Prof Xavier's Many Chairs

The most famous user in comics, Charles Xavier has gone though many chairs in his time. Here's a selection of them.

contains spoilers for X-Men: The Last Stand

Comics

Here's Charlie in about a basic chair as you can get. Mobility comes from either getting someone to push (using the handles from on the back), or, if no X-Men are about, he could probably use the old Xavier-arm power. Note that there is no heating supplied with this chair, so use of a blanet is required to prevent frost bite in the lower regions. Note: if your hair is in a similar state to Xavier's, a lot of body heat can also be retained through use of a hat.

Alternatively, if no blanket is available, a nice hot cup of tea could be used. Note: Xavier is a bit of a slow learner and has yet to listen to advice about a hat...unless the reason for the tea wasn't to warm up, and was instead because of Charlie being thirsty - in which case I retract the 'slow learner' remark.

This is another of those 'Xavier showing off' moments. Yet again, Xavier has had his legs fixed (seems to happen more regularly than Jean dying) and is freed from his chair. This is quite a lucky thing considering the chair he is getting out of is a huge thing. I think this leg-repair came about with help from the Shi'ar, so this would probably be a Shi'ar chair, and they obviously have much wider doors than we do on Earth, as maneuvering that thing though a house would be pretty much impossible otherwise.

This is probably the 'classic' Xavier chair and (I think) comes again from the Shi'ar giving it fancy floating abilities and difficulties getting through doorways. Many versions of this yellow chair have been used through the years, and a variation of this design was used by Xavier in the 90s X-Men cartoon.

Apologies for it's small size, but this is the best image I could find of the chair used in the cartoon. You get the general idea though - it's a giant yellow thing.

The yellow thing again, in sprite version from one of the Capcom games.

This has got to be from the 'New' X-Men era. As you can see, Xavier now has a little joystick to move himself about with, and big tyres to absorb all the impact of wheeling about the mansion - though the appart very high centre of gravity does pose a bit of a tipping-over worry. To be honest, it looks a little odd bit odd which is typical of what I expect from something Quietly drew.

This is one of the most recent versions of Xavier's chair and the one he used when messing about on Genosha before vanishing in the 'no more mutants' aftermath. It seems to be a big heavy thing, and not really designed for getting over the mountains of rubble that were left after Genosha went ka-boom. His joystick appears to have been taken away on this model, so he could be back to having to manually wheel himself about.

Finally in the comics section we have the Ultimate Chair. Ultimate due to being from Marvel's so-titled line of comics which were supposed to get rid of the billions of years of back history from the Marvel universe and start it all over again and be nice and simple (which worked in the beginning, but since the line has been running for over 5 years now things have started getting complicated again). The chair is a classic wheelchair design - no fancy gizmos on this one, not even a cat carrier so Charlie has to resort to carrying his feline friend on his shoulders.

Movie

The chair from X-Men 2 (or X2, or X-Men United, or whatever the official title acutally ended up being). I cleverly deduced this photo was from the sequel due to the presence of a uniformed Rogue in the background. The chair itself doesn't look particularly comfortable, appearing to be basically a big lump of steel in a chair shape - comfort mustn't be desired in the 'near future' (or however the time period is described) so it may be wise to start hording cushions now before it's too late. The designers must have thought themselves really clever when they came up with the idea of sticking giant X's in the wheels, either that or Xavier has a really big ego and needs to remind everyone that he's head of the X-Men all the time.

Here's Xavier as seen in X-Men: the Last Stand (ie X-Men 3). Now as those of you who have seen it will be aware (and those who haven't will be in a second as I'm about to tell you), Xavier meets a bit of a nasty end in the film at the hands (or 'mysterious mind powers') at the hands of Phoenix. Whilst watching this I was in great fear of the outcome, however I was very happy to see that Xavier's chair made it through the attack unharmed. It is good to see that beings of pure evil still have nothing against the humble chair.

Cartoon

Interesting to note how much the Evolution chair looks to the movie version. It's been a while since I watched the cartoon so I can't remember if this version has battery power or not. I'd expect so, since the youth of today cannot be trusted to help with anything, and so Xavier would be stranded all the time (Cyclops would probably help since he's a bit of a teacher's pet).

Toys

images from marveltoys.net

This is probably the worst Xavier toy ever produced. Why? I should think that was obvious - where's his chair?! No idea what separates this toy from being repaint Iceman or repaint ahundredothercharacters now. Who cares about Mutant Armour (sorry armor)? Certainly not me, nor any of the followers of this site.

images from fwooshnet.com

Look, it's a toy of the movie chair (complete with xavier in movie-style suit minus Patrick Stewart-style head)! A mighty fine toy this one is, with much attention given to the chair. I was slightly disappointed when I turned it over to find that what looked like a pull-back action was in fact a non-powered set of wheels, but after a few moments I got over the disappointment of seeing Prof X zooming across my desk and realised that it's probably a good thing that wheelchairs can't reach the speed I was thinking of.

As a special bonus, in this pack you also get a Big Giant Head. No, it's not Mr Shatner, but instead the head of Galactus, the planet-eater. As a cunning marketing ploy to get kids (of all sizes) to buy the other 6 figures in the set (Nightcrawler, Dr. Strange, Hulk, Deathlok, War Machine and Bullseye - none of which come with chairs) each one comes with a part of Galactus which you are then supposed to put together and have standing menacingly over your other toys. Luckily, Xavier gets one of the more useful parts and you can happily recreate the end of Transformers the Movie with it, if nothing else.

- Damian, January 2006

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