"But I Don't Want To Cure Cancer. I Want To Turn People Into Dinosaurs"

About

"But I Don't Want To Cure Cancer. I Want To Turn People Into Dinosaurs." is a famous quote by X-Men villain Sauron from the comic Spider-Man and the X-Men. The comic box containing this rebuttal was used in various ways, and mostly to react to people misusing their talents and power.

Origin

On January 28th, 2015, the second issue of the Marvel crossover Spider-Man and the X-Men^[1] was published, featuring Spider-Man working as an ethics teacher at the X-Men University. One of their earliest confrontations is against dinosaur-themed villains Stegron, from the Spider-Man comics, and Sauron, from the X-Men comics. Upon learning their evil plan, which is to mutate every human on Earth into dinosaurs, Spider-Man reacts as such:

"You can rewrite DNA on the fly, and you're using it to turn people into dinosaurs? But with tech like that, you could cure cancer! "

to which Sauron retorts:

"But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs."

This dialogue is a comedic throwback to the famous Spider-Man proverb and theme: "With great power comes great responsibility". The line was immediately noticed by the fanbase, and the very day of the comic's publication, a photography of this exchange was uploaded on Tumblr^[2], and another one separately on Imgur^[3] the next day.

Spread

The comic box from which the iconic dialogue originates has been used by many Internet users either as a cropped version focused on the two speech bubbles in question, an edited version of this cropped box, or a redraw of it. Sometimes, this dialogue is simply quoted. The main context in which this dialogue is used is when talking about squandered potential used for trivial or selfish ends.

Although decently popular on many image boards and social media, the most popular version of this meme comes from a Daily Struggle version on r/memes, posted on March 7th, 2020,^[4] and which quickly gathered more than 44200 points (97% upvoted) and 330 comments.

On Tumblr, a redraw themed on the Sonic comics was posted by Rik Draws^[5] on July 22nd, 2020, and gained 2650 notes. Another one, posted by smut artist GraphiteKnight^[6] in the beginning of January 2018, gained 2140 notes.

Various Examples

Search History

External References