thinking the other day of what it might be like if Sue Storm left Reed and started an all woman Fantastic Four and a thought occurred to me. While it’s easy to fill in slots for the super strong power house type or the flame flinging hot head type with female heroes, I couldn’t think of any super science woman geniuses. Out of the vast amount of characters from the Marvel U the only female science wiz I could think of was Rhona Burchill from the Ultimate Universe. Joe, can you think of any female heroes or villains in the 616 universe that would be the intellectual equivalent of Tony Stark or Hank Pym etc.? And why does there seem to be such a wealth of male geniuses and little or no female geniuses?

I wonder about the shape shifters of the Marvel Universe in terms of procreation. Could Mystique turn into a man and impregnate a woman? Could Hulking turn into a woman and get pregnant? Such characters often seem able to copy every other physiological aspect of assuming false identities like finger prints and retinal scans. Do their powers extend to reproductive organs? I know some might dismiss this as a pervy question, but I think in the hands of well fitted writer (say Mike Carey or Brian Bendis) that a really sophisticated story could come out of such a question.

JQ: Does that make sense? Please say it does because I have no idea what I’m talking about. Did Stan Lee ever have to answer questions like this?

NRAMA: Our mutual friend Kevin Smith raised the question about certain areas of the Thing’s anatomy to Stan in Mallrats, so we’d say “yeah”.