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[LordOfLore]

Link.

In May of 1963, thousands of black protestors—many of them school children—marched on Birmingham, Alabama to draw attention to the city’s entrenched segregation. Later that year in September, Marvel would publish the very first issue of The X-Men, a series clearly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement.

Though the Civil Right Movement had been well under way before the Birmingham protests, images plucked from media coverage at the time would come to symbolize the fight for black rights. With a series of coordinated marches and sit-ins that were scheduled throughout the entire year, protesters were able to put serious economic pressure on local businesses who supported Birmingham’s segregationist policies. The Birmingham Police Department responded by throwing hundreds of the protesters into city jails until there was no more space. When the protesters kept coming, the police met them with attack dogs and fire hoses.

Although it’s often brought up in discussions about how comic books have always been important sites of social and political discourse, The X-Men’s Professor Xavier and Magneto are not the perfect parallels to MLK and Malcolm X that many comics fans make them out to be.

To liken Magneto to Malcolm X, for example, is to reduce the entirety of the latter’s life and politics down to a set of destructive, dramatic ideas with villainous implications. Whereas blacks were (and still are) historically disenfranchised people agitating for their rights, mutants were formally “normal” people who suddenly found themselves discriminated against because of their newfound changes. Minorities though they may have been, the original X-Men and Brotherhood of Evil Mutants were still a group of white folks who were largely able to move through the world unburdened by their technical otherness if they chose to do so.

But 1963 was a different time and there’s something to be said for the idea that Lee and X-Men co-creator Jack Kirby were strongly influenced by the social movements of the time. The X-Men didn’t always provide the sharpest critiques of bigotry by modern standards, but that wasn’t exactly that Lee and Kirby were chiefly concerned with. But by the time Chris Claremont began defining the X-Men’s tone in the ‘80s, Marvel had begun using them as their go-to characters for stories about oppression.

Much more at the link.

 

[Hades Hotgun]

Good read.

Whenever people pull that Malcolm X is Magento shit I get irate.

You have to know nothing about either to believe that nonsense.

Likewise King and Xavier.

The X-Men actually used to be a lot more overt in how they used the mutant metaphor and I think that the conflict between Islam and religiously inspired terrorism would be a pretty fantastic source of inspiration today.

 

[Slayven]

But they did, they evolve from to being about actual survival as a race. They faced actual genocide( thanks Scarlet Witch)

 

[Sgt. Kabukiman]

They did evolve during the Morrison era. The rise of mutant culture was great, I loved District X and X-Statix. The X books have been thematically irrelevant since House of M. Not saying they haven't been good here and there but their natural evolution was neutered and they haven't recovered since.

 

[George Oscar Bluth II]

They did evolve during the Morrison era. The rise of mutant culture was great, I loved District X and X-Statix. The X books have been thematically irrelevant since House of M. Not saying they haven't been good here and there but their natural evolution was neutered and they haven't recovered since.

Yeah, Morrison did good work.

The films havent even tried moving past the '60s.

 

[Slayven]

They did evolve during the Morrison era. The rise of mutant culture was great, I loved District X and X-Statix. The X books have been thematically irrelevant since House of M. Not saying they haven't been good here and there but their natural evolution was neutered and they haven't recovered since.

Yeah it was great seeing mutants taht don't revolve around the X-men.

Yeah, Morrison did good work.

The films havent even tried moving past the '60s.

Don't get me started on the movies

 

[OldRoutes]

Don't get me started on the movies

Oh please, please DO get started!!

 

[Palette Swap]

I really liked the article, but I think it really glosses over the post-House of M status quo, which was interesting as it broke the Magneto/Xavier simplistic duality like never before.

This theme is touched in the article, but for a long time, the Xavier/Magneto paradigm kind of pushed the notion that although mutants are different, they’re good people to the conclusion that they have to be good people to be accepted. The decimation years, really the Cyclops years, shifted that conversation to a simpler, unconditional right to exist (in the face of catastrophe) and be accepted, warts and all.

(It’s a simplistic take on general trends with exceptions over the decades, obviously, but that’s how I felt the general trajectory shifted)

 

[Duane Cunningham]

I think the fact that they really were fighting for survival for the past 12 years finally made them make sense. Part of it was in-universe reasoning, part of it was real world. But all through the 80's and 90's, we were told that the mutants were the oppressed freaks of superheroes, but shown that they were the most popular characters of all with the best art, best writing, and within the stories, they seemed more prominent than the Avengers or anyone else.

Post House of M, they really were on skid row in the comics, and post MCU, they really were the freaks in the shadow of more popular superheroes like Iron Man and Captain America.

From 2005 on, they really were fighting for survival within the fiction, and circumstances outside the fiction finally made it ring true as well.

(I also liked the pre 2005 "half the world is a mutant now" era, but it made less sense. It was nice to have that contrast immediately before it all went to hell, actually... it made "no more mutants" hit that much harder.)

 

[Vermillion]

I agree that it's time to evolve, but not necessarily in the direction people here are posting about.

I think that survival as a race is good and well, but I feel like there's more they could do to parallel modern discrimination. Modern social movements.

Like, Marvel has been making this push for diversity, but I don't think anything would be stronger than having mutants face some of the same issues minorities really face today. Incidentally, I feel like it would bring the most backlash, but... it'd be more powerful.

 

[erlim]

Well that's just the thing. X-Men can just play with star hopping adventures like Guardians of The Galaxy or it can do more socially relevant stories like God Loves Man Kills. Both work because they draw from literary diverse history.

 

[zeemumu]

I agree that it's time to evolve, but not necessarily in the direction people here are posting about.

I think that survival as a race is good and well, but I feel like there's more they could do to parallel modern discrimination. Modern social movements.

Like, Marvel has been making this push for diversity, but I don't think anything would be stronger than having mutants face some of the same issues minorities really face today. Incidentally, I feel like it would bring the most backlash, but... it'd be more powerful.

They started working in that direction with the inhumams since they're MCU Marvels mutant replacement

 

[Pau]

They did evolve during the Morrison era. The rise of mutant culture was great, I loved District X and X-Statix. The X books have been thematically irrelevant since House of M. Not saying they haven't been good here and there but their natural evolution was neutered and they haven't recovered since.

I don't like a lot about Morrison's X-Men run, but that part was awesome. Shame they did away with it.

 

[Parallax]

But they did, they evolve from to being about actual survival as a race. They faced actual genocide( thanks Scarlet Witch)

they faced genocide long before scarlet witch bro

 

[Some Nobody]

At a cursory glance of what's quoted in the OP, this feels like the author hasn't really kept up with what's happened in the comics.

As a sidenote, Magneto's been on the side of the angels as long as he's been a villain. He's been something of a tweener since the Claremont days. How many times has he been an X-Man? He lead the team in the 80's, lost his memory for a bit in the 90's or so and joined again, and post-Messiah CompleX just said screw it and joined up straight on no?

 

[Adam Sadler]

Just an FYI in case y'all didn't read it he does mention examples from current ongoing xmen comics.

 

[BSherrod]

I really enjoyed this article. I don't have anything profound to say, but the author made great points.