Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Need help understanding the X-Men

I've had a big issue with the concept of the X-Men in context to the Marvel Universe as a whole. Not really with the characters and personal dynamics like Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, or that Timber-Wolf-knockoff-what's-his-face. I cannot complete suspend my disbelief where mutants are persecuated.

There are many contradictions that compliment my sentiment. For example, the original X-Men and Fantastic Four team up against some alien creature or undersea monster. The setting is in New York, as per usual because its not Marvel if it does not take place in New York. The respective teams begin their Marvel-usual infighting as always before they realize they're both good guys and unleash their anger on the behemoth.

They win and save the day. But during the aftermath, the FF get their praise from the NY denizens, at the same time the X-Men get their ire. In essence, the world would choose a man made of orange rocks over a girl in a skin tight green dress and yellow domino mask with telepathy.

It makes more sense to have Beppo the Super Monkey than their sprock.

Never made any sense to me, either. Really, I don't think the X-Men work very well in the same universe with any other series. The supposed benefit of mutants to the writers - "never have to explain super-powers again" - is useless in a world already full of non-mutant supers. That is, it doesn't simplify the world. And, as for persecution, the question shouldn't be "Why are mutants distrusted?" From a more real-world POV, the question would be "Why are any superheroes accepted by the public?"

In a world where heroes like Spider-Man are also persecuted in their own way, the X-Men thing made some sense, at first. Even the Avengers, back in the day, had to deal with government mistrust and intervention (and Henry Peter Gyrich, in particular). Figures like the Hulk were even more spectacular cases of 'super-heroes' who have entire government agencies of powered armor folk created and tasked specifically to hunt them down. (The Hulkbusters, for instance, or any other of General 'Thunderbolt' Ross's brilliant failed ideas to bust his daughter's boyfriend.)

But, in later years, we've got various heroes celebrated. The Hulk gets a statue in Central Park (sculpted by Alicia Masters). The X-Men give their lives to stop the Adversary on national TV and become heroes (and again become televised heroes, stopping the alien invasion in Genosha in Extreme X-Men). The Avengers have freaking *parades* in their honor, despite having mutants like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (both former members of Magneto's 'mutant terrorist' organization) as prominent members.

If anything, the mutants would seem to be far *less* likely to be predjudiced against than the Asgardian / Olympian gods (false pagan icons, leading our children into idolatry!), sentient robots like the Vision *marrying living women*, aliens from outer space, etc.

Mutants, by definition, are the children, brothers, sisters, parents, etc. of other people, who are most likely humans. Someone like Superman, unstoppably powerful and *alien,* seems like they would be much, much, much more likely to be persecuted or feared.

Perhaps mutants were persucuted because of the uncertain origin of their powers and the fact that anyone could turn out to be a mutant. Most people would not fly a ship through cosmic rays, so there was no danger that they would turn into Things. On the other hand, "if Bobby could become a mutant, then so could we."

It didn't help matters that Magneto and his ilk were touting mutant superiority, thus fueling the fears non-mutants already had.

The 60s X-Men were an allegory for the US civil rights movement. Xavier is the MLK figure working for integration, and Magneto is his Malcolm X working for revolutionary separation.

Despite the fact that we've come to accept MLK as crusader for justice, dont forget that much of 60s America considered him a troublemaker and an agitator. I'd even say that many white liberal Americans distrusted MLK as much as they distrusted Malcolm X and his total rejection of white America. Similarly in the MU, whatever the X-Men did was wrong and distrusted in the eyes of the normal folk. They're troublemakers, despite the fact they're doing the same things as all the other heroes.

At the other end of the continuum, the Fantastic Four are the Mercury 7 astronauts of the Marvel Universe. They were celebrities in a Kennedy New Frontier that idolized science and progress. They'd be on Marvel Universes' versions of Life have action figures made of them etc.

And, particularly in the last decade or two, the X-Men really haven't helped that situation. Xavier went on and on about a dream of mutants and humans living in peace, and then creates a fortified compound in which the mutants are herded, and the humans kept on the other side of the fence. I remember a day when the mansion had human groundskeepers and such, and the team hung out at the malt shop. Nowadays, the only time a mutant sees a human is if they are trying to kill each other. The mutants who used to date humans (Angel, Beast, Wolverine) are now dating mutants, aliens, whatever. Anything but a Candy Southern, Trish Tilby or Mariko Yashida.

Hide all of the mutants inside a fortified compound, and sever all ties with the human population, and it's hardly a shock the rest of the world regards them as another Waco / Ruby Ridge waiting to happen...

As an Avenger, the Beast (and Wonder Man) would regularly go hot-tubbing with Hollywood starlets and the only complaint about the Beast's presence was that his fur would clog up the filters! And now he's part of that hated / feared minority again, just because he's hanging around the X-mansion instead of Avenger's Mansion.

Actually, the complaint I find most understandable about the X-Men is as follows: It's kind of hypocritical to have a team that embodies the dream of respect for all regardless of circumstance, and yet over and over to have the most-"deformed," least "human" looking mutants turn out to be bad rather than good.

A character like Callisto starts out, by comic babe standards, fairly unattractive. When she becomes a heroic or at least more morally gray character, they start to draw her as being more traditionally pretty. Which sort of undermines the whole message of "Come be appreciated for what you are, without having to conform and be like everyone else."

As one fan I know said, who the blazes can get all weepy for poor Scott and Jean when they look like movie stars ? They could, with minor effort vanish into "everyday" life with no problem. How about the mutants that can't ? Does anyone sympathize with them ?

The other points made here, while salient, have a lot to do with real-world trends and news that influence writers;Not to mention the never-ending arguments about continuity and how bound (or unbound) new writers and editors should feel in regards to it.

Oy.

That is what I think is the best basis for the mutant hatred in the Marvel Universe. They are touted as being genetically superior to a normal human...our evolutionary replacements. What better reason for hatred than potential obsolescence at the hands of your betters?

At least with the accident/experiment heroes you have a chance of getting the powers. Well, as long as your luck, money, or government contacts hold up.

Good point, although Beast (post-1970) and Nightcrawler certainly qualify as non-human looking.

Even looking at internet message boards, it's pretty clear that taken as a whole, "poeple" come across as hypocritical, fickle and inconsistent. But that's to be expected when trying to distill the opinions of thousands or millions of people into one coherent belief system.

That said, in looking at how mutants and super-heroes are generally perceived, I'd boil it down to the simple perception that the Avengers and the FF are seen as upholding society whereas mutants are perceived as antisocial and a threat to our way of life. The public doesn't know half of what the X-Men really do, and good or bad, all mutants are probably lumped together in most people's minds.

The people who show up for Avengers parades probably aren't the same people holding up anti-mutant signs, but even if some of them are, I don't think it's hard to imagine them being the same kind of people who throw around the N-word, but "love" Michael Jordan.

Haven't read any X-Men in years, but didn't they make Nightcrawler half-demon? As my kid brother said, "It's like they completely missed the point of the character."

Chuck Austen is pretty unpopular for that storyline. These days, Nightcrawlers 'demon' dad is actually just an immortal mutant, who fathered a dozen / hundred / whatever of these teleporting mutant kids to try and weaken the barriers to whatever dimension he was trapped in. (How he gets out of the dimension he's 'trapped in' to breed with all these women, well, we'll just ignore that pesky detail, and why all of his dozens / hundreds of kids are the same approximate age, well, artistic license...)

Then someone went one step further and made Warren Worthington half-angel, with healing blood, descended from someone later revealed to be another immortal mutant with an angelic appearance, the ancient enemy of the demon-looking Nightcrawler-siring mutant. Ugh.

Not since Sam Guthrie became an External, and then mysteriously stopped being an External, have I seen such douchebaggery from the X-books...

Sometimes I think that Marvel has missed the entire point of the word 'mutant.' They are supposed to be different from their parents. If every mutant parent produces mutant babies, they aren't very 'different' then are they? These days it's just assumed that if the Summers or Guthrie clans squeeze out another child, it's gonna be a mutant with super-powers, and not just a kid, which would be thousands of times more likely...

The human relatives, much like the human groundskeepers and allies (see McTaggert, Moira) have been either sidelined (Hank McCoy's parents, the Summer's dad, Xian's little brother and sister, Leong and Nga) or killed off (Piotr's family, Jean's sister, nephew and neice, etc).

I'm reminded of a line from the interview at the back of the Death of Phoenix remix that Marvel printed like a decade later, where they printed the story where Jean survived the final battle, and, in their words, 'lost her powers and went on to become Scott Summer's wife, about as important a character as the left rear wheel of the Blackbird.' Such blistering contempt for a character that *isn't* a mutant (any longer), and therefore means nothing to the writer speaking (and I don't recall who it was). They went on to mention that there was some fuzzy thinking about maybe having Magneto kill her in issue 200 or something, which would really establish his cred as a threat, to have finally killed one of them. Yikes! Lose your powers in the X-verse, and your sole purpose now is to die off to establish credibility for some villain?

Sounds too much like what they eventually did with the New X-Men, where a bunch lost there powers and were promptly blowed up by mutant-hating extremists!

Hmm... Beast started out as a full-fledged human (visually), though. Only his hands and feet were kind of "funny-looking." Except in one issue of What If, I don't remember him ever changing mentally to the point where he might do something villainous. So in a way, the perception of the character later is still influenced by how he was drawn earlier on.

Also, artists like Cockrum still drew both characters with the classical features we associate with heroic figures. Strong jaws, muscled physiques and the like. The overall impression is still more in line with what's commonly perceived as "attractive," even with the blue fur and fangs added.

As opposed to, say, Blob, Toad or early Callisto.

What you say is certainly true. Heroes do look heroic, fur and fangs aside. And in rendering the characters this way, Marvel was probably adhering to the notions that comics are primarily a kiddie medium and that kids don't want to read about ugly heroes (just as boys who watch cartoons apparently don't want to watch girls).

Yet getting back to the question of this thread--Why are the X-Men persecuted?--I can't help but think that Toad, Callisto, and perhaps even the Blob would have an easier time blending into human society than would Hank or Kurt.

By the way, Banshee underwent a transformation similar to Callisto's. The Sean Cassidy of issues 94-110ish scowls a lot less than he did as a villain.

True, Sean wasn't exactly a cheery guy. Kind of understandable: Didn't his wife die on their honeymoon and then his brother stole the kid and yadda yadda yadda ? But he was always pretty handsome even when not smiling, yes ? Callisto started out literally drawn comic-book "ugly," regardless of her emotional state and the fact that (like Sean) her life at the time wasn't exactly all roses.

I think that both the Toad and the Blob were once circus performers, weren't they ? Or was that just Kurt ? I imagine that what was supposed to distinguish Kurt from the other two is that he had a "family" relationship with other performers. I guess you're supposed to assume that the other two were too innately antisocial or selfish to manage that.

Don't get me started on the ZOMFG-boys-can't-watch-girls-on-TV thing. I'll be here for a week ranting.

I don't know what ZOMFG means, but I'd be ranting with you.

The first time I saw Banshee was in an issue of Captain America during the Secret Empire story. With his Patricia Routledge hairstyle, I thought he was supposed to be a woman--an ugly one, at that.

ZOMFG = Oh, my [bleeping] God. The "Z" is what all the cool kids are using today. Or so mr_cleome tells me with his Facebook and his LJ and, ahhh. Kids.

HWW: (snip)

Quote

...The first time I saw Banshee was in an issue of Captain America during the Secret Empire story. With his Patricia Routledge hairstyle, I thought he was supposed to be a woman--an ugly one, at that.

Now I'm doubly sad that I don't have my old comics anymore.