TheCorpulent1 said:
2) He wasn't the first to present them sensibly. Don't you think the fact that everyone else managed to get the message of racism out of the classic X-Men comics while you apparently couldn't might tell you something?
Uhhh, no. X-Men always said it was a book about racism. It never showed it sensibly. The contradictions ran to fiercly through the book. As I said it was pretty easy for Stan Lee to say this is our racism focused book. But critically if you analzyed it, it's a terribly weak analogy which plays on the fact that usually comics are not that deep.
I think it's pretty easy to have the word "MUTIE" scralled on a wall or show an angry mob. But when it comes time to actually make mutants an oppressed minority, they failed.
We were told they were "freaks" yet rarely were any of the X-Men "freaks". And even those who could not pass as normal were generally drawn to look attractive.
Problem 1: Mutants need betterment in an oppressive system: Okay great. They never got it. Apparently you were either going to put on spandexy uniforms and fight Magneto or you lived off somewhere. Mutants never were educated at the school. In fact during the sixties/seventies and eighties all the mutants attended normal colleges with normal students. Blacks never had that option. Their problem was they needed special outlets and were forced to go to lesser schools for their education. But apparently Jean Grey has no problem attending the same school as Johnny Storm. Metro University. Yeah racism runs rampant when "You can walk into a college and get the same education as anyone else, but you have to live being a mutant. Oh the agony".
Scott went one from there to get a JOB as a radio announcer and Jean as a MODEL. Gee tough life.
Problem 2: (never addressed before Morrison) Mutants as threats. Mutants were threats supposedly because they had powers they could or could not control. They were essentially walking weapons. Now in the movies this was not a contradiction. However when you have a beloved God named Thor walking around, it is. Mutants were no different, and sometimes less of a potential threat than regular Superheroes. Days actually bothered to address that Sentinels would eventually see all metas as threats. But in doing so they passed this supposedly focused oppression onto every other hero as well.
Morrison actually made his first storyarc about mutants causing humans to become extinct. Back in the Lee/Kirby and even Claremont days mutants sparatically appeared. We know for example the 198 are suppose to be Lee era mutant levels. So not only were they a minority, they were an extreme minority. Something akin to the size of the audience who read them rather than an actual minority.
To Trask apparently their abilities and unpredictablity were this horrible threat, but in doing so the book completely skirts the issue that Marvel had several beloved heroes with similar "afflictions". Some of them more freakish than any X-Men.
Problem 3: Xavier Institute bastion for all mutants: We'll start with Lee's run. Supposedly Xavier was the bastion of tolerance, but not once did a black, asian, or latino mutant ever join. All white, anglo saxon, protestant, fit and normal looking individuals. Even the fat guy, Blob, turned out to be evil after being only OFFERED membership.
They should have hung a sign on the door saying "all white superheroes club, female quota filled."
The next run to even address this concept was "All New, All Different" which brillantly made one of the first extremely multi-ethnic teams ever. Now something Ultimate X-Men did here was to make the multi-ethnic roster create inherent racism amongst the team. Something we never saw during Claremont. However the team was still all beautiful. Even Nightcrawler was drawn as a handsome young man, and both he and Beast were huge womanizers. Some curse huh?
During Morrison we saw Beast revert to anything but attractive, as the same for the students. Most of whom were disfigured and did not look human.
Problem 4: Political Disenfranchisement: There never was an explanation for the MRA (not even passed) or a system like Jim Crow developed in the comics. The X-Men were first and foremost accepted by other Superteams, in fact they looked just like the other superteams. This was a taboo that was never broken because in order to do so you'd have to show that most of the people in the MU were bigots. But they never did. There were small pockets of people who hated mutants, who also seemed to revere heroes.
Truthfully, if for no other reason but to save face, the Avengers and FF and others should have been denouncing mutants right allong with the rest. There was no law enforcement agency officially sanctioned by the Government put against them, because this would mean that the same Government who paid Captain America was also bigotted. That doesn't work out when your Government superteam are suppose to be good guys.
Sentinels would come into play as part of renegade schemes. So really this oppressed minority was really a team of superheroes that had groups who hated them? Wait isn't that all superteams. So does Hydra hating SHIELD make SHIELD an oppressed minority. What about Fantastic Four, I am pretty sure the whole race of Skrulls hates them.
Blacks were actually politically disenfranchise by the agency that ruled over them. Mutants never were. It was never even addressed whether mutants had political leaders or not.
There wasn't even enough support drummed up by hate filled people like Gaydeon Creed or Senator Kelly (pre-1985) to cause mutants to become oppressed. If anything they were preventing a future of possible oppression than ever actually combating actual oppression. The same can be said of any Superteam really. Cap and FF do not want Baron Zemo or Doom seizing power anymore than the X-Men want Creed or Trask to.
So are they really oppressed, or do some guys just hate them. That is not racism.
Morrison addressed this with making the X-Men into more of a underground black ops team. Who interacted very little with the Superhero community. He stopped them from appearing like the exact thing that was suppose to be against them in the first place. The rest of the world.
Just an FYI. My favorite story ever is Phoenix Saga, followed by Inferno. Not Morrison. I hated him when he was writing him. I used to say this is not X-Men, but looking back now...it was. Morrison actually wrote X-Men as an oppressed minority. And cleaned up all the problems with the poor analogies of the past.
X-Men was much more focused on it's exploration of it's characters, all of which are very good, than it was making the racism angle work.
I'm glad you know senisically is not a word, it's too bad you are unable to see why X-Men never made sense.
