Uncanny X-Men #15.INH
So this is Marvel’s new thing, then – sticking file extensions on the end of issue numbers to signal crossover stories. Hallelujah. With this out of the box thinking, the industry is saved.
Uncanny X-Men #15.INH doesn’t work. Or at least, it doesn’t work if you’ve been skipping the build-up to Inhumanity – which I have. But since this issue’s primary purpose is apparently to advertise Inhumanity to Uncanny X-Men readers, you would certain hope that it would be aiming to capture the interest of people coming to the event fresh. In this, it fails.
From the relatively little I’ve seen of the build-up to Inhumanity, I don’t honestly understand the hook. And yes, that’s even after reading the one-shot we reviewed on last week’s podcast, which was nothing but recap. Because it’s not so much that I don’t understand the plot – more that I don’t understand why it’s supposed to be interesting. The hook, as best as Marvel have managed to convey it to me, is that the Inhumans’ city of Attilan has been destroyed by a massive bomb which has spread their mutagenic Terrigen Mists around the world. This has apparently activated a bunch of dormant Inhumans, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, who have gone into cocoons and come out with super powers.
So basically… a thing has happened and a bunch of people have got super powers. That’s fine as the starting premise for a superhero universe, and in fact such a thing more or less was the premise for the New Universe back in the 1980s. But as a Marvel Universe concept with the Inhumans attached, I don’t get it. These “new Inhumans” are, from the look of it, just ordinary folk who didn’t know they had any connection to the Inhumans. But the entire point of the Inhumans is their distinctive culture. That’s their thing. They’re kind of heroic but they do weird things to their kids and keep a slave race – they’re somewhere between foreign and alien. Take that away and replace it with “ordinary people from the world over” and you haven’t got a concept any more.
Or a least, I don’t understand what the replacement concept is meant to be.
The X-Men pose a further problem for this revamp of the Inhumans, since the X-Men’s series has already littered the Marvel Universe with ordinary folk who suddenly developed super powers, inviting the obvious question of what makes the new Inhumans different. That’s not necessarily such a big problem for the Marvel Universe in general; the X-Men have always been a bit semi-detached from the rest of Marvel continuity, and there’s never been a particularly good reason for the Marvel Universe public to draw such a distinction between mutants and other superheroes. The Marvel Universe is ultimately just a storytelling device to allow characters from different books to meet. But if you’re going to do an Inhumanity tie-in issue of Uncanny X-Men – then yes, you’re going to have to turn some attention to asking how these two concepts fit together.
What actually happens in this issue: the women from Scott’s team decide to go shopping in London. (This first half of the book is basically fine, by the way, if you like Bendis’ downtime issues.) They stumble upon an Inhuman emerging from one of the cocoons, who turns out to be a Latverian called Geldhoff who doesn’t like mutants and is a bit confused. There’s a minor altercation and then AIM come and cart him off. And… um, that’s it.
There’s some vague and unexplained blather about Inhumans being different from mutants, without any attempt to explain why – most likely because Bendis doesn’t know either. In fact, Bendis seems to be using this story as a device to bring Geldoff from Ultimate Spider-Man into the Marvel Universe (even though that’s been done already). Which only goes to emphasise the fact that there’s nothing remotely Inhuman about these new Inhumans, if an unrelated character can simply be plugged into the role.
Or at least, if there’s an explanation out there in the other tie-in issues of what makes these characters Inhuman in any meaningful way, it’s not to be found here. As of right now, not only do I not care about Inhumanity, I don’t even know what it is I’m supposed to care about.
Having a distinctive culture is what the Inhumans used to be about. Now they’re about being a disparate race of superpowered individuals, who are feared by the non-Inhuman community and the movie rights to which are owned by Marvel.
There’s a theory going around the message boards that this is Marvel Studios’s attempt to replace mutants for the in-house Marvel films, since the X-Men rights are still with Fox.
Given that the Fantastic Four rights are still with Fox as well, I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work (and thus I doubt the rumor is true). Then again, f Wanda and Pietro count as characters for both sets of rightsholders, who knows.
Otherwise, I don’t see the point in (once more) bringing over Geldoff, who was perhaps the most poorly received thing in Bendis’s otherwise acclaimed Ultimate Spider-Man and was rather quickly forgotten in the Ultimate titles.
The concept reminded me more of that Bloodlines gimmick from early 90 DC. That at lleast gave us Hitman.
It also seems to be an excuse to repower/power-up existing characters as needed. Over in the somewhat underwhelming Infinity Heist miniseries, they did this to Donnie “Blizzard” Gil, whose claim to fame before that was being the latest guy to wear a suit that gave him cold powers. So all of a sudden he’s an Inhuman with blue skin and…cold powers.
I wonder if mutants with Inhuman ancestry can become Inhumans with additional powers. Or new powers, if they lost them during Decimation.
If anything, this reminds me of the Gene Bomb from the end of DC’s Invasion event, which likewise activated a bunch of people with the latent metagene.
Unless the Inhumans plan to start rescuing their people and developing a nation-in-exile where they teach them all about sacred Inhuman customs and holidays, and fighting to be recognized as an ethnic group with all the rights and responsibilities–in which case we could be up for an interesting Israeli analogy–this will just be another cheap excuse to give random people powers and create drama. Especally since we’re already seeing the “collect ’em all” mentality of various cartoons.
Wait, somebody had already brought Geldoff into the main continuity ? Who, where ? And most importantly, why ?
I can see Bendis bringing in a pet character like this for the sake of it ; I’m confused as to why anyone else would bother.
Yeah, this is exactly like the Gene Bomb from DC. I guess Marvel figure that was so long ago that most readers won’t remember that the other company already did it.
I guess the main difference between Inhumans and mutants is that this can destroy the lives of people who were already set up and living their lives, unlike with mutants.
With mutants, the power manifests at puberty, when people are still growing up to adulthood.
With this, people who are married and living their lives can suddenly find themselves with weird powers.
I don’t find it a very interesting concept either, but that’s a main difference, I guess.
I’m afraid what I have read does make me think about the Generation Hope series far too much though.
thank you for putting into words what I’ve been feeling. Another way to put it for me is to metaphor the same feeling when there’s second-hand smoke in the area and you can’t tell where it’s from– there’s just something “off” in the enviornment which makes a subtle but still distracting discomfort as you try to settle into the setting
@JD: Geldoff was a minor character in Avengers: The Initiative.
Obviously the new status quo had to be addressed, but as Paul says it’s all terribly vague. “Maybe the public will hate these new weirdos now and mutants will get a break” “Um no, that’s not how it works.” And that’s basically it. Kindt’s Awakening is addressing a similar question, differently and with mixed results, but basically we are just getting a new excuse to create new characters (none of which do far are particularly compelling. We really need another bird girl?) Considering that the next Avengers film is meant to involve Thanos, I am inclined to believe that Inhumanity was conceived of and driven by the needs of marvel studios.
Is there any chance that the upcoming storyline with a planet for mutants in Uncanny Avengers would be a longterm plan, allowing new stories for the XMen line while allowing the rest of the Marvel U to continue having a group to hate and fear? It seems silly to me, but its the only thing I can think of that tends to make much sense.
I find it funny in the books doing inhumanity there doesn’t seem to be any confusion if these people are mutants or not. There could be a story in the fact that the public doesn’t realize why people are being powered up ( attilan blew up during an alien invasion I’m sure it wasn’t the only thing in the sky blowing up). It seems such common knowledge it’s the terrigan mists doing this that they can learn it by reading minds in London.
AvX ended with the same payoff as infinity less than a year later. WTF. This idea undercuts the X books and is very clunky. I said it after the podcast I think inhumanity is a dud and the ongoing inhuman series ends up a mini or scratched altogether.
“I am inclined to believe that Inhumanity was conceived of and driven by the needs of marvel studios.”
As am I, though not necessarily because of anything to do with Thanos. My guess is that they’re just generally rooting around their stable looking for properties that they can movie-fy. And yeah, maybe they are looking for a replacement X-Men concept for the films. Whether or not Inhumanity makes a great deal of sense (or if it undercuts the X-Men) within the context of the comic book universe is something I don’t believe they’re terribly concerned with. Who cares, really? It’s the films that make the big bucks, not the comics, and in Marvel’s cinematic universe, there are no X-Men to undercut.
Joseph – No, the next AVENGERS film is not about Thanos, it’s about Ultron. They’ve already cast James Spader as Ultron. Presumably, Guardians of the Galaxy will feature Thanos, but my best guess is that they’re saving Thanos for an even bigger shot in Avengers 3, which will probably (maybe? hopefully?) be Robert Downey’s last picture as Iron Man, along with possibly a couple other cast members who might want to step back and be replaced. So Avengers 3 is probably going to be the biggest in terms of scope.
Michael – I think, from reading the stories and the interviews, that this is closer to the truth of what Inhumanity is supposed to be leading up to. After all, Black Bolt’s motivation for blowing up the city was to awaken the descendents of Inhumans whose ancestors had interbred with regular humanity. I believe the assumption on the part of Black Bolt is that all these new Inhumans will somehow acknowledge their Inhuman ancestry and pledge fealty to the royal house of Boltagon and rebuild the Inhuman power base on Earth, which is a naive idea either on the part of Black Bolt or the writers themselves.
Funnily enough, Bendis himself killed off the Initiative version off Geldoff — who called himself “Proton” — in Secret Invasion #3, apparently because Dan Slott had told him that the character was built to be cannon fodder. (I wonder if he even noticed that it was “his” character?)
I have not read the comics yet and honestly I’m as baffled as Paul. Even on paper the concept seems like such a non-starter given that you already have mutants and X-Men.
So yeah, I think the Marvel Studios hypothesis is the most viable reason as to why Marvel is doing this…unless we get thrown a curve-ball with the concept down the line.
Not only does the Inhumanity premise sound bland as American cheese, but the Inhumans themselves aren’t all that interesting without the right creators (and even the right creators sometimes fail to do anything worthwhile with them).
Oh yeah, Ultron. That’s right. Anyway it still feels like it’s got marvel studios written all over it, though it doesn’t seem to be very well thought out.
I’m not very well versed on inhuman history, but why exactly would these new inhumans have any loyalty to attilan? Based on Fraction’s first issue there was a deep schism in the first place, which presumably will be addressed in that series. And black bolt was able to unite his group with other of shoots be past (in space or something? I’m not too clear on that but he’s got 5 wives now?) But regardless of thst fact there must be more than that to it. Why would all these folks whose lives have been ruined, or at least seriously disrupted, by black bolt have any interest in him? For that matter why would the inhumans still follow black bolt after breaking with tradition? I have more faith in Fraction than that, so I’m going to run with the main series a bit longer.
I’m not really sure why the Marvel Studios angle makes sense. The X-Men are popular because of the characters, not because of the “people suddenly gaining superpowers who are hated and feared” storyline. People go to see Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, etc. No one cares about Geldhoff.
Hmm?
I have been reading Marvel comics for about forty years now and it was never even hinted that there could possibly be interbreeding between Inhumans and humans.
This is quite plainly a metaphor for Israeli / Jewish community then.
While I guess the angle that the inhumans mutation can effect ordinary people that already had their lives set-up is something different if still somewhat uninteresting.
Yet, is that not what the Phoenix thing has been doing in Uncanny X-men? Creating new mutants who didn’t know they were mutants? Hasn’t that been the mutant’s thing since the end of AvX?
Clearly Bendis’s goal is to establish the fact that “Geldhoff” is a common Latverian name.
@Luis Dantas – Quicksilver and Crystal had a child, so it has been established that Inhumans and mutants can interbreed, and therefore it seems to reason that Inhumans and humans could too.
The Inhumans always fell into the same niche to me as the Legion of Superheroes or the Fourth World or the Eternals – little pockets of superhumans so isolated from the rest of their universe that they don’t really feel like an oganic part of it and I forget they exist when they’re not actively crossing over with someone else.
I don’t have any trouble understanding why bigots in the Marvel Universe would draw a distinction between mutants and other superhumans – I’ve used this metaphor many times before, but it’s the same reason real world bigots might hate someone born with dark skin but not someone who acquired dark skin by lying out in the sun for hours, because it’s not really about “skin color” per se, it’s about their feeble grasp of biology and genetics – but I’m going to need a damn good explanation if I’m supposed to believe that the average MU civilian draws much of a line between mutants and inhumans. Especially since most of the fears people are usually shown to have about mutants – that they see themselves as better than humans, that they have secret plans and agendas – are actually true about most Inhumans (at least the pre-Terrigen Bomb ones).
Does Marvel studios even have the rights to an Inhumans film? I would have assumed they would be bundled off to Fox as part of the Fantastic Four franchise since they are one of the few interesting and workable concepts that the FF is tied to outside of Doom and Galactus.
“But since this issue’s primary purpose is apparently to advertise Inhumanity to Uncanny X-Men readers, you would certain hope that it would be aiming to capture the interest of people coming to the event fresh. In this, it fails.”
Sounds like it fails spectacularly.
Also,
“I have been reading Marvel comics for about forty years now and it was never even hinted that there could possibly be interbreeding between Inhumans and humans.”
Whether or not it is genetically possible, isn’t one part on the Inhumans’ history that they are isolationists? They didn’t want to mix with regular humanity so lived in their own community? I mean, even if a handful of them left Attilan on their own accord, there couldn’t be that many descendants…
They could. If they were not Inhumans and therefore a closed tribe. Every time one of them leaves Atillan it is an event of some kind, directly causing a story.
Incidentally, isn’t the plot point that Inhumans usually can’t breath our polluted air for long still standing? Medusa once pointed out that she “seems have developed an immunity”, and IIRC Reed had a serum or something. But it is still something of a retcon that Inhumans can even live unaware among humanity.
I wonder why they made Inhumans a metaphor for Jewish People.
“I don’t have any trouble understanding why bigots in the Marvel Universe would draw a distinction between mutants and other superhumans.”
I do. I’ve felt for a long time now that the X-Men concept would be better off in a self-contained universe outside of the MU proper.
Bigotry towards mutants isn’t just about their appearances. It’s about their abilities. It’s mostly about ability, actually, and what makes little sense to me is this:
MU citizen: “You there! Super-powered person! How did you get those powers?”
Mutant: “Couldn’t help it. I’m a mutant. They manifested at puberty. Wasn’t my idea.”
MU citizen: “I don’t trust you!!”
(moves over to someone else)
Mu citizen: “And what about you? How did you get your powers?”
Superhuman: “Scientific experiment. Quite deliberate. I was trying to gain powers and I succeeded.”
Mu citizen: “Okay, I trust you!”
Indeed. If anything, people should have a harder time trusting, say, the Human Torch (whose powers are undeniably dangerous) than Kitty Pryde (who is only harmful to electronical equipment).
Come to think of it, it is odd to expect people to trust any of the many Supersoldiers over, say, Nightcrawler.
“Whether or not it is genetically possible, isn’t one part on the Inhumans’ history that they are isolationists? They didn’t want to mix with regular humanity so lived in their own community? I mean, even if a handful of them left Attilan on their own accord, there couldn’t be that many descendants…”
This was covered in the story, where they explained that there were non-isolationist splinter factions who left Attilan thousands of years ago and began interbreeding (although at the beginning of Infinity there’s at least one community of pure Inhuman isolationists left).
The real question then becomes, even if only a handful of Inhumans bred with regular homo sapiens, given enough time wouldn’t a large majority of the humans on the planet be related to the Inhuman line in some way? That’s how breeding works over large enough spans of time. If this was supposed to be thousands of years ago that the process started, I’d expect a significant proportion of people to be effected, not just a small handful. They think that Ghengis Khan is a direct ancestor for 16 million people, after all . . .
While we’re talking Inhumans, does anybody else think the recently-introduced “Latin” name for the species, “Inhomo Supremis,” is absolutely ridiculous? Every time I see that in print, it kicks me right out of the story.
More ridiculous than the House of Blackagon.
I might not be recalling GCSE biology correctly here, but if Inhumans and humans can interbreed and have viable offspring, doesn’t that make Inhumans… human? At that point, aren’t all their differences cultural rather than biological? (Even their superpowers are artificially granted, aren’t they?)
Regarding inhumans in the general population, this was revealed during Infinity and Inhumanity. Apparently in ancient inhuman times they’re was a schism having to do with terrigenesis, whether or not they should become what they are and fulfill the Kree’s plans for them. Free will vs fear of the kree coming back and being unprepared. So half the group left and founded a city whatever the fuck where Thanos’ son was found. Inhumanity asserted via Karnak that over the millenia some must have left and mixed with humans.
And yes having a separate genus is absurd.
This is how I see a possible marvel studio line of thought. They’ve been using extremis to power up random characters in Agents of Shield (which is ok, typical joss whedon, btw for anyone not watching). But the extremis thing gets really old and is really limited. Inhumans give them the flexibility of mutants (if not the characters)
This premise might be more interesting if the points it’s raising or ignoring weren’t already covered nearly fifteen years ago by Jim Krueger, Alex Ross and John Paul Leon in Earth X.
The moral of the very first ever Inhumans story by Jack and Stan ends with everyone realizing Inhumans and humans are the same species when Maximus’s “humans-only” superweapon affects everyone.
For that matter, the Inhumans’ origin was established such that they were humans genetically altered by the Kree. Why wouldn’t they be able to interbreed with humans? This is the Marvel Universe, where even humanoid aliens can do that.
@halapeno – That’s the point, though, that anti-mutant bigots DON’T hate them just because they have powers. Just like a real-world anti-Semite might insist they hate Jews because they “have all the money” and “secretly run the world” and idiocy like that while harboring no ill will towards wealthy gentiles and hating poor Jews just as much as rich ones. And Klansmen have no beef with Caucasians with dark tans but hate light-skinned blacks who can “pass” as white as much as – possibly more than – dark-skinned ones. Most homophobes have no problem watching a lesbian scene in a porn flick, as long as they can tell themselves that those women are really gay.
Because the thing they really hate is that the person is different from themselves. They’re part of “the other.” “Those people” are obviously all plotting against us good “normal” folks. It’s “in their blood.”
Or, to use a different metaphor, how many people who complain about how “the one percent” are all selfish assholes honestly believe they, themselves, would become just another “rich asshole” if they won the lottery? And how many rich objectivists who insist the poor are just lazy parasites honestly believe that they would become a lazy parasite if they lost all their money?
The thinking goes that “those people” are “just born that way,” and if a “nice, normal person” becomes like them outwardly, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll become like them inwardly.
The conversation you imagined would go something like this:
MU citizen: “You there! Super-powered person! How did you get those powers?”
Mutant: “Couldn’t help it. I’m a mutant. They manifested at puberty. Wasn’t my idea.”
MU citizen: “You were born with pure genetic evil in your veins! Your claims of innocence are just lies to cover up your plans to kill us all and conquer the Earth! You were born with something I wasn’t born with and therefore you must hate me as much as I hate you!”
(moves over to someone else)
Mu citizen: “And what about you? How did you get your powers?”
Superhuman: “Scientific experiment. Quite deliberate. I was trying to gain powers and I succeeded.”
Mu citizen: “Okay, you’re a good normal person like me. You weren’t born with evil programmed your DNA, just like I wasn’t. You’re like I would be if I got powers, and therefore I’m okay with you!”
@Omar – Absolutely right. They’re basically a bunch of human super-soldier test subjects with slightly more exotic origins (outsourcing goes back further than most people realize). Then they formed their own society. Otherwise, they’re not significantly different from Steve Rogers.
(And no matter how many times I proofread a post, there’ll always be an error I don’t notice until I hit “Submit Comment.” The last sentence of the first paragraph should say “…as long as they can tell themselves that those women *aren’t* really gay.” Leaving off the “not” part kind of reverses the meaning of the sentence.)
@ZZZ – Can’t agree with you there. I still maintain the fear/hatred towards mutants has far more to do with ability than genetics. You don’t go about building Sentinels just because you don’t care for “different” people.
“I believe the assumption on the part of Black Bolt is that all these new Inhumans will somehow acknowledge their Inhuman ancestry and pledge fealty to the royal house of Boltagon and rebuild the Inhuman power base on Earth, which is a naive idea either on the part of Black Bolt or the writers themselves.”
My impression (and I think it was confirmed in one of the many Hickman Infinity tie-ins that I read, but I can’t remember which one) is that Black Bolt triggered the bomb in order to make it harder for Thanos to find his heir. Which is a pretty Machiavellian thing to do, since theoretically Thanos would have been happy genociding the known Inhumans and then leaving the rest of Earth alone, otherwise, but Black Bolt just made Thanos everyone’s problem.
Re: Uncanny 15. Wong may have needed a personality upgrade away from ‘humble Asian servant’, but ‘generic Bendis sitcom guy’ is barely an improvement. Every time he writes that character, it’s like nails on the chalkboard to me.
Come to think of it, the fact that humans hate/fear mutants largely due to their abilities was established as far back as the first appearance of the Sentinels (X-Men 16?). Remember the cheesy artist’s rendering of what a mutant-dominated future might look like with ordinary humans taken as slaves?
Yes, there are bigots who would hate mutants if they only looked different and didn’t have any powers. But most of the paranoia stems from the fact that some of them can read minds, or shapeshift, or walk through walls, etc. It shouldn’t be equated to just another case of irrational hatred based solely on the fact that these people are different. That’s not realistic, and frankly, ordinary human beings have a point when it comes to mutants. Why do we lock our doors when we leave the house? Why do we teach our children not to talk to strangers? Because we can’t trust people we don’t know. Throw random powers popping up in random people into the mix, and you have a society of justifiably frightened and paranoid people. I’m a liberal-minded, tolerant person and even I’d be demanding mutant registration were they to exist in the real world as they do in the MU. Yet for some reason, every creator adopts the default position that mutants are unjustifiably persecuted while anti-mutant human beings are ignorant bigots. It’s bullshit.
And then there’s the X-Men who seem to have it stuck in their heads that by continuing to do good deeds, they’ll someday convince the world that mutants can be trusted, which is just about the stupidest thing ever. The most that they can hope to achieve in this manner is to convince the world that the X-Men are a nice bunch of folks, and that’s it. This does nothing to alleviate very real concerns that come with random people developing extraordinary superpowers.
Homo sapiens sapiens
Homo sapiens mutatis (not mutandis, I don’t think)
Homo sapiens terrigenesis
Homo sapiens kurtzbergensis
I’d be happy if they’d remember the correct formatting, and that “sapiens” isn’t a plural (although I think it probably is its own plural).
Huhhh…so will the children of these Terrigensis-activated people plop out baseline human? Because they’d probably have to. But how would that work with the germline…I mean, female Inuhumans would have un-Terrigened eggs, right, they’re born with all their eggs. But the boys would have all kinds of jinky spermatozoons, not producing them until puberty, and thereby, after Terrigenesis.
Hang on. I think Jinky Spermatozoon might be Moon Knight’s new sidekick.
//\Oo/\\
I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to establish that not all Inhumans live in Atillan _this_ late on the game. The city was moved at least twice and both times it was understood that all Inhumans lived there, except for Medusa and Crystal when they were with the FF.
This is an odd, unconvincing retcon. One that damages the Inhumans as a concept.
Problem is that Wong personality upgrade away from “humble Asian servant” happened decades ago over multiple Doctor Strange series. Which I’m betting good money Bendis has never read.
Paul, you’re still too generous to Bendis when you give the first half of this issue a pass. Three examples:
(1) It’s simply not plausible that the Cuckoo’s don’t know what an iPod is.
(2) We’ve seen Emma in bed many times, and she doesn’t sleep with her ass in the air.
(3) Jean’s comment that she’s been wearing those cloths since, “like,” 1963 is wrong on multiple levels. If she’s from 1963, she wouldn’t speak like a 1993 valley girl; if she’s not from 1963, why would she say that; and it’s not true anyhow because she stole clothes during Battle of the Atom, and because the clothes she’s wearing are not the ones she wore when she travelled through time, and of course, she’s changed clothes a number of times since arriving.
Bendis’ dialogue is grating, character is sacrificed to dull jokes, and he’s writing so many comics he can’t even remember the details of the stories that he wrote last month.
“My impression (and I think it was confirmed in one of the many Hickman Infinity tie-ins that I read, but I can’t remember which one) is that Black Bolt triggered the bomb in order to make it harder for Thanos to find his heir.”
That was the reason Black Bolt gave at the time. But I seem to recall that in one of the latter issues of the series, Maximus figures out–and Black Bolt silently confirms–that he was planning on detonating it anyway,and Thanos’ presence just provided a convenient smokescreen, which is even more Machiavellian. Between him and the Sub-“What, do you expect an apology for those Wakandan mass murders”-Mariner, monarchists aren’t doing great things in MU right now.
“Yes, there are bigots who would hate mutants if they only looked different and didn’t have any powers. But most of the paranoia stems from the fact that some of them can read minds, or shapeshift, or walk through walls, etc. It shouldn’t be equated to just another case of irrational hatred based solely on the fact that these people are different. That’s not realistic, and frankly, ordinary human beings have a point when it comes to mutants. Why do we lock our doors when we leave the house? Why do we teach our children not to talk to strangers? Because we can’t trust people we don’t know. Throw random powers popping up in random people into the mix, and you have a society of justifiably frightened and paranoid people. I’m a liberal-minded, tolerant person and even I’d be demanding mutant registration were they to exist in the real world as they do in the MU. Yet for some reason, every creator adopts the default position that mutants are unjustifiably persecuted while anti-mutant human beings are ignorant bigots. It’s bullshit. ”
Thank you.
This is why I have always felt the “mutants-as-a-metaphor” idea never made any sense and always takes me out of the story whenever it is used.
Yes, people shouldn’t be persecuted for who they are, but when a mutant is capable of reading someone’s mind or melting their face off, I think its naïve that anyone would think mutants wouldn’t be feared just because they exist.
And the X-Men certainly don’t actually help with the perception of mutants; if they truly wanted to change people’s perception of mutants, maybe they should stop going around blowing things up and killing and mind-raping people.
Don’t forget the paramilitary training schools with mutant-only policies!
Seriously, I think the metaphor could still fly, but you have to do a lot more work to make it do so. Hating the guy down the street for being a dangerous mutant like Magneto when his only power is a third eye in his forehead could (with a lot of handwaving) be seen as similar to the narrow-minded people who, after 9/11, assumed all Muslims are terrorists.
Incidentally, my favorite take on the “mutants are to be hated and feared” (which I’ve admittedly trotted out on this blog before, so bear with) was X-Men 85, where Joe Kelly had Magneto go incognito to confront an average man on the street to see what he thinks about mutants. And when the man turns out to be more tolerant than Mags expected, he reveals himself and roughs him up a bit, and guy says, “It’s not mutants I hate, it’s you, because you’re a monster who’ll do whatever he wants to get the answer he’s looking for.” (Kelly phrased it a little fancier in the original.)
“Hating the guy down the street for being a dangerous mutant like Magneto when his only power is a third eye in his forehead could (with a lot of handwaving) be seen as similar to the narrow-minded people who, after 9/11, assumed all Muslims are terrorists.”
Yeah, but that’s just bigotry then, and the X-Men books have already done stuff like this (hating the easily identifiable but otherwise harmless mutant).
Besides which, if all this were real, that wouldn’t be the big problem. The big problem would stem from the knowledge that not all mutants can be easily identified. I’d honestly be much more comfortable with mutants like Beast or Nightcrawler. At least I can pick them out in a crowd. But knowing that anyone could be a mutant– that anyone could very well be a shapeshifter or a telepath or a whatever… That’s what would freak people the hell out. That’s what would ramp up the paranoia and it would be perfectly justifiable paranoia.
I can trust a person but I don’t trust people. That’s why I lock my door. That’s why we have home security and internet security and passwords and all of the other shit we employ in our day-to-day lives to protect ourselves. But l don’t live in fear and hatred of others because I know that, for the most part, we’re all in the same boat.
The existence of mutants would change all of that, but the X-Men books are determined to approach anti-mutant sentiment as pure ignorance and bigotry 100% of the time. No creator is willing to even entertain the idea that the ordinary humans might actually have a point. You know, after they plopped down good money on a top of the line home security system and then got robbed blind by some phase-shifting mutant a week later. They’re just being ignorant and irrational!
No, we need to trust Xavier. He’s the Martin Luther King Jr. of mutants, so we’re told. Even though I don’t recall King spending the better part of his life trying to conceal the fact that he was black, but never mind. Let’s listen to the mind reader who hid the fact that he was a mutant for years and now asks us to trust him. Oh, and pay no mind to that doohickey he has in the basement. I know cellphone and email hacking has become a growing concern over the years, but let’s not
all freak out about the global mind-browser Xavier built quite on purpose. Nothing to worry about there.
halapeno – Yes, yes to this. Also, the biggest head-scratcher for me in recent years is why the books operated under the assumption that restoring the mutant “race” was such an imperative, when according to the logic of the books the mutants are just humans with special powers. And when mutants were restored, most of the mutants weren’t actually that happy to be made mutants, seeing as how their lives were ruined and many of them were given a life-changing deformity. “Thanks, Cylcops, for fighting for the mutants, now I’m a giant lobster man. Thank you so much.”
Lol, yeah. Reminds me of the Matrix films.
“Rejoice, we’ve freed you from captivity!”
“Oh, thank you very much. So, instead of living a comfortable simulated existence where I was blissfully oblivious to the fact that none of it was actually real, now I get to live a bleak, post-apocalyptic existence in an underground shithole. Could you plug me back in, please?”