Being a mutant is no joke. Whether they're a hero in the X-Men or a villainous member of the Brotherhood, death is always lurking around the corner. If it isn't a team on the opposite side trying to hunt them down, it's the humans who think mutants are freaks trying to usurp their place in the evolutionary chain. And that's not even counting all the times the Avengers showed up looking to start a fight for no discernible reason.

Fortunately, mutants have an edge, using the very powers that make them hated. Gifted since birth and manifesting during puberty, mutant powers are both a curse and a blessing. Some mutants are lucky and get a set of wings or hypnotic beauty. However, if the fates are less kind, mutants are cursed with terrible or useless powers. There are mutants who look like scrawny chickens or who have waxy, translucent skin. Marvel Comics characters have some of the coolest mutant powers, but others are stuck with terrible abilities.

Updated by John Dodge on October 1, 2023: The challenges faced by Marvel's mutants may be ever changing, but so are the powers that these heroes (and villains) have to fight back with, even if they aren't all created equal.

The Coolest Mutant Powers

Energy Plasmoids

Jubilee was the inadvertent poster child of the X-Men for a long time. Her popularity in the '90s animated series and her ties to Wolverine meant she regularly showed up, and her unique fireworks power made her an easy target for flashy drawings or impressively stylized shots. However, it also made her a target for many fans who ridiculed her as little more than a mallrat with the ability to shoot balls of light. It doesn't help that Jubilee is typically portrayed as immature, but her energy plasmoids might be the most potent weapon in the X-Men's arsenal.

Jubilee's explosions aren't fireworks but super-heated plasma. She can create a bolt of bright light, pushing out enough power to bend steel or destroy a tree, and when she concentrates on precision, she can detonate microbursts inside someone's brain. However, Jubilee's power goes beyond that. As her former Generation X instructor Emma Frost once speculated, if wielded properly, Jubilee could detonate objects on a subatomic level. This would create a devastating blast on par with a fusion explosion, making Jubilee a walking and talking nuclear bomb.

Molecular Acceleration

Part of what makes Gambit one of the most popular and sensational X-Men is his unique and visually impressive mutant power. Gambit has molecular acceleration abilities, allowing him to excite the molecules inside an object kinetically to the point they explode on contact. His power complements his fluid and acrobatic combat style, letting him use anything at hand as a super-charged, explosive weapon. However, Gambit typically falls back on his old favorites: a deck of playing cards.

There are seemingly no limits to what Gambit can charge — so long as it isn't organic material — and he's charged larger and larger objects over time. As an added bonus, Gambit can charge an object without detonating it, allowing him to supercharge his trademark bo staff with devastating consequences.

Weather Manipulation

Storm is a standout member of the X-Men and her ability to control the weather is one of the most impressive powers in Marvel Comics. Storm hails from a tribe in Kenya, and when her powers manifested, she was perceived as a goddess. She was worshiped by her people until Charles Xavier arrived and explained the true nature of her ability to control the weather. Under Xavier's tutelage, Storm mastered control over the weather, becoming one of the most prominent X-Men and a respected team leader for many years.

Technically speaking, Storm's powers comprise control over atmospheric elements in her surroundings on an atomic level. Her powers extend to the local weather, even on other planets. Storm has demonstrated the ability to change temperatures and climates, cause rain, and generate lightning, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Her precise control over the weather means she's manipulated the air to suffocate her opponents or increased the air pressure to throw off their balance. Storm's weather manipulation is the source of long-running jokes about her effectiveness at a picnic, but underestimating her abilities isn't a mistake her enemies make twice.

Shapeshifting

Shapeshifters are commonplace among the X-Men, though their classic villain Mystique is the most infamous. With the ability to impersonate anyone, Mystique became the ultimate assassin and subversive agent in the Marvel Universe, feared by virtually everyone she came across. Her shapeshifting is incredibly potent, and recent enhancements following her resurrection by The Hand made her so gifted she could disguise herself from acute hunters such as Wolverine. Mystique's shapeshifting also allows her to shift her organs and mimic different materials and textures.

Shapeshifting typically comes with a host of secondary mutations. Plenty of other mutant shapeshifters have appeared over the years, each with their own unique twist on the ability. For example, Morph of The Exiles had a malleability power that gave him the ability to shapeshift, though he used his powers to change his body more than he assumed other forms. These abilities offer their users enhanced durability as a side effect. Shapeshifters typically have decelerated aging or have stopped aging altogether. Mystique is easily over 100 years old.

Sanguine Combustion

Sanguine Combustion might be one of the coolest powers in the Marvel Universe. By exposing his enemies' blood to higher than normal levels of oxygen, Adam-X could ignite it and burn his opponents from the inside out. It was incredibly effective, and he could detonate entire starships after merely nicking his opponents.

However, there are definitely several drawbacks to this power. In addition to the blade-covered suit he wore to assist his abilities, when he faced a Juggernaut enhanced by the powers of The Serpent in Fear Itself, Adam-X ignited Juggernaut's blood. Unfortunately, this only turned him into an unstoppable enemy who lit everything he touched on fire.

Teleportation

The various X-Men teams and their villainous counterparts have relied on teleporters since their inception. Nightcrawler, better known now as the Uncanny Spider-Man,, the team's most prominent teleporter, joined the team as a member of the All-New, All-Different X-Men. Since then, Nightcrawler has been regarded as something of a teleportation guru.

As powers go, teleportation is pretty straightforward. Kurt's able to teleport in any direction within a few miles, though he has to spend a split second in a terrifying Hell dimension to do so. There are other teleporters in the X-Men's lineup, though they use different methods of teleportation to get around. Blink is the team's most powerful teleporter and has traveled as far as the moon in a single jump and other mutants, like Magik, use teleportation as a weapon. This is easily one of Marvel's most practical and potent powers.

Healing Factor

Having a healing factor is fairly common in the X-Men. Many mutants have an enhanced healing factor as a secondary mutation, helping them cope with the strain their powers put on their bodies. However, having a healing factor as a primary power is pretty cool, as demonstrated by the team's most popular member, Wolverine. His counterparts like Sabertooth, Laura (now the all-new Wolverine), and Daken also share this power.

Wolverine's healing factor borders on absurdity. When he first debuted, he only enjoyed an accelerated rate of healing and healed slightly faster than a normal person. However, over the years, his healing ability developed into virtual immortality. In the 2000s, Wolverine regenerated from a skeleton and still bounced back. Apparently, his Adamantium is holding him back in some ways, but, left unchecked, his body's constant regression could turn him into a feral beast, so it's probably worth the inconvenience.

Probability Field Manipulation

"Hope you survive the experience," is the X-Men's long-running catchphrase, uttered sarcastically to every recruit. The turnover for X-Men is unusually high, and many die in the line of duty. Becoming one of the longest-tenured X-Men requires a good dose of luck, otherwise known as Probability Field Manipulation. This power is essentially the ability to increase the odds of something good happening, and it's a surprisingly common mutant power.

The ability works through a combination of psychokinetic and psionic environmental manipulations that positively influence the wielder's surroundings. It doesn't make anything outrageous happen, but it does subtly shift what happens in the world. Both X-Force's Domino, and Mojoverse refugee, Longshot, have demonstrated this ability, using it to increase their marksmanship and become lethal fighters. They're both skilled fighters, but the fact that nothing ever goes wrong for them makes them look incredibly cool.

Instantaneous Adaptation

Life is dangerous for mutants, especially if they're hanging around with superpowered individuals. Survival often means having special abilities that keep them alive. Darwin, a mainstay of X-Factor following M-Day, is the ultimate survivor. His ability to adapt to any situation has let him power through some of the most treacherous attacks in mutant history.

No matter the situation, instantaneous adaption allows for survival. Trapped underwater? Here's a pair of gills to enable breathing. Can't see because all light has been extinguished? Here's some night vision. The power has a surprising scale, even raising Darwin's intelligence, so he could understand alien languages. Of course, this comes with a few caveats. Like Wolverine, Darwin is immortal, dooming him to a long and potentially lonely life. His powers are also completely reactive and out of his control. They've backfired hilariously on a number of occasions, such as teleporting him to another state when he was facing down a rampaging Hulk.

Energy Absorption

Plenty of mutants have various forms of energy that they can create, channel, and direct in a multitude of ways. That said, it is far rarer that a mutant can absorb what their enemies have to throw at them. Lucas Bishop is the prime example of what that power set can accomplish.

Not only is Bishop able to absorb different kinds of energy to release later on in the form of kinetic or concussive blasts, he has honed this ability into more than mere offense. It isn't just that Bishop can take whatever his opponents hit him with, but that he can quite literally bend light and other latent energies to make himself effectively invisible to different security measures. This might take more effort and concentration than simply throwing a superpowered punch, but it is just as if not more effective.

Organic Diamond Form

Emma Frost is by far one of the strongest telepaths that Marvel's mutant population has to offer. That said, like so many other mutants, Emma is host to both a primary and secondary mutation, the latter of which completely overrides the first in exchange for becoming an unstoppable and, more importantly, near unbreakable living diamond.

Emma's diamond form might be a specific type of rock imitation that has been seen in a multitude of characters, but it is unique enough to be included as an entry unto itself. Emma isn't even the only mutant to have this power, either. The Stepford Cuckoos who were crafted from Emma's genetic template can become living diamonds as well. The Stepford Cuckoo's are entirely flawless in their diamond forms, which Emma is not, though they cannot maintain their diamond structures nearly as long as their "mother."

Kinetic Duplication

Jamie Madrox is one of the most interesting characters, not just for the breadth of knowledge and experience he has amassed, but for the manner in which he has acquired it. Jamie can create duplicates of himself through physical impact, though he has little to no control over when this happens.

Each duplicate that Jamie creates is a completely independent being. These duplicates can go off on their own adventures and lead their own lives, learning and developing new skills along the way. If Jamie merges back together with one of his duplicates, he will be imbued with all of their memories and experiences, allowing him to become the most impossible kind of autodidact imaginable.

Mutant Powers That Aren't Worth Having

Omnilingual Translation

Being a mutant is a matter of luck, equally likely to empower or disable individuals who identify as homo superior. However, even worse than a terrible superpower is boring. Given the code name Cypher, the New Mutants' Doug Ramsey's could read and translate any language. Admittedly, this is a pretty great gift under most circumstances. Cypher always had a world of knowledge at his fingertips. Unfortunately, from a story perspective, it bombed.

Marvel's writers had to dig deep to help Ramsey remain relevant. Unsurprisingly, Cypher met his end just a few years into New Mutants. Revived in the 2010s, Marvel attempted to update his powers for the modern age by evolving the definition of his powers to define computer programming and body language as languages he could read intuitively. This turned him into the X-Men's foremost hacker and a capable combatant. Unfortunately, his power had a terrible downside. When Cypher re-emerged during The Hunt for Wolverine, he had an extreme internet addiction, having lost his way deciphering the web.

Accelerated Bone Growth

Bones already cause incredible pain when they're growing, and if they're broken, they sometimes never fully heal. If they never stopped growing and even sometimes broke through the skin, it would be so much worse. This is Sara's plight, a Morlock who later joined the X-Men in the wake of "Operation: Zero Tolerance" as Marrow. Marrow's power was one of the X-Men's more unusual abilities, albeit one that's made her a fan favorite for years.

Marrow's unusual skeleton did offer her some advantages. Her bones were incredibly dense and could either be shaped into makeshift armor or broken off and used as weapons. Unfortunately, her powers were also wildly unpredictable and, worst of all, hurt her. Bones breaking through skin and muscle is painful enough, but imagine breaking them off intentionally.

Telepathy

Telepathy is one of the go-to superpowers a lot of fans want. It's right up there with flight and invisibility, but fans need to think about the consequences of reading minds. Reading thoughts invites a world of possibilities and benefits, but there are downsides too. Although most telepaths can control an individual's actions by planting suggestions in their psyche or even hide in plain sight via telepathic suggestion, the harsh realities underlying telepathy outnumber the benefits.

Marvel telepaths like Professor X experience paralyzing migraines as their powers develop, so starting a new life as a telepathic powerhouse is incredibly painful. On top of this, there's the long and arduous process of learning to use telepathic powers. Many telepaths can't control their powers at first. This means they quickly become overwhelmed by the thoughts of everyone in their vicinity, whether they like it or not. Telepathic backlash has also killed people and accidentally rewritten human minds as blank slates. Being a telepath sounds like a lot of fun on paper, but in practice, it can be one of the worst powers a mutant could get.

Transitional Omni-Morph

Part of the Guthrie family's mutant dynasty, that includes Cannonball and Icarus, Paige Guthrie's power was as disgusting as it was impressive. She had the uncanny ability to rip off her skin at will, revealing a variety of different bodily compositions underneath. Beneath her skin, Paige can take on the form of many natural materials, ranging from wood to diamond or even glass.

Paige took on the name Husk, though, since the skin-shedding was an unavoidable part of the process. As a transitional omni-morph, her power originally generated random, if viable, bodies beneath her skin. Thankfully, training with the X-Men granted her a level of control over her transitions. However, Paige's power took a toll on her psyche since no one wants an unsettling ability like "skin removal" at their identity's core.

Sentient Digestive System

The South African mutant named Japheth was dealt a very strange genetic hand. Later called Maggott, he had a sentient digestive system that took the form of two giant slugs that lived in his abdomen and functioned as his stomach. Maggott would release the slugs several times a day to absorb the food he required to survive, though their energy also gave him superhuman strength and toughness.

This bizarre power robbed Maggott of a lot of simple pleasures in life. He spent most of his childhood in terrible pain. Doctors attributed the bizarre slug creatures to cancer until Magneto forcibly removed them from Maggott's body. Maggott had no stomach and couldn't digest food, so he had to rely on the slugs for sustenance. Maggott's powers also had benefits, including the ability to absorb the memories of any people the slugs consumed. Letting someone else be a cannibal for him was hardly desirable, though.

Acidic Vomit

Peter Milligan and Mike Allred drastically reworked the X-Force concept when they took over the title in 2001, introducing a host of bizarre and terrifying mutants. Acidic sweat, overwhelmingly enhanced super-senses, and adaptable fat deposits are just a few of the powers that defined the strangest team of mutants ever assembled. However, even stranger was one-time leader Zeitgeist's powerset. He could spew acidic vomit.

This is every bit as terrible as it sounds. It was effective since it could melt through thick steel, but it obviously ruined Zeitgeist's life. He could only spew his acidic vomit as far as a normal human could, so it was hardly a ranged weapon. He also couldn't control the acidic flow from his mouth and had to wear a special mouthpiece so he wouldn't melt someone's face off just by talking to them. Zeitgeist died in a dark joke in his first appearance, though his legacy remained through the rest of the X-Force run, and he was notable enough to earn a fatal cameo in Deadpool 2.

Imperceptibility

Living life with a perpetually clean slate was ForgetMeNot's curse. No matter who he talked to and no matter what he did, the second he was out of sight, he was out of mind. Videos erased themselves and conversations were forgotten. ForgetMeNot was cursed as one of the most peculiar and obscure X-Men characters in existence, the living embodiment of Schrödinger's Cat.

Once people took their eyes off him, even just for a second, they completely forgot he existed. He and Professor Xavier discovered a psychic workaround where the professor created a psychic reminder that prompted him to recall the unfortunate mutant's existence, but this died with Xavier. Despite his power's potential for villainy, ForgetMeNot was always loyal and decent. He was even cast as a hero in several rewritten stories, though everyone forgot he'd ever been there.

Black Hole Brain

Kuan-Yin Xorn was first introduced during Grant Morrison's iconic run on New X-Men as a character with an interesting visual design and mysterious past. Xorn wore a containment helmet because his brain was a miniaturized star, which meant his head emitted fierce, blinding radiation that was dangerous to other humans. It also granted him a degree of gravity-based electromagnetism, but led to mental instability as well.

Kuan-Yin's brother's brain, Shen Xorn, was a miniature black hole. He possessed the same gravity-based electromagnetic powers as his brother, but appeared to retain his mental faculties. Despite being able to survive without needing to eat or breathe, they lived their lives behind helmets, lucky to have each other but essentially alone.

Acoustikinesis

Onetime villain Sean Cassidy joined the all-new, all-different X-Men on their iconic rescue mission to Krakoa as the bombastic Banshee. A onetime Interpol agent, the Irishman had the unique ability to manipulate sound in incredible ways. He could throw his opponents off their guard and create concussive blasts that could crush buildings, hypnotize opponents, create sonic shields, and generate sonar. Iconically, we could even fly by using a special set of wing provided by the X-Men.

However, Banshee could only use his powers by screaming at the top of his lungs, making him the last person to bring on a stealth mission. Banshee's powers are incredibly potent, but his vocal cords are his major weakness. Using his wail too much can damage his voice and nullify his ability to scream, and he was once rendered powerless after his throat was cut by Mystique.

One-Time Self-Detonation

Bailey Hoskins was a nobody. He didn't stand out, he wasn't special, and he didn't matter to anybody. Then, one day, Bailey found out he was a mutant. When Bailey went to the X-Men to confer with them about his own X-Gene, he discovered one of the worst mutant powers. He was a human firework. He could explode on command and control the size and strength of the explosion. Unfortunately, Bailey didn't develop a secondary mutation.

Bailey could explode once, killing himself and anyone nearby. He joined the X-Men anyway, using a suit of powered armor. However, after he failed to stop the mutant Riches from killing Xavier, he tracked down Riches and took both their lives when he put his mutant power to use. They're probably out there, but it's hard to imagine a more disheartening mutation.

Music-Based Power Manifestation

There is no shortage of Marvel characters whose powers are based in sound, and there are several who turn to music to embrace or amplify those abilities. In the case of Rachel Argosy, better known as Rhapsody, music is a prerequisite to manifesting and harnessing whatever power comes next.

As fantastical as that sounds on the surface, it's one of the biggest problems that any mutant could have in terms of their abilities. If Rhapsody lost her instruments, she would have little to no viable options to call upon her powers. Even if Rhapsody improvised a way of making music, all it would take to rob her of her powers entirely would be injuring her hands, leaving her unable to play whatever instrument she acquired.

Partial Avian Physiology

Having wings is one thing, but being able to use them is another entirely. Unfortunately for Barnell Bohusk, better known as Beak, he only has feathers, which is just the first of several partial avian mutations he experiences as a mutant.

Rather than being more bird than man, Beak is still very much a man, albeit one with mostly hollow bones, a handful of feathers on his gangly arms, and a beak and talons that he isn't particularly proficient in using. As a whole, Beak's mutation is more of a hindrance than it is any sort of help. It hasn't kept Beak from leading a fulfilling life, however, nor has it held him back in any of his personal endeavors. That said, things would absolutely be easier for Beak if he had been given any other mutant power, or if his had simply never emerged.