How much has the X-Men as a reflection of real life minorities changed overtime?

[Electricmastro]

They are no different than the Hulk, Thor, Inhumans, Eternals or anyone else with powers.

And that's interesting, because in regards to Amazing Spider-Man #282 (1986), there's a scene in which X-Factor is talking with Cameron Hodge on the subject of J. Jonah Jameson wanting them to capture Spider-Man, and after they say that Spider-Man isn't a mutant, Hodge then basically says that Spider-Man looks and acts weird to the point that he gives the impression of being a mutant to an average person on the street. This, along with neighbors being reported as mutants, might lead one to think that there would be more scenarios of Spider-Man being accused of being a mutant, but as far as I've observed, and despite how irrational and accusation-heavy fear can get, that didn't really happen that often after this.

[Mia]

It's true that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the X-Men with the intention of addressing the dangers of prejudice, solutions that could be implemented to combat against the misguided fear that fuels it, and how this can reflect the experiences minorities face in real life. That said, to claim that all of the writers that have written for the X-Men, from Stan Lee, to Roy Thomas, to Chris Claremont, to Scott Lobdell, to Chuck Austen, to Ed Brubaker, to Matt Fraction, and beyond have all written with the exact same approach would probably be a tad bit unrealistic, including in regards to the prejudice-addressing aspect of the X-Men. So, for those of you that feel similarly, how would you say that this aspect of the X-Men has morphed and changed with how it has been approached throughout the 55+ years of the X-Men's published existence?

When I started reading the X-Men in the mid 90's and some of Claremont's old stuff. It was about wanting a seat at the table and showing the world that minorities have just as much to offer the world and want to be able to contribute as well. The X-Men, mostly who are based on the Jewish people, wanted to be part of society, but they certainly did not allow their enemies to define them. Now it's the exact opposite. Now it seems about victim mentality and entitlement.

[BroHomo]

The X-Men, mostly who are based on the Jewish people.

???
Ohhh reeeeeeally
Evidence....

Now it's the exact opposite. Now it seems about victim mentality and entitlement.

Double ???
Um do you have examples.....

[pkingdom]

When I started reading the X-Men in the mid 90's and some of Claremont's old stuff. It was about wanting a seat at the table and showing the world that minorities have just as much to offer the world and want to be able to contribute as well. The X-Men, mostly who are based on the Jewish people, wanted to be part of society, but they certainly did not allow their enemies to define them. Now it's the exact opposite. Now it seems about victim mentality and entitlement.

They're kind of allowing their enemies to define them twice over now. They're (or at least Xavier, Magneto and Apocalypse are) acting like Trask always stated they were going too. And they're putting their villains largely in charge of how Krakoa is being run. So in a way, their enemies are defining mutantkind on both fronts

[BroHomo]

They're kind of allowing their enemies to define them twice over now. They're (or at least Xavier, Magneto and Apocalypse are) acting like Trask always stated they were going too.

I must've missed the issue this prediction came true...

I bet Xavier, Magneto, and ∆ looked cute in their matching vests

[Electricmastro]

Of particular note, in Daredevils #9 (September, 1983), politician Jim Jaspers denounces superheroes, not simply mutants, but superheroes in general as monsters that threaten freedom, who must be contained, and who must be suppressed. Alan Moore planted this seed which could have caused more ripples throughout the Marvel Universe, but while the X-Men went through tragedies such as X-tinction Agenda and Operation: Zero Tolerance, the mutates seemed to have been left pretty much unaffected, unless one counts Civil War as discrimination against superheroes in general.

[RachelGrey]

In Rachel's 811 world after the X-Men were either killed, rounded up to concentration camps, or escaped to the resistance. The next stage was the elimination of all super powered beings and the Fantastic Four and Avengers were hunted down and killed. After that they hunted down any hero or villain with powers and either killed them or put them in the concentration camps for experimentation, or conversion to hounds to be used to track other super powered beings and mutants.

I think super powered members of the Avengers and FF are not the objective of Homo Novissima, Homo Novissima wants to merge human and technology together with the intention of ascending to become part of the Phalanx and then from there part of a machine Dominion. The people who fit this are Iron Man, Ant Man, Vision, Viv, War Machine, etc... Anyone who merges machine and man as part of their attempts to advance themselves beyond normal humans. Or machines with artificial intelligence.

Susan, Reed, Johnny, and Ben are all people who have modified DNA, and every one of them has a very high chance of having mutant offspring because of it. Because of this all four of them would be labelled as abnormal humans with risk of mutant offspring and they would be targeted for extermination because they are "impure" and would corrupt the ascendancy of the human/machine hierarchy!

Even Captain America would have a high risk factor of mutant children because of the super soldier serum and would be marked for extermination, and he was exterminated in Rachel's 811 world by the human/machine ascendancy!

[Su_Whisterfield]

Of particular note, in Daredevils #9 (September, 1983), politician Jim Jaspers denounces superheroes, not simply mutants, but superheroes in general as monsters that threaten freedom, who must be contained, and who must be suppressed. Alan Moore planted this seed which could have caused more ripples throughout the Marvel Universe, but while the X-Men went through tragedies such as X-tinction Agenda and Operation: Zero Tolerance, the mutates seemed to have been left pretty much unaffected, unless one counts Civil War as discrimination against superheroes in general.

Oh, I still have that comic, somewhere, Jaspers makes some of the current MPs look positively sane. Very much a Moore comic, you can see lots of seeds of Marvelman/Miracleman in his CB.

[Zelena]

Of particular note, in Daredevils #9 (September, 1983), politician Jim Jaspers denounces superheroes, not simply mutants, but superheroes in general as monsters that threaten freedom, who must be contained, and who must be suppressed. Alan Moore planted this seed which could have caused more ripples throughout the Marvel Universe, but while the X-Men went through tragedies such as X-tinction Agenda and Operation: Zero Tolerance, the mutates seemed to have been left pretty much unaffected, unless one counts Civil War as discrimination against superheroes in general.

It would be interesting to see the observations made by Jaspers adressed without them being clouded the discrimination rhetoric: how do you protect banks from people who can go through walls, economic or sensitive secrets from people who can read minds and so on… the list of problem super-powers pose seems endless. As long as these people play nicely, of course, there is no problem and if there's a problem, you can say there is discrimination because they have done nothing wrong. But according to what I've seen since I started to read comics, mutants are neither better or worse than the average human. It's fundamentally a political problem. (I suppose you can always say, if you are not nice, exile to Krakoa).
But, the same kind of question can be raised on Krakoa: so what? because you are among your peers, you will be necessarily be a model citizen, what prevents mutants to be mind-controlled by a being powerful enough to do that?
I found the problem posed by Matthew Malloy interesting because it puts the mutants in the same position the rest of humanity is: what do you do facing someone, not necessarily bad, but powerful enough to wipe you out?
X-men readers read stories from the mutant point of view, it's certainly interesting to see the other side but it is rarely done (once I read a comics whose main character was a simple cop in New York where super-heroes came and left…)

[Electricmastro]

Oh, I still have that comic, somewhere, Jaspers makes some of the current MPs look positively sane. Very much a Moore comic, you can see lots of seeds of Marvelman/Miracleman in his CB.

I'm personally not a fan of Alan Moore's material as I felt it can get too far into dark and dreary territory for my tastes, but despite that, I definitely still respect how in-depth, profound, and just all around well-constructed his material can get as well.

[BroHomo]

It would be interesting to see the observations made by Jaspers adressed without them being clouded the discrimination rhetoric: how do you protect banks from people who can go through walls, economic or sensitive secrets from people who can read minds and so on… the list of problem super-powers pose seems endless. As long as these people play nicely, of course, there is no problem and if there's a problem, you can say there is discrimination because they have done nothing wrong. But according to what I've seen since I started to read comics, mutants are neither better or worse than the average human. It's fundamentally a political problem. (I suppose you can always say, if you are not nice, exile to Krakoa).
But, the same kind of question can be raised on Krakoa: so what? because you are among your peers, you will be necessarily be a model citizen, what prevents mutants to be mind-controlled by a being powerful enough to do that?
I found the problem posed by Matthew Malloy interesting because it puts the mutants in the same position the rest of humanity is: what do you do facing someone, not necessarily bad, but powerful enough to wipe you out?
X-men readers read stories from the mutant point of view, it's certainly interesting to see the other side but it is rarely done (once I read a comics whose main character was a simple cop in New York where super-heroes came and left…)

Ehhhhh the "solutions" always just seem a liiil close to Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron and thats super icky to me

Oh, I still have that comic, somewhere, Jaspers makes some of the current MPs look positively sane. Very much a Moore comic, you can see lots of seeds of Marvelman/Miracleman in his CB.

Gah!! I lOOOOOve MiracleMan

[Su_Whisterfield]

I'm personally not a fan of Alan Moore's material as I felt it can get too far into dark and dreary territory for my tastes, but despite that, I definitely still respect how in-depth, profound, and just all around well-constructed his material can get as well.

And utterly unique and groundbreaking at the time.
Saw him at my second convention in ‘81, he was on stage at a SF con in Cardiff and talking Marvelman (and Marveldog. And Marvelhamster, don’t go there). But he’d had a dodgy curry the night before and had to dash off stage to the loo twice. But he soldiered on.

[Electricmastro]

It would be interesting to see the observations made by Jaspers adressed without them being clouded the discrimination rhetoric: how do you protect banks from people who can go through walls, economic or sensitive secrets from people who can read minds and so on… the list of problem super-powers pose seems endless. As long as these people play nicely, of course, there is no problem and if there's a problem, you can say there is discrimination because they have done nothing wrong. But according to what I've seen since I started to read comics, mutants are neither better or worse than the average human. It's fundamentally a political problem. (I suppose you can always say, if you are not nice, exile to Krakoa).
But, the same kind of question can be raised on Krakoa: so what? because you are among your peers, you will be necessarily be a model citizen, what prevents mutants to be mind-controlled by a being powerful enough to do that?
I found the problem posed by Matthew Malloy interesting because it puts the mutants in the same position the rest of humanity is: what do you do facing someone, not necessarily bad, but powerful enough to wipe you out?
X-men readers read stories from the mutant point of view, it's certainly interesting to see the other side but it is rarely done (once I read a comics whose main character was a simple cop in New York where super-heroes came and left…)

I'm sure it's possible to be well-intentioned and responsibly considerate towards the well-being of the population at large while keeping mutants, or just superheroes in general, in proper check, but I think the main thing about it is that, regardless of how often and how in-depth the X-Men gets about social issues, the one aspect that can never be completely be dissociated with it is it being a superhero book. I think it's reasonable enough to say that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby intended for the X-Men to be a fun superhero book first and foremost, with anti-mutant crowds and the Sentinels as well, but not in a way that it becomes primarily a social-addressing book above being a superhero book. I think that the X-Men being a superhero book still applies today, or at least through widespread expectation, and by virtue of it primarily being a superhero book it, perhaps inevitably, lends itself to all sorts of big and outrageous scenarios, which I think is how many writers have approached the X-Men series even at the risk losing nuance and being oversimplified.

So yes, I'm sure what you bring up in regards to protecting banks from people who can go through walls or sensitive secrets from people who can read minds is an innocent enough question to ask in of itself, and that there's a good time and place in comics for a critically in-depth analysis of a complex situation that is human/mutant relations, which I'm sure can believably be shown to have its nuances through such an analysis when the writers approach it that way. But that's probably not the most appealing approach in terms of Marvel's overall point of view in wanting to make as much profit from their books as possible, as businesses usually do. From what I've observed, Marvel won't hesitate to put out story arcs or events that are as big, bombastic, or attention-seeking as much as they can get away with if it means drawing in more readers to buy their stuff, with storylines such as X-Tinction Agenda coming out in the early 1990s, which is arguably when Marvel really started to ramp up in its crossovers, collector gimmicks, and focusing more on style over substance, to the point of pushing aside any potential nuance for the more extreme.

True, we're not in the 1990s anymore, but Marvel's desire to make money from their comics any way they can surely hasn't significantly dropped down, and perhaps with the perception of superhero books needing a more dangerous enemy to fight against so as to draw more attention and result in more profit, they certainly won't hesitate to use the most outrageous villains with the most extremely malicious goals as a means to achieve that, be it a Hitler zombie, the KKK, or a corrupt politician enforcing mutant slavery, mutant genocide, or any other anti-mutant law that results in very shocking atrocities, which is how I think the scenario usually ends up playing out when any politician in the Marvel Universe shows even the smallest concern in regards to how dangerous mutants/heroes can get, because those sorts of concepts are attention-grabbing, big, physical threats for the heroes to smash down on and readers to immediately cheer at.

[davetvs]

Agree the metaphor was fine but we are not in the 80s anymore. If you want to tell stories about oppression and homophobia them use gay characters and real minorities. The dissonance of the mutants between “ we are superior species “ and “ we are poor oppressed people” drags things down

I agree with the first part, not the second. Look at Black Americans for example, considered in the national consciousness to be "better" at sports, dancing, music, and generally cooler + hipper but still oppressed.

[Huntsman Spider]

I agree with the first part, not the second. Look at Black Americans for example, considered in the national consciousness to be "better" at sports, dancing, music, and generally cooler + hipper but still oppressed.

That actually underscores the point. Physical superiority doesn't mean a damned thing if society's institutions are all arrayed against you and yours. That's what mutants have had to deal with in the Marvel Universe; while they might have incredible (and incredibly dangerous) abilities that humans generally don't possess, what humans have in their favor is a society with institutions designed to serve their interests first and foremost, meaning any real or perceived threat to said interests is going to be neutralized however, whenever, and wherever possible.