The recent behavior of the X-Men: right or wrong?

[Londo Bellian]

The "Secret Crisis" teased in "Doomsday Clock" #12 can't come fast enough. Real superhero...

[king of hybrids]

I’m pretty sure the Avengers doing sweet F all about Genosha was one of the JL’s list of grievances last time they tangled with them. A line-wise crossover would probably involve Spectre frying certain Avengers and the DC heroes offering to transplant Krakoa to their earth

[AbnormallyNormal]

What this runs is about exactly, I wonder… I hope it's more than Hickman saying "Look, people, how much I'm clever…" He certainly doesn't make a proposition that is very uplifting… everyone can be saved providing they found an island and they gather the power to defend themselves.
Well, it is more or less the world where we are living and this fiction doesn't offer anything better than nations looking at each other with distrust and resent. Right, X-men was for me about something else. Ugliness and horror exist in our world but it shouldn't make us forget that the world isn't made only of that. The mutants look after their own, fine for them. So what? It's not an exemple of generosity and heroism.

Generosity = drugs

Heroism = protecting and fighting for one another (also in the case of New Mutants, helping out aliens)

I agree the themes/messaging of Dawn of X are indeed clashing to a degree with the traditional X-Men ones involving pure integration/assimilation/tolerance/"We can all live together in harmony, only evildoers should be fought whether they be human or mutant". But that's because this is a more REALISTIC and hence INTERESTING take on the issues involving mutant-human dynamics. Like I said initially this is closer to a sociological/anthropological study than it is a typical "Good Dudes Dressing In Colored Suits Beating On Baddies" thing. There are PLENTY of those out there if you truly need to read them

[RachelGrey]

Expected response being, "IT'S NOT A SUPERHERO STORY! IT HASN'T BEEN FOR YEARS! DO WE NEED TO PUT AN R-RATING ON THE COVER FOR YOU, BRAT? This is why we should ban clear-cut heroes and villains in fiction and teach from an early age that there are no black and white, only gray."

But that's just it, there are books written for young readers in comics right now. Squirrel Girl, Ms Marvel, and in DC we have Far Sector about a young teenage green lantern. There are comics that are directed at younger readers.

This isn't just about readers, this about finding creative writers who want to challenge the story and move it forward. Heroes grow up, they become adults, they get married, they have children, they have to deal with real world issues of racism, misogyny, homophobia, religious persecution, and other forms of bigotry that is entrenched in modern society.

The readers who originally read Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman all grew up into adults, but part from nostalgia and part from just loving the characters they wanted the stories to grow up with them. Many gifted writers came on and were recruited to write for comics, some of them novel or screen writers who want to try the comic medium out for a while. (i.e. Ta-Nehisi Coates, JJ Abrams, Joss Whedon, Neil Gamon) No one can argue that Neil Gamon's Sandman, Death, and other series were directed at adults. No one can argue that Wolverine is more or less a comic character that isn't really for children, and that the X-Men became a lot more complex and adult focused when Claremont was writing. Chris Claremont infused the X-Men with a level of sex and violence, and pushed the limits of the comic code authority to the max. If he had been a little more blatant while he was writing they would have had to move the X-Men to Marvel Max because Claremont pushed the standards. Many writers did over the years and the stories became more complex and less archetypical. By the 1990's Emma Frost wasn't a villain anymore, she was an anti-hero who wanted to protect her students and was willing to use any means to do so. She had become a female version of Wolverine who used her cunning and wiles to protect her students from the rising racism in the Marvel Earth! Magneto went from being a 1 dimensional villain, to becoming a compelling anti-hero and guerrilla freedom fighter who resorted to terrorism to fight against the entrenched racism of the humans.

So many characters changed over the years. Tony Stark became an alcoholic, Carol Danvers was kidnapped and raped, Carol Danvers had her memories forcibly removed from her, and Rogue who did that was horrified by her own actions in that incident and reformed herself to become a hero because of it.

Under Claremont the Reavers tried to crucify the remaining X-Men in Australia, and they actually did crucify Logan, and this was written in the 1990's X-Men book.

I am sorry, a character being crucified in a comic is not a comic that is directed at children, and that was almost 30 years ago.

Superman who is the epitome of the pure and noble hero, his comic is not directed at children these days. They try to have a more hopeful theme in the comic, but Clark Kent is an adult, he's married, he has a child. His comic just went through a recent run dealing with a genocidal maniac who wanted to purge the universe of Kryptonians.

The X-Men were only archetypical superheroes in the 1960's. When Claremont took over and after Giant Size X-Men, the themes of the X-Men became much deeper and adult. Suddenly these weren't teenage characters, they were adults, doing adult things. Storm, Kurt, Logan, and Piotr were all over 20 and they had lived lives of hardship, they were experienced as individual super powered individuals, and they had to overcome personality differences to work as a team. They weren't children learning to fight, they were adults learning to fight as a unit.

Heck, they had a very limited student body until much later, and when Emma and Scott were running the school together that is when they emphasized that it was a full blown school with a large student body. Just compare Emma's original Massachusets Academy to the Xavier Institute. Emma had a mix of human and mutant students at her school, and the mutants were being trained in the underground facility beneath the school. The Xavier Institute maybe had 20 students only, and they were all mutants like the New Mutants Roberto, Sam, Dani, Xi'an, Illyana, Rahne, Doug, Kitty, etc.. When Emma reformed and merged her operations with Xavier, even she went to just having a limited student body at her school with no human students anymore. Because people now knew that Emma was openly allowing mutants at the Massachusets Academy, and they didn't want to send their human kids there, so it was just Sean and Emma teaching the younger kids to be a team together.

The X-Men isn't really a superhero story, it hasn't been since Giant Size X-Men, the X-Men is the story of the mutants in the 616 Marvel Earth and how they have struggled to be free to be themselves and to live in society peacefully. Some mutants became so disillusioned with humanity that they became terrorists, i.e. Amelia Voght, and Marrow. Some mutants preferred to be outright villains like Sabretooth because they get pleasure from hurting people. Some mutants worked as mercenaries, spies, and assassins, selling their services to the highest bidder, like Mystique and her Brotherhood.

I look at the X-Men as a science fiction story, what if we lived in a society where people could be born with super abilities and powers because of a quirk of genetics. What if more and more of these mutants were being born each year, how would the world react, what would the world do. All of the writers of X-Men since Claremont have been trying to answer that question.

If we are going to be purists and say that the X-men shouldn't have changed from how Stan Lee and Jack Kirby interpreted them to be, then that means the X-Men ended in the run in the 1960's and never came back. The pure story as it was originally written had some interesting concepts, but the execution was rather generic storytelling with simple archetype heroes and villains who didn't have any growth.

Even Archie Andrews and Riverdale have changed. Those kids are still in high school, but the owners of the Archie/Sabrina IP have been hiring writers to do mini-series that are much darker and more adult themed. They revamped the entire line a few years ago to make the characters reflect current high school dynamics a lot more than they have in the past. They also changed the art style to be more realistic with the current day comic artists. So even the unchanging Archie Andrews has been revamped to reflect the modern era.

[Londo Bellian]

It's those walls of well-thought out text being thrown back at me that fills me with more despair, and reduces me to snapping at anything and everything.

Yes, no infinite amount of information and reasoning will ever remove this animosity of mine against HoxPoxDox, much less instill in me a fanatical level of support for it barring specific individual titles (that are coming to an end anyway).

I'm sorry; you're trying to do the impossible with me. It's on me.

[RachelGrey]

It's those walls of well-thought out text being thrown back at me that fills me with more despair, and reduces me to snapping at anything and everything.

Yes, no infinite amount of information and reasoning will ever remove this animosity of mine against HoxPoxDox, much less instill in me a fanatical level of support for it barring specific individual titles (that are coming to an end anyway).

I'm sorry; you're trying to do the impossible with me. It's on me.

But that's ok, you want a different type of comic that has more traditional super hero elements. I have Justice League Odyssey and Strikeforce on my pull list. I am not interested in the Year of the Villain stuff, Justice League Odyssey is so far removed from the whole thing, Darkseid actually doesn't want anything to do with "Year of the Villain" at all, but he is the villain of the book, and Jessica Cruz is leading a mishmash team to try and stop him. Strikeforce is a mishmash team of heroes who are trying to stop a remnant evil from War of the Realms from getting a foothold on Earth. Both books are more traditional superhero stories and I don't mind that. They have darker themes, and even some shades of grey in some of the characters, but overall they are a story of superheroes trying to stop a threat of great evil.

It's ok for you to want a more traditional superhero story. The X-Men haven't been that for a long time. The closest we came was X-Men Red in recent history, and even in that book the themes of racism and hate were the thread that drove the entire series to completion.

We want different things, I want the story of the mutants and how they survive in the world that hates and despises them, how they fight against the genocide of their people. I am interested in that story because I find it interesting and compelling, but I also understand that many people don't find that compelling and don't want to read about those themes in comics because they are already tired of that from the real world news. I have always liked fiction that has a more dystopian feel, I guess that is why my favorite characters in comics is Rachel Summers who is the lone survivor of a dystopia!

[The Quiet Councilor]

Expected response being, "IT'S NOT A SUPERHERO STORY! IT HASN'T BEEN FOR YEARS! DO WE NEED TO PUT AN R-RATING ON THE COVER FOR YOU, BRAT? This is why we should ban clear-cut heroes and villains in fiction and teach from an early age that there are no black and white, only gray."

We should ban clear cut heroes and villains in fiction, or rather, I’d like to see creators move away from that paradigm. The world has never been black and white, so perpetuating that perception inevitably does more harm than good. Most of us are a mix of selfless and selfish, and most conflict stems from clashing priorities rather than some grand struggle between good and evil. It’s no accident that Magneto took off as a character once he was fleshed out and made sympathetic. It’s no coincidence that the X-Men took off after those lines were blurred for him and for Jean.

[Vishop_]

Generosity = drugs

Heroism = protecting and fighting for one another (also in the case of New Mutants, helping out aliens)

I agree the themes/messaging of Dawn of X are indeed clashing to a degree with the traditional X-Men ones involving pure integration/assimilation/tolerance/"We can all live together in harmony, only evildoers should be fought whether they be human or mutant". But that's because this is a more REALISTIC and hence INTERESTING take on the issues involving mutant-human dynamics. Like I said initially this is closer to a sociological/anthropological study than it is a typical "Good Dudes Dressing In Colored Suits Beating On Baddies" thing. There are PLENTY of those out there if you truly need to read them

I was just skimming through this thread and then I saw this. How do actually think this is more realistic view? I am curious to know. Care to elaborate.

[RachelGrey]

We should ban clear cut heroes and villains in fiction, or rather, I’d like to see creators move away from that paradigm. The world has never been black and white, so perpetuating that perception inevitably does more harm than good. Most of us are a mix of selfless and selfish, and most conflict stems from clashing priorities rather than some grand struggle between good and evil. It’s no accident that Magneto took off as a character once he was fleshed out and made sympathetic. It’s no coincidence that the X-Men took off after those lines were blurred for him and for Jean.

It does make sense that some stories are like that, because some writers want to tell those stories. That's why we have young adult fiction writers and children's fiction writers. DC is doing a reasonably good job of developing this by doing the young adult novels that are directed at younger readers. They have a whole slate of stories about their characters but written in an AU with different history and backstories, and many of the characters are portrayed younger. There is a market for these kinds of materials, and Marvel has been working on developing the Marvel Rising line (although very slow and disjointed) with Ms Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Ghost Spider, and other younger heroes. This is being directed at a younger audience, primarily girls. They will probably start doing some young reader novels like DC is doing too. Now that they have Disney + there is a good chance that Marvel Rising will end up as an ongoing cartoon series to introduce a younger audience to Marvel characters.

So I don't think traditional Superheroes should be banned, I just think that there are places where they fit better. X-Men have been moving toward being the "story of mutant kind" for years, and Jonathan Hickman has just decided to fully embrace that. Hence the starting point was the amnesty that allowed the villains to come to Krakoa and join the new nation, to have their past crimes forgiven, and be granted a second chance. Some characters are going all in on the new status quo like Apocalypse and Exodus who both want to fully support this nation of mutants, others have a definite malicious intent like Sinister, Sabretooth, and Sebastian Shaw, others have uncertain motives like Mystique, Gorgon, Selene, Emplate where we don't know which direction they are going to go because they haven't been explored yet.

I like the complexity of this, how do these heroes and former villains get along. How soon before some of them come to blows over past grievances, how long can the peace on Krakoa hold before it starts to fall apart. Will we end up with a Krakoan civil war between different factions, or can the Quiet Council hold things together for a while? So many interesting questions and I can't wait to find out what happens next. I love the political themes in this story. Well mutants you finally have your nation you always wanted, but what will you do with it, and will you learn from past mutant mistakes and the mistakes of humanity and succeed where others have failed. Will Moira be proven right and no matter what you do the mutants will always die to the genocide that results from the human/machine ascendancy?

[Wind Rider]

I think it is complicated but ultimately I think the X-Men are right. The focus on the revitalization of their species and human/mutant relations taking a back seat to that is loooonnngg overdue. I’m loving the new direction and I think the human forces that are trying to continue to oppress them should get whats coming to them.

[RachelGrey]

I was just skimming through this thread and then I saw this. How do actually think this is more realistic view? I am curious to know. Care to elaborate.

Because the story has changed, when it was just about "mutant rights" it was possible to live the dream of "We can all live together in harmony, only evildoers should be fought whether they be human or mutant", but over time the story has become a race of refugees fleeing from the human perpetuated genocide. It's no longer possible to live in human society because humans want to purge the Earth of mutants. You can't live every day fearing that the people with the black hoods are going to show up at your home and throw hood over your head and cart you off to the concentration camps. This is why people flee from genocide, you can try and fight it, but if you are vastly outnumbered you need to flee to a "high ground" where you can defend your position. Krakoa is the mutant "high ground" the defensible position from which they can try to fight against the world wide genocide of the mutant race. A lot of people who have fled genocide in their lives can see this, I haven't fled genocide myself but I have great empathy for people who have, and I can understand the appeal of being able to establish a safe nation where you can try to regroup and recover from the genocide.

Technically we have already seen this in the last 100 years of our history. One of the greatest genocides in modern history was the death of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazi forces all across Europe. People fled before this genocide, but they couldn't find succor because a lot of countries would force them back. In many ways the Allied Nations could be considered complicit in this genocide, because even when the Allies were aware of it, we still turned back Jewish refugees knowing they were going to be taken to camps.

After the war, people felt guilty, they saw the pictures of the gas chambers and the concentration camps, and they realized that they had allowed this to happen, they had allowed this tragedy to happen and they didn't do enough to stop it. This is why the gave the territory in Israel to the Jewish people to live in, it was a reparation for the horrendous evil that had been perpetuated against the Jewish people, but it was also to assuage the world wide guilt that people felt that they had allowed the worst genocide of that time to occur and didn't do enough to stop it.

In Marvel Comics the mutants have suffered under the worst genocide in Marvel Earth history. Nearly 20 million mutants dead in the last 30 years. That is a horrifying genocide, and though some super villains were involved in perpetuating this Cassandra Nova and Doom, there were many humans that were willing participants in this genocide and even built the means by which this genocide could be perpetuated (the Sentinel attack on Genosha).

Just recently the US Government controlled O.N.E. was doing experiments with the transmode virus to convert mutants into Sentinel Hounds to hunt, kill, or capture mutants and bring them in for extermination, termination, or force curing. This evil was specifically perpetuated by the US Government, but many other world governments were also peripherally involved and they openly supported this genocide of the mutant race. They had the mutants on the run, it was time to purge the world of them once and for all.

This is the state the world was in when House of X occurred and the founding of the Krakoan nation. Mutants from all over the world fled from the genocide to the newly established nation to try and be free from oppression and death.

[Devaishwarya]

I think it is complicated but ultimately I think the X-Men are right. The focus on the revitalization of their species and human/mutant relations taking a back seat to that is loooonnngg overdue. I’m loving the new direction and I think the human forces that are trying to continue to oppress them should get whats coming to them.

At its core, HiX-Man's X-Men is not very different from what came before.

Orchis and Xeno are just new versions of The Right and The U-Men
Humans are still being well...Humans
Mutants in general are still hated and feared and persecuted.
The X-Men are still fighting and saving lives against that hatred and fear and persecution.

Only now...
The difference (besides the obvious) between Krakoa and the Mansion/Utopia Island/Genosha is several hundreds of acres and political/global power and influence.
The X-Men and the Mutant 'Villains" have finally! consolidated to fight the true enemies.

[Londo Bellian]

True enemies being everything and everyone that's not a mutant? Counter-genocide?

...see how frayed I am because of this status quo?

[Devaishwarya]

True enemies being everything and everyone that's not a mutant? Counter-genocide?

...see how frayed I am because of this status quo?

No.
True enemies would be anyone and everyone...Orchis, Xeno, Politicians, Governments,who would actively orchestrate the enslavement of mutant children and ultimate demise of mutants as a race.
Sorry I can't help with your frayed state of being, as that seems self-inflicted, only you can help yourself.

[Kisinith]

True enemies being everything and everyone that's not a mutant? Counter-genocide?

...see how frayed I am because of this status quo?

What counter-genocide?