There have been some hilarious quotes in comic books over the years, but one from just over a decade ago might be the funniest, thanks to the situation it happened in. Released in 2015, Spider-Man and the X-Men was a six-issue miniseries by Elliott Kalan and Marco Failla. This was during the Krakoa era in Marvel Comics, and in a strange move, Spider-Man ends up relocating to Krakoa so he can become a guest professor at the Jean Grey School. It turned out that after Wolverine died, Storm found papers inviting Spider-Man to teach past students, who were all considered likely to turn into supervillains, to find a mole working against the school.
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That was the setup to the story, but things took a turn when Spider-Man took the mutant students to a museum, where they were attacked by Stegron and Sauron. At the end of issue #1, Spider-Man and the mutant students wake up in Staten Island, which has been turned into the New Savage Land.
Sauron Delivers One of Marvel Comics’ Funniest Quotes
Spider-Man and the students opened the second issue by battling several former humans turned into dinosaurs. These students consisted of several young mutants, including Ernst, No-Girl, Hellion, Rockslide, Shark-Girl, Glob Herman, and Eye Boy. They then came face to face with Stegron and Sauron again, and this is where Sauron delivered a side-splitting one-liner. When Spider-Man learned the villains were using rewritten DNA to turn people into dinosaurs, he asked why Sauron wouldn’t rather use it to cure cancer.
Sauron looked at Spider-Man and said, “But I don’t want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.” It was so absurd and ludicrous that it ended up as a perfect answer to Spider-Man’s question. So many villains are given sympathetic stories or deep reasons why they commit evil acts. For Sauron, it was simple. He just wanted to turn people into dinosaurs, and that was it. It was probably the simplest answer that any supervillain could have given, and Spider-Man should have appreciated it as such.
Stegron kept it going when he corrected Sauron and said, “We want to turn people into dinosaurs,” to which his partner in crime reluctantly agreed. The relationship between these two villains was funny all the way through. When Sauron tried to tell Stegron what to do, the other dinosaur would follow his orders, but only because he said he wanted to do it, not because he was told to do it. From the point that Sauron delivered his great line about turning people into dinosaurs onward, this duo became incredibly entertaining throughout the rest of the series.
And then, when Sauron began hitting on Shark-Girl, there was no turning back. It all ended up with Sauron and Stegron beating each other as they battled for Shark Girl’s affection in what might be the most ridiculous dinosaur battle in history.
Sauron Has Been One of Marvel’s Oddest Villains Since the Silver Age
Sauron was once a brilliant hypnotherapist named Dr. Karl Lykos, a man who was bitten by pteranodons as a child and found that he needed to drain people’s life forces to stay alive. He then began to drain humans, but only to an extent where he left them weakened, refusing to kill any of them. Eventually, Karl left for medical school and became a hypnotherapist, which allowed him easier access to victims to drain to stay alive. When Havok almost died in a suicide attempt, the X-Men took him to Lykos for help, and when he tried to drain energy from Havok, the mutant DNA entered Sauron’s body and turned him into a half-humanoid pteranodon.
Karl made his first appearance in X-Men #59 (1969) by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, and he became Sauron in the very next issue. While Karl was an old friend of Professor X, the transformation had a side effect that changed his personality. He kept his intelligence and ability to speak, but the change distorted his personality and turned him evil. He then became an X-Men villain. However, Sauron wasn’t a prolific villain at first. In fact, nine years passed between his debut appearance and his return in The Uncanny X-Men #114 (1978) by Chris Claremont and John Byrne.
Sauron ended up going to the Savage Land, where he fought with the Savage Land Mutates against Ka-Zar, Angel, and Spider-Man in Marvel Fanfare #1-4 (1981-1982) by Chris Claremont, Michael Golden, Dave Cockrum, and Paul Smith. He was then gone for another decade before showing up again in X-Force #5 by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld as a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. If Spider-Man and the X-Men showed anything, it is that Sauron can be a highly entertaining Marvel villain, albeit an underused one.
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