How should X-Men reflect the bigotry of modern times?

[KangMiRae]

The X-Men should be an allegory for the persecution people who pour milk first then cereal get.

[salarta]

A writer's imagination has limits. Marvel's writers by and large have been the privileged class. I'm not knocking them for that, but the simple reality is real life experience trumps imagination and objective empathy every time.

I wasn't alive when my uncle was killed by violent racists. It's a story that I've heard from my mother, aunts and uncles. But the person who told it best was my grandfather...because he was the one who stayed up all day and all night for two days straight searching the countryside looking for his eight year old son. And he was the one who eventually found the body, the child's skull bashed in, the rope still around his neck, the body bloated from being left in the nearby watering hole. The best storytellers are those who lived it.

But Marvel writers can't bear all of the blame. Time makes us all much more thick-skinned about the pains that previous generations endured. And the hubris of younger generations is such that people often believe that they would have done something differently, forgetting that the human condition hasn't evolved as much as they'd like to believe. It's difficult for writers to re-create a convincing atmosphere and environment of oppression and persecution when the readers' minds are closed to it for whatever reason.

Agreed with all of this. Passage of time washes away the perceived seriousness of these matters, which is why it's gotten easier for Nazis to recruit as the generation that suffered from their evil or had to fight them in World War II passes away to leave only secondhand memories.

And the "would've done something different" crowd falls into the same egotistical self-perceptions as people who think, in a shooting incident, they would run in or whip out a gun and save the day. Nobody's ever going to truly know how they will react unless it actually happens to them. In sum, I agree with you that it's best to hire people who've experienced these things and can speak to what it's like. Or at the very least, getting people who've been through these things as consultants.

[Magnusilver]

The minorities parallel of X-men Franchise are way too behind time to a point that It's better to drop it than have it now. The entire franchise was looping around extinction story line for more than a decade before Hickman takes over and finally bring something new to it.

[Killerbee911]

The minorities parallel of X-men Franchise are way too behind time to a point that It's better to drop it than have it now. The entire franchise was looping around extinction story line for more than a decade before Hickman takes over and finally bring something new to it.

I mean it is core part of the X-men it can't be dropped,What can happen though is strong reminder that the X-men are heroes. I would mind 5 or 6 year stretch of them pushing the hell out of the X-men being pure superheroes.

[Magnusilver]

I mean it is core part of the X-men it can't be dropped,What can happen though is strong reminder that the X-men are heroes. I would mind 5 or 6 year stretch of them pushing the hell out of the X-men being pure superheroes.

I agree. The X-men need to be heroes again. Hopefully they won't fall back to the edge of extinction after Hickman leaves.

[Electricmastro]

I agree. The X-men need to be heroes again. Hopefully they won't fall back to the edge of extinction after Hickman leaves.

I imagine there isn't as much rooting for the X-Men to be superheroes and save people when 99% of people are be jerknozzles to them, even to the point of being destructive.

[Killerbee911]

I imagine there isn't as much rooting for the X-Men to be superheroes and save people when 99% of people are be jerknozzles to them, even to the point of being destructive.

Which is the X-men. And to paraphrasing Jean Grey in X-men Red "The X-men will save you anyway"

[Frobisher]

I think the mutants only really feel like an ethnic group when robots/pseudo-klansmen are trying to kill them. Most of the time, the youth sub-culture/generational metaphor is stronger, where they have different values from their parents and just want to prove themselves. I guess this is what Hickman is trying to address with the mutant language.

[JKtheMac]

Modern day bigotry utilizes gaslighting, misinformation, little tricks to foster and reward in-group behavior, love-bombing, brigading (often paired with bots), and a whole host of other similar tactics. Plus sometimes exploiting loopholes in laws that government hasn't reached yet, such as SWATting and doxxing. Any true modern day approach to X-Men dealing with bigotry would involve dealing with these matters. They're all either psychological ploys or are intended to cause psychological harm on targets.

Marvel and the X-Men office would never pursue this, though. It would be too risky for the company and for employees personally. We've seen what bigots will do just when they don't like diverse characters in comics. Imagine how far they'd go if their tactics were getting eviscerated and revealed for what they are as a regular feature of the comics.

They haven’t harmed comics, and some of them are victims of these kinds of tactics themselves. Geek culture is easy to manipulate, and big data is the tool. People say ‘I can’t be swayed, these are my own ideas’ and then preceded to espouse ideas they don’t even fully grasp.

The challenge to writing this kind of story isn’t the opponents of the stories, the challenge is making it an enjoyable story about mutants. X-Men Red tried and failed to tell a version of this story.

[JKtheMac]

I think the mutants only really feel like an ethnic group when robots/pseudo-klansmen are trying to kill them. Most of the time, the youth sub-culture/generational metaphor is stronger, where they have different values from their parents and just want to prove themselves. I guess this is what Hickman is trying to address with the mutant language.

Absolutely. This is a key part of the nebulous thing that is the Mutant Metaphor. This is why people read derivative works at places like Image and say ‘this was X-Men done right’. If you focus in on teenagers it all becomes so much clearer. This is why school titles so often work. It’s why Morrison worked. Mutant powers are such a good analogy to the profound changes we go though as we approach adulthood.

However, we live in a world where small countries were used as experiments to see if the youth could be manipulated to not vote. Youth culture itself is a construct built in the middle of the twentieth century. There are so many stories in there waiting to emerge.

[salarta]

They haven’t harmed comics, and some of them are victims of these kinds of tactics themselves. Geek culture is easy to manipulate, and big data is the tool. People say ‘I can’t be swayed, these are my own ideas’ and then preceded to espouse ideas they don’t even fully grasp.

The challenge to writing this kind of story isn’t the opponents of the stories, the challenge is making it an enjoyable story about mutants. X-Men Red tried and failed to tell a version of this story.

Considering what I've seen, I have to disagree on where the main challenge lies. Not that making it an enjoyable story isn't a challenge, but that its challenge isn't as great as standing up to bad actors.

[dkrook]

Considering what I've seen, I have to disagree on where the main challenge lies. Not that making it an enjoyable story isn't a challenge, but that its challenge isn't as great as standing up to bad actors.

Agreed, more to that point. I think a good writer could stay with the race analogy. Let's just look at what race means to our society. Race right now occupies that position of America's "other" , in a dark, sinister type of way. Now this is beside the fact we live next to it, work with it, and interact with it everyday. Race inhabits a place of deep-seated fear in many Americans that takes them to dark places of thought the surpasses the bounds of reason. So many relevant stories to be told but most writers lack vision and boldness to write

[JKtheMac]

Considering what I've seen, I have to disagree on where the main challenge lies. Not that making it an enjoyable story isn't a challenge, but that its challenge isn't as great as standing up to bad actors.

Comics do not have a responsibility to react to idiots. That’s a social issue and we as individuals have to deal with that.

[Electricmastro]

I already answered this in Electricmastro's version of this thread but the books should focus on superheroics but include stories with mutants harassing humans and vice versa once in a while.

As well as more complexities in how humans and mutants view and interact with each other in general. I'm reminded of this moment from Uncanny X-Men #196 (1985) in particular:

[Marvell2100]

I'll just repeat what I said elsewhere:

I've come to the conclusion that the mutants are as feared as much as they are in the Marvel Universe because the writers are writing them like they're still in the 1960s, if not, in a more backwards time, all while the Fantastic Four and other mutate superheroes are relatively treated less harshly despite also having supernatural powers like the mutants do.

I think the human/mutant relations is portrayed as a little too backwards/non-progressive, perhaps more than it should. I realize the X-Men were created to serve as a parallel to the Civil Rights Movement and persecuted minorities in 1963, but on the other hand, we're not in 1963 anymore and, at the very least, I think it's reasonable enough to say that the world in 2019 isn't quite the same as it was in 1963.

Yes, there's still hatred in 2019. Yes, there's still racism in 2019. Yes, there's still scapegoating of groups of various backgrounds to the point of suffering in 2019. I'm not denying any of that. At the same time though, considering how there are quite a few successful celebrities of minority backgrounds, such as black actors, black athletes, black comedians, black musicians that are popular and respected by the public by and large, which are situations that can also help spread a message of equality to them, as well as there being numerous black politicians, and America in 2019 just being in a distinctly different place than how it was in 1963, all aspects considered overall and kept in mind, then I'd like to see a shake-up in the human/mutant dynamic in the series.

I'm definitely not saying to get rid of the minority persecution aspect of the series, as black celebrities don't always have it peachy keen either. I guess I just think that having a more "human-embracing" aspect towards mutants in addition would make for a more interesting shake-up in the current status quo, which at many times can seem to pigeonhole mutants as seemingly being only destined to suffer. As well as it how it help the series be more interestingly progressive rather than uninterestingly (and perhaps over-depressingly) regressive. The human vs. mutants relation just ends up seeming more like a demon hunters vs. demons relation, resulting in more of a commentary of religion rather than other aspects such as race, despite many writers' intentions.

I like this post.

The problem with the X-Men is like someone said, not enough diversity in a comic that is supposed to promote diversity. Pretty much the same line-up for last 30 plus years.

Also, there is no balance. It seems every human on the planet hates mutants. Where are the human friends and supporters? There used to be human friends and supporters in the X-Men.

Now the X-Men are about mutants, all the humans who hate them and the robot they build to kill them. No tolerance.