These include, besides mainstream heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali, Che, Fidel, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, generic freedom fighters, and "revolutionary women".
The mutants run the gamut from relatively mainstream heroes such as "Nightcrawler", "Shadowcat" and "Deadpool", played by Alan Cumming, Ellen Paige and Ryan Reynolds respectively, to more obscure characters such as "Havok", "Longshot", and "Mirage".
He sees it as fundamentally of a piece with the projects and creations of his anti-mainstream heroes.
They include the 2003 debut of the singer Susan May, who was then 12; recordings by the saxophonists Von Freeman and Fred Anderson; dates by Bobby Lewis, a mainstream trumpet hero; and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, renowned avant-gardists.
He may not wear a deerstalker, or battle an arch nemesis such as Moriarty, but Turing, the mathematical genius, appears set to become a kind of real-life Sherlock figure: an eccentric yet mainstream British hero clad in tweed and corduroy.
Pegg expressed sympathy with Takei's sentiment that mainstream gay heroes were belatedly coming to the big screen, but rejected the idea that this meant a new character needed creating.
Joplin was making it in the psychedelic 60s, which promoted very conventional attitudes in the white rock-and-pop mainstream about male heroes and demurely attractive women.
"One of the dandified mainstream's menswear heroes is rapper ASAP Rocky, who pals around with and walks the runway for camisole-wearing fashion designer Shayne Oliver".
His flustered attempts to articulate this strange position have made him the bane of critics and the hero of mainstream rock fans.
