Do the X-Men still take the place of POC, religious minorities and the LGBTQ?

[Lucyinthesky]

Not all of them- see Beast, Nightcrawler, Rockslide, just to name a few.



Not all of them- see Cyclops, Rogue, etc.



True, but many minority groups, particularly those that were persecuted, have some unique subcultures that most people outside of them don't know much about.



Actually, they were in Genosha (although if Marvel really wanted to explore this, they should have made a new character that was a survivor of Genosha enslavement).



Except those that are.




Actually, from what I wrote above, you might think I disagree with you, but I don't- as I said earlier in this thread, you can use them as a minority allegory in some stories or for a few characters, but trying to make them a perfect stand-in for any specific group not only can be offensive, but also limits story potential too much. The X-men are better use as outcasts, but not tied-in too much to any specific minority or persecuted group (and the Legacy Virus non-sense is a good example of what happens when you do).

Agreed the X-men are bassically outcast who participate on their fictional world in politics but who also have super hero adventures like other characters.

I also agree marvel needs to introduce new characters from those minorities, do a second "All New all different X-men" that era gave us Storm, Colosus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Shiro, etc where there are mutants from all around the world, the complicated thing is giving them the place to breath and give their own unique perspective accoding to their understanding of the world but a skilled writer could do it imo. As a Magneto fan part of what attracted me to the character was the way marvel didn´t hide his experiences, still they could do a little more to write him as a jewish person in the day to day basis.

I like Emma, Hank, Scott, Jean, Logan, Charles, Magneto et all but we also know their stories and the X-universe is big enough to tell new stories and made them matter in the bigger picture.

[The Gold Stream]

maybe a couple i think kitty is bi or lesbian

[Steel Inquisitor]

That's a lie. It never happened. It is false. it is actually offensive to claim Xavier = MLK and Magneto = Malcolm. Only people who were ignorant of both men would have ever tried to make that analogy and only an equally ignorant audience would have accepted it. It's nonsense.

I'm curious, why do you think it was offensive? Again, analogies don't have to be 1 = 1, that's why they're analogies. And it was the 60's, where Captain Kirk kissing Uhura on tv was a big controversial move for Star Trek.

Stan invented mutants because he was tired of making up origin stories. the civil rights nonsense was injected in the late 1980s.

Page 13 of SON OF ORIGINS of MARVEL COMICS tells the story in detail. Stan wrote it.

True, but that's not what all the X-men stayed at as a concept. Stan said lots of things, he's like George Lucas in that respect. It's debatable about the inspirations of Malcom X and MLK but the metaphor isn't.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-...never-stopped/

“I always felt the X-Men, in a subtle way, often touched upon the subject of racism and inequality, and I believe that subject has come up in other titles, too,” Lee told The Post’s Michael Cavna in 2016. But, Lee added, “we would never pound hard on the subject, which must be handled with care and intelligence.”

Claremont didn't just get there ideas from nowhere and Stan and Jack weren't people who ignored what was going outside of society during the 60's, every media is affected by the culture their creators live in. You really think X-men has no value to its readers using analogies to marginalised groups? Singer's X-men examined it through an LGBT lens, it wasn't subtle.



That's been the X-men's niche in Marvel since forever, they just modified the message over time. All entertainment comments on politics, the X-men are just really, really up front about it. Spider-man has class issues, New Warriors has examined internet culture, Wonder Woman has feminism, Batman is crime and justice, Blue Beetle and Ghost Rider have been about Latino culture/Latino POV in America. 9/11 impacted numerous media from Jason Bourne to Superman. Pick any media and you'll find politics influencing the creative decisions.

Exactly this.

And with so many mutants being beautiful white people, it kind of falls apart.

I mean, can guys like Emma Frost and Scott Summers really be metaphors for POC? Nah...

That's why they're metaphors. Just because they're metaphors don't make them good metaphors. Emma works because she's a wealthy sell out who exploited her position to harm her own people for her own gain both as a villain and a "hero." Scott works more for being disabled than a racial or sexual metaphor these days.

[Redjack]

I'm curious, why do you think it was offensive?

Charles Xavier is a moral cripple when compared to MLK. They have literally nothing in common whatsoever. Magneto is a racist mass murderer. He has NOTHING in common with Malcolm X. It's like saying Hitler and Malcom X had things in common. Magneto was literally based on Hitler.

Again, analogies don't have to be 1 = 1, that's why they're analogies.

No. They have to be analogous. That's why they're analogies.

True, but that's not what all the X-men stayed at as a concept. Stan said lots of things, he's like George Lucas in that respect. It's debatable about the inspirations of Malcom X and MLK but the metaphor isn't.

No. It's not "debatable." Stan didn't start talking about the civil rights aspect until DECADES after the x-men were created because he didn't create them to deal with that issue. which he says, repeatedly, for decades prior to the civil rights crap being pasted on. this is a hard fact, not a debatable opinion.

Claremont didn't just get there ideas from nowhere

Yes. In this case, they did. almost literally from nowhere. definitely not from stan and jack.

and Stan and Jack weren't people who ignored what was going outside of society during the 60's, every media is affected by the culture their creators live in. You really think X-men has no value to its readers using analogies to marginalised groups?

I think that analogy is brutally toxic in this case, in its failure to be what it pretends to be.

That's been the X-men's niche in Marvel since forever, they just modified the message over time. All entertainment comments on politics, the X-men are just really, really up front about it.

false. in every respect, this statement is false.

[Omega Alpha]

Right in early Stan & Jack's X-men, you had X-men complaining about being targeted unfairly by humans (like the famous rant of Beast that Bendis had present day Beast interrupt) and the government building machines for the purpose of killing it's own citizens. If you don't think that was extremely bold and revolutionary for the times, you don't know anything about the history of comics.

Granted, if wasn't as pronounced as it became with Claremont, but it was always there.

[Zelena]

“X-Men,” says Claremont, “has always been about finding your place in a society that doesn’t want you.”

https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/3522/

I mostly read the X-men during Claremont’s run, for me, it was about how to be a valuable person, it’s like that I understood his stories, it wasn’t a political manifesto for me.

Whatever Claremont meant to put in his stories, I remember above all X-men as sympathetic people. I cannot say the same about Hickman’s run.

[Devaishwarya]

The same "actual" diversity and marginalised rerpesentation (but with powers) some of you are clamouring for is supposed to be found in Vita Ayala's upcoming CotA. The same book many of you here and in the X-board have already panned and disregarded (for reasons) despite not having read a single page.

And that's the problem with most readers who "demand and expect" a particular thing such as "more diversity, more true representation"...you don't really want it. At least you don't want it in the format you are getting it. You all have this individual idea in your heads of the story, the characters, the plot but...none of you are writing for Marvel. (except Mr. Thorne) as such, the stories and characters will never be 100% what you expect, what you've already made up in your heads. So you turn to whining and wingeing, bitching and bemoaning..."This is not what I asked for!"

If every writer was to sit down and write exactly what each and everyone of us readers want and expect...every single book and character would be a hot fockin' mess not worthy of wiping our asses with. And we ALL will still be cussing and complaining.

[Lucyinthesky]

I agree there´s no way to give every reader what they want, neither is that a good narrative tool, writers have to get the space to tell the story with the characters available to them.

That said, I agree there´s no real need to compare the X-men to the civil rights movement in the US, they have changed a lot and have been different things to different readers during their publishing time, so imo I see the point of not agreeging to them being a real representation of the civil rights movement. If marvel wants to get credit for making an adaptation or an anology of the civil rights movement then they should dedicate a title or a series focused on that situation alone with original characters or maybe even a graphic historical novel, to help describe the situation to a new group of readers who probably don´t know much or anything about it. That would be a fair treatment of the real world event, not making easy comparasions between fictional characters with real world ones.

I also disagree completely with the pov of Magneto meant to be Hitler, at least post Claremont, where the character was written in a more tridimensional way, before that he was pretty much a villain with no redeeming qualities but also with no real personality, past, history or even name, who certainly was not meant to reflect Malcolm X at all, even after Claremont Magneto is firmly established as a jewish, not a black person, that alone makes him unable to become any kind of analogy to the civil rights movement.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

The X-Men haven't been a 1:1 metaphor for any real-life marginalized identity since the Claremont days. Claremont turned them into a metaphor for outcasts in general and used the civil rights comparisons only where it made sense.

I do think Miles Morales and Kamala Khan work better as representations for real-life minorities, but not just because most of the X-Men are white. It's mainly because Miles and Kamala are both working-class everymen like most of the population, and are likelier to have experiences closer to that of most real-life black and brown people as a result of this.

[U.N. Owen]

I generally disagree with the notion of the X-Men being "good" representations of minorities because they often try to lean too much into reality with their allegories without thinking of the implications of how they are in a fictional world.

Also, the multiple genocide plots sucked the hope, pun intended, out of the X-Men so much that it can easily be interpreted as a farce of civil rights, that things will never get better no matter how hard you try. Rosenberg's run probably cemented that for me.

[williamtheday]

Mutants are analgolous to...Mutants! Science Fiction stories about highly evolved individuals were around decades before X Men; EC comics had mutants facing humans fear and hate in Weird Science, Marvel had amutant villain in Young Men, who sounded just like Magneto, and DC had the heroic Captain Comet. Fear of mutants with powers and abilities beyond humans is a traditional Sci-fi trope. Although it can be said that teenage readers going through their own mutation of adolescence, with changes in their bodies, would identify with mutant characters.

[Rang10]

The X-Men haven't been a 1:1 metaphor for any real-life marginalized identity since the Claremont days. Claremont turned them into a metaphor for outcasts in general and used the civil rights comparisons only where it made sense.

I do think Miles Morales and Kamala Khan work better as representations for real-life minorities, but not just because most of the X-Men are white. It's mainly because Miles and Kamala are both working-class everymen like most of the population, and are likelier to have experiences closer to that of most real-life black and brown people as a result of this.

I think that comics moved to direct representation lately. Like you said Miles is very relatable, a black teenagers trying to find his place on the world and all the shenanigans of superpowers.

You can fit some situations x-men live on the metaphor, but in the end it isn't a fully analogue. It kinda of rememers me of a netflix movie with will smith, where fairy creatures were the stand ins for people of olor, of corse the movie was panned

[Devaishwarya]

The X-Men haven't been a 1:1 metaphor for any real-life marginalized identity since the Claremont days. Claremont turned them into a metaphor for outcasts in general and used the civil rights comparisons only where it made sense.

I do think Miles Morales and Kamala Khan work better as representations for real-life minorities, but not just because most of the X-Men are white. It's mainly because Miles and Kamala are both working-class everymen like most of the population, and are likelier to have experiences closer to that of most real-life black and brown people as a result of this.

Exactatiously.
To belabour the point that they are "not" in today's world, for today's audience is counting straws in a haystack.
At this point...as a group entity, they're more representational of the abstract notion of "Self acceptance" and "I'm going to take control of my life and build my world to suit me and mine. Fuck all y'all"

[MyriVerse]

Sadly, the current X-Men are more like the ppl/groups they used to fight against than anything else.

Yup.

And at this point, there's pretty much nothing remotely relatable about anything going on in any X-Book. There isn't even an allegory, atm.

[AtheistInRed]

Well topic creator, I can tell you from my personal perspective as a black person (yesiknowthatsoundsgeneric) that I would not let anybody tell me straight to my face that a mutant and mostly white group represents me. Let alone serve as an insulting metaphor. There's just no way.

So yeah, I never looked at the X-Men as an analysis of real life. They represent mutants from a fictional universe known as Marvel.