In Chris Claremont’s X-Men, the issue is immediately brought up. As Forge and Iceman point out, even though the X-Men serve to protect humans, humanity fears mutants and their power, who they believe “[diminish] the rest of humanity, ordinary homo sapiens”(43). They see a future “where they’re destined to be perpetual victims, innocents caught between beings whose powers they barely comprehend and haven’t a hope of matching”(43). In this incarnation of X-Men, the X-Men are much more wary of humanity’s distrust and fear of mutants.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Human-Mutant Relations
My only experience with the X-Men is through the movies, so I was interested to see their comic book origins. In the X-Men movies at least, there is a clear focus on mutants as social outcasts that are considered dangerous and a threat to human safety. In the comics we read for Tuesday, this message is not quite as clear. In the first issue, the X-Men are immediately received by the military base that is under attack, no questions asked, and when the job is done, the humans thank them, with no mention of fear. In the issue where they meet the Avengers, the only nod to human-mutant relations is when the X-Men run into a man, scared after seeing the Avengers, and scare him away when Angel reveals his wings. There is no mention of any kind of recognition of mutants by humans or any threat that humanity poses to the X-Men.
In Chris Claremont’s X-Men, the issue is immediately brought up. As Forge and Iceman point out, even though the X-Men serve to protect humans, humanity fears mutants and their power, who they believe “[diminish] the rest of humanity, ordinary homo sapiens”(43). They see a future “where they’re destined to be perpetual victims, innocents caught between beings whose powers they barely comprehend and haven’t a hope of matching”(43). In this incarnation of X-Men, the X-Men are much more wary of humanity’s distrust and fear of mutants.
In Chris Claremont’s X-Men, the issue is immediately brought up. As Forge and Iceman point out, even though the X-Men serve to protect humans, humanity fears mutants and their power, who they believe “[diminish] the rest of humanity, ordinary homo sapiens”(43). They see a future “where they’re destined to be perpetual victims, innocents caught between beings whose powers they barely comprehend and haven’t a hope of matching”(43). In this incarnation of X-Men, the X-Men are much more wary of humanity’s distrust and fear of mutants.
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Kelsey, I agree with both your points but find your first point especially interesting. I think there is no mention of human-mutant relations in the first comics we read because there's no mention of the X-Men being mutants at all--there's no origin story or anything saying they got their powers through mutation. I think for our generation, who, for the most part, know the X-Men from their movies in which the mutant-human mistrust is at the forefront, it's odd for us to see nothing in the foundational issues of the comic. However, I think for audiences reading X-Men when it first came out, this idea of people who are different than the general population interested only in helping the public without question was much more acceptable (thanks to earlier comics like Superman and Wonder Woman who did similar things).
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you, Gabe. I also think it has to do with the social commentary on the times. The X-Men comics and the human-mutant conflict have frequently been viewed as an allegory for society's fear and lack of understanding of homosexuality. If viewed in these terms, the lack of conflict in the early comics could be because homosexuality was not as widely acknowledged in the public sphere during the original issues. Later, when it became more of a social issue, that's also when the X-Men began to face more public prejudice.
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