OK kids, here is a fun way to start out the new year, apparently Marvel Comics lawyers, are having a very real-world battle attempting to prove that the company's mutant characters aren’t human. 


Really. Want to know why? well, if they aren’t human, then it costs the company less to export them to other countries. Seriously

In the non-fictional world, our world, Marvel is taking the position that mutants are not humans at all. But this isn’t an ideological or a moral stance. Instead, it is a financial one. Toys manufactured in other countries and imported into the US are subject to taxes, but those taxes are lower if the toys represent non-human characters. That has led to Marvel lawyers arguing that an action figure representing, say, Wolverine, is actually “representing animals or other non-human creatures (for example, robots and monsters).” This argument leads to a good conversation on the questions of humanity and acceptance that have long been part of the X-Men storyline.

We really can’t make this stuff up.