20 Of The Weirdest X-Men Stories Ever

The X-Men go to Pizza Hut (Image via Marvel)

18. When the X-Men Ripped Off Tron

There must have been some point in time where “___ gets trapped in a computer world” was a cutting-edge story. After all, there was a time when even the existence of computers was a strange and wonderful advancement in human technology. Of course, like many things, our species has managed to muck it up with poorly thought out stories, odd outfits, and Pizza Hut tie ins.

Oh, and I should mention that this whole bizarro escapade was part of the 90s X-Men. In fact, there’s quite a few entries on this list that exist solely thanks to the “Xtreme” fad of the late 20th century. Yes, the 1990s gave us a generally peaceful and prosperous time (here in the United States, anyway), but the comics were pretty strange in retrospect. This particular run was released in Pizza Hut locations. Comics and pizza are great, but this particular combination was a little off.

Yeah, the plot, right. You probably want to hear about that? I would, too, honestly, if I could make sense of it. There’s some nonsense about Cerebro malfunctioning. The X-Men are having none of that, and so they have to fly around and do various tasks, like finding computer parts, antivirus programming, and inevitably fighting Magneto. Cyclops and Bishop have to go into the computer. Of course.

Supervillain Arcade shows up and battles Cyclops and Bishop, mostly via facsimiles of the other X-Men. Bishop, who can absorb various forms of energy, gets beat up enough by the fake X-Men that he just kind of blasts them into oblivion, thus defeating the computer virus.

But, it turns out Arcade wasn’t involved after all. Who, then, was the villainous mastermind behind this mess? Why, friendly and not-at-all criminally insane Professor X, of course! He was just testing his mutant team, like a crappy boyfriend. The X-Men are strangely okay with it, as long they get – yes, you guessed it – some sweet, delicious pizza.