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

[Kusanagi]

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.

While I agree in general, Operation Zero Tolerance might be a bad example. Since weren't the majority of Avengers and other big names 'dead' at the time post Onslaught, and Operation: Zero Tolerance spun out of the belief that the X-Men were responsible for the previous event?

[Huntsman Spider]

While I agree in general, Operation Zero Tolerance might be a bad example. Since weren't the majority of Avengers and other big names 'dead' at the time post Onslaught, and Operation: Zero Tolerance spun out of the belief that the X-Men were responsible for the previous event?

Pretty much, yeah.

[pkingdom]

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

There is a bit of 'have your cake and eat it too' with this. Mutants are the next stage of humanity by being better in every way (according to people like Xavier and Magneto) but are also poor, downtrodden victims wiped out at the whim of humanity. Huh?

I think we've talked about it here and on other boards, but the huge variance between mutants hurts the metaphor. You have guys who look like supermodels with fantastic powers who often make dramatic speeches about their superiority. And then there are people who's mutation is 'looks like a fly' or that poor guy who's stomach was replaced with slugs.

[pkingdom]

While I agree in general, Operation Zero Tolerance might be a bad example. Since weren't the majority of Avengers and other big names 'dead' at the time post Onslaught, and Operation: Zero Tolerance spun out of the belief that the X-Men were responsible for the previous event?

I have no idea about any of this and I'm morbidly curious. Can you explain a bit?

[Kusanagi]

I have no idea about any of this and I'm morbidly curious. Can you explain a bit?

Very brief, Onslaught was the big 90s mega event. It spun out of Fatal Attractions where Xavier mind wiped Magneto, Onslaught was something of a psychic manifestation of the two of them. It's a massive crossover, Onslaught attacks New York with Sentinels, kidnaps and takes the power of Franklin Richards. Every hero gets involved. In the end The Avengers, Fantastic Four, and several other non mutant heroes (for plot reasons) sacrifice themselves to stop him. The X-men are left standing the only survivors and it looks to the uninformed they deliberately turned on the heroes at the end. This eventually leads to Operation Zero Tolerance.

[Huntsman Spider]

Very brief, Onslaught was the big 90s mega event. It spun out of Fatal Attractions where Xavier mind wiped Magneto, Onslaught was something of a psychic manifestation of the two of them. It's a massive crossover, Onslaught attacks New York with Sentinels, kidnaps and takes the power of Franklin Richards. Every hero gets involved. In the end The Avengers, Fantastic Four, and several other non mutant heroes (for plot reasons) sacrifice themselves to stop him. The X-men are left standing the only survivors and it looks to the uninformed they deliberately turned on the heroes at the end. This eventually leads to Operation Zero Tolerance.

Pretty much that, and the notable thing about Operation: Zero Tolerance was that it introduced Bastion, who turned out to be a hybrid Master Mold-Nimrod Sentinel in human form, along with the Prime Sentinels, who were humans outfitted with nanotech that converted them into sleeper agents that could blend in with normal humans and root out mutants that were also passing for normal humans.

[Zelena]

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 still applies today, or at least through 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 it 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.

There is a huge difference between a ennemy that draws attention and make every superhero united and fighting together regardless of their pedigree and a 'civil war' between superhero, mutants and 'humans'. The first one is sending the message: "Ok, we are different but we need to overcome our differences for a greater good and eventually, when we have done it, it has proved that we are not so different." The second, on the other hand, is about: "Whatever the efforts we make, it always ends in a fight." And, lately, we had more of the second than the first.

Marvel has lost something of a soul along the years, the first stories were always optimistic. Now, they are always pessimistic. No, I don't think Marvel will ever make nuanced and balanced stories anymore, the only way the superheroes (mutants or 'humans') are expected to interact with one another is by fighting one another. Another publisher, maybe? (Marvel doesn't certainly work to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, they have traumatized so much X-men readers that these ones have become bloody-thirsty…)

For those who still advocate for an cohabitation, there is still the problem to make it work. In that regard, the existence of Krakoa is quite useful: the mutants who suffer of discrimination have a safe haven to go and the ones who don't want to go to Krakoa still have it as an option. Krakoa is useful to 'humans' in another way: it would be logical that the same rules that apply to 'humans' apply also to mutants but it would be quite expensive to have a special device, for example, for banks to defend against one mutant's powers like Kitty Pryde's. And you have all the powers to consider… There are also the powers you don't know. In the same vein that it's easy to burn a forest with a simple match and matches still aren't forbidden, the simplest thing would be to expect the mutants to play nicely and if they don't, to send them to Krakoa. (After all, they accept everyone as long as they are mutants.) So the humans have no reasons to be against Krakoa. On the contrary… as long as it is seen as a stability factor.

[pkingdom]

The other alternative would be something like, "if your power is ludicrously dangerous and unstable, you get a mutant cure for the sake of everyone, including yourself", or "if you do crime with your mutant power, mutant cure. If you don't use it responsibly, you lose it"

Fanfics go with that all the time. Its actually pretty reasonable, but the X-men have never really proposed anything like that as a compromise, and every time a cure comes up its always a SECRET EVIL GENOCIDE PLOT!

[Zelena]

The other alternative would be something like, "if your power is ludicrously dangerous and unstable, you get a mutant cure for the sake of everyone, including yourself", or "if you do crime with your mutant power, mutant cure. If you don't use it responsibly, you lose it"

Fanfics go with that all the time. Its actually pretty reasonable, but the X-men have never really proposed anything like that as a compromise, and every time a cure comes up its always a SECRET EVIL GENOCIDE PLOT!

Fanfic stories are usually about interpersonal relationships, the relationship between the 'humans' and the mutants is often important but rarely the main subject. So the author has to make it work and it must look plausible. It also rarely goes without friction.
Marvel seems have lost this appeal to character development: less spectacular, it requires also a writer with a encyclopedic knowledge of all the characters and their stories. I liked the way Claremont knew how to balance action sequences and moments that were more intimist in a way that was fluid and natural.
You can also send the mutants in space or universe where the human-mutant relationship is irrelevant because there is no one that is human other than the mutants. There are ways to ease the tension… Marvel just uses the easy path.

[Electricmastro]

Marvel has lost something of a soul along the years, the first stories were always optimistic. Now, they are always pessimistic.

That reminds me of something. I was reading Stan Lee's Soapboxes recently and one of his statements that particularly stuck out to me was one he made for February, 1977:



And that made me consciously realize how even though this is coming from the same person who wrote the X-Men in socially-conscious stories, this is also coming from the same person who had the X-Men fight carnies and helped create Paste-Pot Pete, because indeed, no matter how political or social the X-Men get, it should never lose that fun, positive sort of feeling overall, and I personally think that's a big reason why the X-Men feels less appealing to me now despite Hickman and the others' writing being very dramatic and well-constructed, and reasonably I’m sure, somehow I don't think I'm alone on that. I think that can key into what you said about present stories feeling more pessimistic than optimistic, losing something of a soul, and perhaps its sanity, in the process. Even now, I also recall Chris Claremont on the Epic Marvel podcast saying how fun it was writing for the X-Men, because in spite of writing the relatively more dreary Days of Future Past and God Loves Man Kills, he also wrote stories focusing on Kitty telling fairy tales and Nightcrawler riding around with a queen in a dune buggy. I suppose X-Men is at it's best, not when it's simply socially-aware, as important as that can be, but when it consistently gives off a variety of well-written themes and feelings in a way that feels positively satisfying when all is said and done.

[pkingdom]

They've been dominated by these dramatic, dour stories for years. We just don't get silly, goofy X stories like you see in Squirrel Girl or Moon Girl, or even Ms. Marvel. She had a short arc where Shocker built a Rube Goldberg house and accidentally made a black hole. It balanced the character frustrations with Loony Toons esque slapstick. I only see that kind of thing from X men when they guest star in other peoples' books. Well, maybe in the excellent Domino series, and some in ANW or X-23. But the main team books have been misery porn. Unless I'm missing something?

[adamTPTK]

Considering mutants can be of any origin, class, gender, country, etc, insisting they strictly minority metaphor is pretty narrow. You have actual minorities to be themselves in this age.
Mutants work best as exploration of human/posthuman conditions. It can have elements of minority experience too for those interested, but never limited to it.

[Mister Mets]

This is an interesting question, as there are changes to the metaphor and to how we perceive civil rights.

The biggest thing Hickman did is establish that mutants as a whole no longer want to be assimilated. It's no longer about people who want to be equal, but about people who see themselves as superior (in this case they have the special abilities to back it up) which changes the civil rights metaphor in interesting ways. It's closer to silicon valley billionaires than existing minority groups.

The inevitable arrival of mutants to the MCU is going to have to address what it means for the mutants to be emerging in a world where they haven't really been mentioned. This could change the metaphor from a persecuted group that has been around for a while to groups that have seemingly emerged recently (IE- people who identify as non-binary or asexual.)

[Electricmastro]

They've been dominated by these dramatic, dour stories for years. We just don't get silly, goofy X stories like you see in Squirrel Girl or Moon Girl, or even Ms. Marvel. She had a short arc where Shocker built a Rube Goldberg house and accidentally made a black hole. It balanced the character frustrations with Loony Toons esque slapstick. I only see that kind of thing from X men when they guest star in other peoples' books. Well, maybe in the excellent Domino series, and some in ANW or X-23. But the main team books have been misery porn. Unless I'm missing something?

I really don’t think a series always has to be exactly one way or the other in being either comedic or dramatic, even when it comes to superhero series with socially-conscious/“worldly hateful and fearful” aspects like X-Men.

Stan Lee’s Amazing Spider-Man was arguably Marvel’s most harmonious balance in having comedic stories, dramatic stories, or a mix of both in the same story, and while the Amazing Spider-Man isn’t the same as the X-Men, I get the feeling X-Men could still greatly benefit from having more variety in themes and tones, as opposed having overly cynical, dreary, and dystopian tones dominate above all else, which I imagine some would conclude the series had come to for a long time.

[Zelena]

They've been dominated by these dramatic, dour stories for years. We just don't get silly, goofy X stories like you see in Squirrel Girl or Moon Girl, or even Ms. Marvel. She had a short arc where Shocker built a Rube Goldberg house and accidentally made a black hole. It balanced the character frustrations with Loony Toons esque slapstick. I only see that kind of thing from X men when they guest star in other peoples' books. Well, maybe in the excellent Domino series, and some in ANW or X-23. But the main team books have been misery porn. Unless I'm missing something?

Even with Claremont, things weren't that rosy, dramatic events happened, people died in gruesome ways, it's just that at the end of the issue, there was always some hope that things will get better and, above all, there wasn't this separation between mutants and non-mutants. Surely mutants were discriminated — sometimes — but they didn't consider themselves as non-human. The mutants shared everything what make the humans human — good and bad.

Discrimination is a human thing… and humanity shouldn't be, of course, proud of that. Among other things. When I read history books and newspapers, I wonder how some people can have done these things. But these 'monsters' belong to the same species as me. It makes me think. When I read Claremont's stories, I knew that what they felt, they victories, their failures could be also mine. The X-men have tried along the years to be a part of humanity, but from a reader's point of view — a insider's point of view — there never has been any doubt about that.

Now, Marvel has invented a new kind of human: a one that X-men readers can distance themselves from. They read X-men stories from a mutant point of view, they identify themselves to them. Yet these mutants, now, dismiss their humanity. What are the humans so mean? The answer is easy: they are human. No need to look further and it doesn't matter that mutants have done terrible things too. And the inference is: "We are not like them, we are better!"