Can the Xmen still be a metaphor for discrimination when pretty much all theirs

[U.N. Owen]

There's also the perfectly rational fears people have about mutants. It's not like being a real minority where there is no actual danger being around a black person or a gay person. They're not the racist/homophobic delusions people make them out to be. There is nothing inherently dangerous to them. Strip a white guy and a black guy naked and have them fight, they still break in the same places.

A mutant, on the other hand, can be a danger inherently. Having the ability to randomly blast flames, shoot lightning, send shockwaves with your mind, and merely exist like Glob are all legitimate fears. It's not like there is some testing center around and a crap ton of research into superpowers that would make therapy easy or predict what power you'll get.

[Lucyinthesky]

They went to live on an island because their members were persecuted non stop around the world in canon, so I would say Yes, their constant suffering is not neccesary for them to be an effective methaphor. So them having a place to live in peace doesn´t mean the metaphor doesn´t work, just that some things have changed because the issue is still there.

[Steel Inquisitor]

They went to live on an island because their members were persecuted non stop around the world in canon, so I would say Yes, their constant suffering is not neccesary for them to be an effective methaphor. So them having a place to live in peace doesn´t mean the metaphor doesn´t work, just that some things have changed because the issue is still there.

This would be more sympathetic if they didn't shake up with the guy who gloated about globally genociding the human race (and he did this to other groups like the Eternals!), in the Bronze Age and let him get into wars in Otherworld without any supervision and they let him be a vote on their Council. Mutants are a persecuted people, but when that gets weaponised by those who would use that as an excuse to kill others who are just as bad or worse than groups like Orchis it falls flat. That's an old fallback various mutant terrorists have used since the 60's, including justifying murdering the X-men themselves. They're not about peace, they're about geopolitical domination.

[Omega Alpha]

They're not about peace, they're about geopolitical domination.

There's two kinds of nations- the ones that are all about geopolitical domination, and the ones that are not, because they don't have enough power to do so.

And for both Xavier and Magneto, geopolitical domination is ultimately a tool to avoid genocide. Moira showed them what happened if they don't.

[Devaishwarya]

...and Geopolitical domination doesn't have to be achieved through active warfare. Going by XM 04, they intend to dominate economically...not through violence and death.

[Kingdom X]

...and Geopolitical domination doesn't have to be achieved through active warfare. Going by XM 04, they intend to dominate economically...not through violence and death.

^This. And going by X-Factor #4, they don’t even have developed war protocols.

[Killerbee911]

Well registering with the SSA has a lot of benefits that the Mutant Registration Act doesn't.

The general point of my post is that they build a lot of stuff into the universe for easy drama not that make sense I mean, Rogue is an easy example of it. Every time they say "there is nothing wrong with you" like she does not kill anyone she touches just shows that they are going for the easy route. Every time they make a registration act in Marvel it is implemented in the stupidest way possible like there is no middle ground between keeping humans safe and being fair to mutants.

It is clear that much of the flaws of the franchise is there to create drama for interesting books but in talking about people don't have to defend the world logic like make sense.

There's also the perfectly rational fears people have about mutants. .

So then it is not perfectly rational to be afraid of young white males age 18 to 34 in the real world, They turn out a lot to be serial killers, Serial rapist, and mass shooters. "Rational fears" are easy when it is not your group but it is the majority group you are talking about the action become individual(which is the correct thing by the way).

[cranger]

The general point of my post is that they build a lot of stuff into the universe for easy drama not that make sense I mean, Rogue is an easy example of it. Every time they say "there is nothing wrong with you" like she does not kill anyone she touches just shows that they are going for the easy route. Every time they make a registration act in Marvel it is implemented in the stupidest way possible like there is no middle ground between keeping people safe and being fair to mutants.

It is clear that much of the flaws of the franchise is there to create drama for interesting books but in talking about people don't have to defend the world logic like make sense.

It also shows one of the downsides with shared universes, and especially an shared universe that has been going on for so long and had so many creators involved trying to tell stories together. There will not be a consistent 'logic' and trying to scrutinize one story based on the elements of an independent story will not work.

[Killerbee911]

It also shows one of the downsides with shared universes, and especially an shared universe that has been going on for so long and had so many creators involved trying to tell stories together. There will not be a consistent 'logic' and trying to scrutinize one story based on the elements of an independent story will not work.

That is fair as well, I can bring up the dreaded "reboot" word. We don't have to bad fiction they can clean up things with a reboot but nonstop continuity is more valuable to them than clear internal logic in stories. It is a pick your poison thing but that is the downside of strict continuity and why movies often make these books look bad at times because they can throw away the bad stuff and keep all the good stuff.

[Lucyinthesky]

I think a soft reboot inside continuity could work in fact Moira´s new powers could be the key to do something like this. But I get the sense not everyone would be happy the editors and writers, just like the fans, have their favorite storylines so not everybody would be happy after all it´s said and done. So yes, pick your poison

[Zelena]

There's two kinds of nations- the ones that are all about geopolitical domination, and the ones that are not, because they don't have enough power to do so.

And for both Xavier and Magneto, geopolitical domination is ultimately a tool to avoid genocide. Moira showed them what happened if they don't.

So if Moira shows them they have no choice but behaving like bastards, Xavier and Magneto will behave this way… They are no more than Moira’s puppets then…

[Omega Alpha]

So if Moira shows them they have no choice but behaving like bastards, Xavier and Magneto will behave this way… They are no more than Moira’s puppets then…

Yes and no. Make Krakoa strong isn't itself a bad thing, and Xavier and Magneto disregarded Moira's ideas many times.

[Lucyinthesky]

Moira X did say she was trying to mold both of them so they would build Krakoa but so far they obviously are still them unless it´s shown they were mind controlled or something like Cap was at the beggining of the Iluminati series.

So far I don´t see much changes in Magneto but the scene of him agreeing and meeting with Xavier and Moira is still missing and Charles was already behaving strange and actually as a grey character after he came back from the death last time before Hickman´s run.

Given Hickman´s praise of Mike Carey´s run I suggest a rereading of his Age of X crossover, in it there was also a Moira X, so my guess is that probably we will see something interesting in the future with Moira.

[skyvolt2000]

There's also the perfectly rational fears people have about mutants. It's not like being a real minority where there is no actual danger being around a black person or a gay person. They're not the racist/homophobic delusions people make them out to be. There is nothing inherently dangerous to them. Strip a white guy and a black guy naked and have them fight, they still break in the same places.

A mutant, on the other hand, can be a danger inherently. Having the ability to randomly blast flames, shoot lightning, send shockwaves with your mind, and merely exist like Glob are all legitimate fears. It's not like there is some testing center around and a crap ton of research into superpowers that would make therapy easy or predict what power you'll get.

There are folks who view black people as threats for just existing.

In Texas a little girl was MURDERED by a white male for having Lesbian mothers.

How many white women have tried to use the police as judge, jury and executioner for a black person? Be it bird watching, sitting at Starbucks, doing homework, going to school, walking home, going to work, minding kids or just EXISTING?

If you have a world with mutants- anyone want to take bets on who gets the most police calls?

Trayvon Martin walking home or Glob walking home?

[Grunty]

The general point of my post is that they build a lot of stuff into the universe for easy drama not that make sense I mean, Rogue is an easy example of it. Every time they say "there is nothing wrong with you" like she does not kill anyone she touches just shows that they are going for the easy route. Every time they make a registration act in Marvel it is implemented in the stupidest way possible like there is no middle ground between keeping humans safe and being fair to mutants.

I have to agree, the mutant metaphor as much as it can be a usefull narrative tool to point towards real world issues involving minorities, falls appart pretty quickly once it's examined too much. Simply because the super natural aspects often contradicts and harms comparision to the real world when examined too closely.

If a person is practicaly born as living weapon, they should by real life standards be registered the same way a weapon owned by a person and it's holder is, to resolve crimes performed with it or determine what ever the holder posses any danger to society.
But since it's a person in a super natural world, where a person can be a living weapon, they suddently get added to a metaphor for real life minorities at which point it's automatically bad to register a person just for how they are born.
So does that mean anyone who is against stronger gun laws in their country is now part of the mutant metaphor too?

And as said, the same applies to how the these purely fictional super powers can be a curse to some and blessing to others. The person born as living weapon is suddently supposed to be proud of it and not desire not to be a living weapon. Because they are again thrown into a metaphor related to real life minorities which often got forced to give up their identity for conformity.
Does that mean someone who suffers from deep depression is supposed to give up medication and risk suicidal urges, just because they should be proud of what they are?

One of the major problems here is that the mutant metaphor's entire foundation is a super hero comic, which results in so many outlandish and super natural elements, combined with over the top and bombastic characters, being placed on top of it, that there is very little room for the necessary grey shading the minority topic requires without losing track of what the comics are meant to represent.

Super heros. People who stand for near impossible to uphold in the real world, but desired by the readers, ideals and virtues, which they keep fighting for against caricature like stand ins for the worst elements of humanity through history and fantasy and of course anything that the elder gods called "the writers" are throwing at them.

Yes mutants in the marvel universe are often presented as victims of hate groups, evil organizations, megalomanic super villains and super natural entities, but mutants are also the source of hate groups, evil organizations, megalomanic villains and super natural entities themself, who both make normal humans and innocent mutants their victims.

The fundamental role of the X-men is to protect the good humans from evil mutants, good mutants from evil humans and good mutants from evil mutants. Because they life in a world of caricatures and over the top normality. But in the end the reader is meant to see them as idealized figures protecting representation of themselves in this fictional world.

After all the reader has the unqiue position where they can identity themself with the mutant heros, innocent civilian mutants but also the normal humans too (and even the more virtues villains). Because everyone can desire to be a hero with awesome powers, identity with people harmed or hated for something they had no hand in and also being just a normal human being themself (and even sympathize with people who did wrong for an understandable reason).

But over the years, especialy the last two decades, the writing has often pushed the mutants collectively more into the primary victim by humans actions role, while seemingly disregarding the human victims and fear that their loss would create in the normal human population. Because of a black and white presented race conflict metaphor, which when pushed too much would require a ton of grey shading.

But grey shading is both hard to do in a black and white morality world and come under critic by people too focused on the minority metaphor.
Not to forget that victimhood is powerfull draw, because many like to feel themself as being wronged, but not that they themself might have been an agressors at times too.

At the same time the standard for displaying the normal humans, which again the reader should identity with too, has settled largely at either ungratefullness and downright hostility towards mutants and their heros. Though this being something that has plagued a lot of modern super hero comics. Essentialy giving the impression that the reader should not identity with the normal anymore.

So the more the mutant metaphor has become pushed to the forefront as the central element of the x-men comics, over the super hero aspects, the more the X-men comics seemed to have suffered from having no clear direction anymore, besides increasing the victim role.
And this is one reason i'm really not a fan of Dawn of X. Because it all seems to be based on this elevation of the victim role of mutants above all else, which contradicts the super hero nature these comics should be based on.
Because super heros are not supposed to falter, give up on their ideals and join force with their super villains on a permant basis. They endure, survive and keep on going with their virtues intact.

Spiderman is not giving up despite the media slamming him, crime never stopping, his civilian life always hanging on a shoe string and his villains always comming back. Captain America won't give up his virtues of what america should be, regardless of how much the government and politicians screw up. Iron Man is not going to conquer the world with his super technology, just because he feels smarter than everyone else. Thor won't just party all day and ignore humanity because they are so weak.
Superman is not abandoning Earth to start a new better Cryptonian civilization because humanity can't stop creating crime and conflict. Batman won't put Gotham to the flames, regardless of how much it's full of crimes and super villains. Wonderwoman is not permanetly returning to her island of amazones because man keep doing bad stuff. Aquaman won't just flood the surface world and wipe out humanity for how much they destroy the ocean.
While these circumstances have on occasion occured, they were never permanent because the basis for these characters contradicts these singular storylines.

Because they are super heros, impossible by real life standards icons of virtues and heroic qualities, who never stop fighting regardless of what the evil elder gods called The Writers are throwing at them in a never ending cycle. Because that's their role.

For the same reason the X-men should not give up hope in co-existince between their people and the rest of humanity (i will never accept the mutant vs. human distinction, because fundamentaly mutants were and are humans just with natural super powers), the believe in good that exist in humanity as a collective and not see themself as above any normal person just because they themself have super powers.
Because they are supposed to be heros. People the readers identity with while also identifying with those they protect. "Nobless Oblige" should not be the mentality of the X-men as a whole, but just of a few of their (many) flawed individuals.

With Dawn of X, Hickman broke several unspoken taboos that exist in super hero comics for a reason. He gave the X-men technology that is actively changing the world, he makes them use their powers to just casualy come back from the dead and he has them react to the consequences of the longtime continuity of their comic existence.
If all super hero comics would do that the Fantastic Four and Iron Man would be in a corperate warfare trying to upstage one another with technologies which would rapidly turn humanity into the Warhammer 40k Empire of Man. Every hero would be like the punisher, in an asylum, trying to take over the world to better it or seeking refuge somewhere in a more peacefull world.
But they aren't. Because of the rules to keep these comics in a permanent status quo, that can only bend but not break in how the heros act, all in order to sustain this fantasy world.

And it's for that reason that the whole Dawn of X status quo appears to me like it's is allready doomed to fail as anything lasting. Because the breaking of the taboos can't last for long.
The main enjoyment i have following this current status quo is the guessing game on what will ultimately doom it, where the button for the self destruction will be and who will ultimately press it. But that's not what these comics should do. They should make someone think that every new sunrise they fought for brings them closer to a better tomorrow. But the tomorrow these characters are currently heading for is unachiavable with their current goal and even contradicts the metaphor that has lead writers to bring them on this path. It all just looks like another missery pile in the making for me.

Allright. Sorry for this massive opinion piece. I do hope everyone who enjoys the current status quo will find the satisfaction in it, regardless of how it will end and what will come after, regardless of how i feel about it.