Day 54- The X-Men and Civil Rights

Total Mileage: 6,376

Song of the Day: “The Future Soon” (Jonathan Coulton)

Book of the Day: X-Men #1 (September 1963)

Okay, time for another installment in how comicbooks, science fiction, and even video games can offer more honest social commentary than more traditional media.  While I could probably keep this more directly theological by making some off-the-wall reference to Calvinism and the Elect, I think I’m just going to focus on the social implications of the X-Men.  After all, I’ve just spent a long weekend in San Francisco, so the oppression of minority groups is freshly on my mind, and this has been a recurring theme throughout the X-Men’s five-decade history.  I should also mention that I still haven’t seen the new film X-Men: First Class (which I hear has defied everyone’s expectations by being really, really good).  I want to see the movie, but when you’re traveling solo on the road, it’s just not very conducive to going to movie theaters.  (But, on the bright side, at least I’ve been spared sitting through Green Lantern.)  X-Men: First Class is set in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but 1962 is also noteworthy as being the year before the very first X-Men comicbook hit the shelves.

Mutation as Metaphor

Most superheroes acquire their powers through tragic childhood events, laboratory accidents, or traveling to earth from an alternate dimension.  For years, comic writers had to rely on plot devices like radioactive spiders and martial arts training and strange visitors from other worlds, but in 1963, Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby came up with a new concept: superheroes who were simply born with their powers.  Two decades after Watson and Crick first proposed the theory of the DNA double-helix, Lee and Kirby put DNA mutation to work in their fiction and came up with a premise for an entire universe of characters: mutants.

Through a miraculous genetic accident, perhaps the next step in our species’ evolution, the world was introduced to mutants, people who were naturally born with amazing abilities far beyond those of normal humans.  Of course, there’s a catch: some of the mutants also have radically different appearances because of their powers-- fur, fins, fangs, feathers, and all manner of other noticeable mutations to draw the scornful eye of a suspicious public.  In fact, with their vast range of superpowers, many of the mutants are practically living weapons, and since some of them look just like normal humans, hysteria exists surrounding the mutant population in the world that Lee and Kirby created.  Could your neighbor be a mutant?  Could they use those powers for evil?  Would you be able to protect your children from the mutant menace?  Might your children even be mutants themselves?  Or maybe your wife?  Your coworkers?  Your congressman?  Maybe we should have legislation about this sort of thing.  Maybe we should restrict them to specific neighborhoods or limit their civil rights or make them register with the government, but how would they react?  Would they accept our regulations or lash out?  Therein lies the crucial issue constantly at play in the X-Men universe:

How does the empowered minority best respond to the ignorant, prejudiced, paranoid majority?

When the first issues of these comics were coming out in the 1960s, the similarities to the American Civil Rights movement were fairly obvious, with various mutant characters speaking out in different ways about mutants’ relationships with the non-superpowered majority.  Some thought that mutants and other humans should coexist peacefully; others thought that mutants should rule the world; still others thought that mutants should leave and have their own separate society.  Over the years, the concept of mutation has taken on numerous other meanings, always becoming a symbol for the oppressed minority, and in several cases, mutants who also share another minority affiliation are given prominent roles to make the analogy that much more potent.  In fact, the superhero team broke new ground by introducing strong black characters (Storm), Jewish characters (Kitty Pryde, Magneto), LGBT characters (Northstar, Destiny, Mystique, Rictor), and Muslim characters (Dust) years before other comic series would feature these groups.  The X-Men comicbooks have always been about seeing the world from the perspective of an oppressed people, but in this case, those people also have costumes and superpowers and goofy codenames.

The Original Lineup

I’m not the first to make this comparison.  In fact, I’ve even heard of entire classes being taught around this subject, and I’m pretty sure it’s even on the Wikipedia page for the X-Men.  Still, it’s worth pointing out:

Professor Xavier : MLK :: Magneto : Malcolm X

I’ve heard that this is supposed to be really obvious in X-Men: First Class, which is another reason why I’m really aggravated that I still haven’t seen it, but I’m going to talk about it anyway.  From the earliest days of the X-Men, the comics have had two perpetually-dueling factions: the X-Men (who promote peaceful coexistence with humans) and the Brotherhood of Mutants (who promote mutant supremacy).  Initially, the X-Men consisted of five teenage/young adult misfit superheroes and their mentor, all of whom have endured hardships because of their abilities:

Scott Summers (Cyclops)-

A regular boy scout, Scott serves as the team leader and closely follows every order given by the X-Men’s mentor, Professor Charles Xavier (affectionately known as “Professor X”).  An orphan from an early age, Scott was mistreated all his life because of his mutant ability: His eyes emit a powerful blast of heat radiation whenever opened.  For this reason, Scott was functionally blind for much of his childhood and adolescence, having to keep his eyes closed at all times before learning that glasses made of a special ruby quartz could contain the radiation.  When leading the X-Men in combat, he wears a special visor to allow for quick, focused blasts from his eyes at the push of a button.  While his personality can be a little cavalier and domineering, he is fully in support of Professor Xavier’s dream of seeing mutants and humans living in harmony.

Jean Grey (Marvel Girl)-

Quite possibly the strongest mutant alive, Jean’s mutant abilities are telekinesis and telepathy, enabling her to lift objects with a thought and read the minds of others.  She is Scott’s girlfriend (and later his wife), and she shares his dedication to Professor Xavier’s dream, seeing Xavier as something of a father figure after he helped her learn to control her incredible abilities.  Jean is perhaps best known for the character’s tendency to die and come back to life due to her frequent possession by a fickle alien deity known as The Phoenix, and as ridiculously farfetched as that sounds, it’s actually been a pretty neat little plot device.

Hank McCoy (Beast)-

Hank was an awkward kid in high school, often bullied because of his abnormal proportions.  Called “Magilla Gorilla” by his classmates, Hank’s abnormally long limbs and large hands and feet give him enhanced agility, making him a natural athlete, but he also has a genius-level intellect to match.  In fact, he often serves as an engineer and mechanic to the X-Men, as well as having a thorough knowledge of medicine, genetics, and even philosophy.  Later in the comics, Hank would mutate further, growing blue fur all over his body.  Despite his now ferocious appearance, Hank remains one of the most friendly and intellectual of the X-Men, proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover.  As one of the mutants who has the hardest time blending in, he is also one of the most active in the public campaign for mutant rights.

Bobby Drake (Iceman)-

The team malcontent and a chronic underachiever, Bobby has the ability to generate and control ice.  Initially, he could encase himself in a snow-like armor, but this later evolved into the ability to turn his whole body into highly-durable ice.  He can throw balls of snow and ice, freeze objects, and slide around on homemade glaciers.  Bobby was persecuted for his abilities early on by his peers, but his parents accepted Professor Xavier’s offer to take Bobby to a special school to learn to harness and control his powers.  This scene was humorously mirrored in the film X2: X-Men United, when Bobby comes out to his parents as a mutant, and his mother politely asks, “Have you tried not being a mutant?”

Warren Worthington III (Angel)-

The son of a wealthy industrialist, Warren discovered white-feathered wings growing out of his back one day while away at prep school.  Donning a costume, he fought crime and helped people as “the Avenging Angel” for a brief period of time before joining the X-Men.  Warren’s sense of entitlement often leads to tension with the team, and because of the publicity surrounding his family, he is one of the few X-Men to retain a secret identity for a number of years before publicly revealing his mutation.  Eventually, following the forced amputation of his wings during a hospital stay, Warren would fall from grace and undergo further genetic experimentation to become the supervillain Archangel for a time before again returning to the X-Men.  Over the years, he has switched allegiances almost as many times as Jean Grey has returned from the dead.  (You know, when a comic has been around for almost half a century, it does eventually start to repeat itself.  Sad fact of life.)

Dueling Visionaries

While popular characters like Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Storm would come along later in the series, these five heroes constitute the original X-Men.  Overseeing this team is an MLK-like visionary and humanitarian by the name of Professor Charles Xavier, a bald, wheelchair-bound mutant with the ability to read and even control people’s minds.  Xavier is very much an idealist, teaching young mutants to use their powers responsibly at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters and hoping to use his team of crime-fighting X-Men to bring positive publicity to the campaign for mutant rights.  Much of his intellectual and financial success came to him on a silver platter thanks to his innate brilliance and telepathic abilities, and the only physical sign of his mutant abilities was his premature balding, making him able to pass for human quite easily.  Still, Xavier was the victim of anti-mutant violence at the hands of his stepbrother while growing up, and he spent years traveling on international humanitarian missions, witnessing violence against mutants the world over.  Xavier strives to work with the world’s political and scientific leaders to guarantee equal treatment for mutants, and despite the occasional use of the X-Men in battle against rival mutant factions and anti-mutant hate groups, Xavier wages his campaign primarily through peaceful, nonviolent means.  He dreams of a day when people will be judged not by the superpowers they possess, but by the content of their character, and he instills this view in his students, particularly the X-Men.

Of course, Xavier’s dream doesn’t have the support of the entire mutant community, and there is one leader in particular who stands against him.  Erik Lehnsherr is a Holocaust survivor whom Xavier befriends while working at a hospital in Israel during his travels, and the two often discuss how the world would respond to the sudden appearance of superpowered humans across the globe.  Erik and Xavier quickly discover that their views are incompatible.  While Xavier hopes for harmony, Erik remains bitter from his experiences in the Holocaust and believes that the mutants would be best off declaring their supremacy and reigning over non-superpowered humans.  Erik simply cannot imagine a world where the mutants are accepted as they are.  Though Xavier and Erik part on good enough terms, the two would eventually find themselves clashing back in Xavier’s home country of America.  Possessing the ability to control magnetic fields, Erik would eventually adopt the name Magneto and would serve as the X-Men’s principle antagonist, often commanding his own team, the Brotherhood of Mutants (sometimes called “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” during their first appearances).  While Magneto initially fights for mutant supremacy, he later attempts to create separate sanctuaries for the mutant population, first in an orbital space station called “Asteroid M” and then later on the island nation of Genosha.  It has long been stated that, if Xavier is MLK, then Magneto is his Malcolm X, using tactics of violence, revolution, and terrorism to further his supremacist/separatist agenda.

The Purifiers (an anti-mutant hate group)

While Magneto was originally very much the villain to Xavier’s hero, the strict good/evil dichotomy has become increasingly blurred over the years that the X-Men comics have been in print, and writers have been constantly revisiting the question: How does an oppressed minority best respond to the oppressive majority-- radical peace or radical empowerment?  It is this question that drives almost every major X-Men storyline, and every time new characters are introduced, their reactions to the treatment of mutants define their relationships with the X-Men.  While many new mutant characters sign on to Xavier’s dream, some are in favor of total separation or supremacy, believing that humans will never learn to accept mutants.  Similarly, human characters have a wide range of reactions.  While some side with Xavier, others form hate groups such as the Friends of Humanity (modeled after the KKK) or the religiously-based Purifiers (led by the fanatical televangelist, Rev. William Stryker, who believes mutation to be the work of Satan).  Some humans in the government seek to control the mutants through legislation, eradicate them through the use of experimental technology, or even harness them as weapons (as was the case with Wolverine in the top secret Weapon X program).  With all of this activity surrounding them, the X-Men are in a pretty difficult place, struggling with responding to violence from humans and mutants alike while also seeking to show the world that mutants and humans can still coexist peacefully.  Of course, some of the mutants struggle more than others.

Nightcrawler-- Priest, Prophet, Mutant

Introduced in 1975, one of the most popular characters from the X-Men comics is a German circus acrobat named Kurt Wagner (a.k.a. Nightcrawler).  Blessed with extreme agility and the ability to vanish in a puff of smoke and teleport miles away, Nightcrawler also has one of the most distinctive appearances of any of the X-Men characters, sporting blue skin and fur, yellow eyes, pointed ears, fangs, a prehensile tail, and three-fingered hands and feet.  His appearance is very much demonic, making Nightcrawler’s devout Catholicism all the more fascinating.  Though Nightcrawler’s freakish appearance is very much accepted during his upbringing in the Bavarian circus, he often finds himself at the mercy of angry mobs whenever straying from his circus peers, and it was after being rescued from one such mob that he joined Professor Xavier’s X-Men and came to America.  Called a demon and a monster, Nightcrawler might have the most in-depth understanding of the persecution that mutants face, and yet, he will not allow his will or his faith to be crushed.  Despite opposition from many in the religious community, he serves as an ordained Catholic priest, even though he finds it difficult to attend or preside over mass due to the terror his appearance often insights.  Still, Nightcrawler remains an effective counselor, preaching the love of God for those born different, encouraging humans to love mutants and encouraging mutants like Magneto to be patient with the humans.

Perhaps what makes Nightcrawler so endearing is how utterly complex a character he is.  A fan of classic films, Nightcrawler fancies himself a bit of a swashbuckler, often imitating his hero, Errol Flynn, when he goes into combat with the X-Men.  Of course, while his beliefs make him pacifistic at his core, he must reconcile fighting alongside the X-Men as a service to the greater good, seeking to protect humans and mutants from whatever threats might arise from those seeking to oppress and conquer.  Additionally, while many of the mutants are capable of passing for human, Nightcrawler’s appearance is a constant source of turmoil for him, but he continually finds affirmation in his religion, recognizing that, through his mutation, God has granted him special abilities and unique insights into the ordering of the world.  He has every right to hate the people around him, yet he sees all people as children of God and preaches that same love and tolerance to his fellow X-Men when they grow tired of fighting the good fight.  His religious rhetoric and comments about God’s love are a welcome antidote to the hate that the X-Men sometimes receive from religious groups like the Purifiers and the Church of Humanity.  In fact, his uncrushable faith might be Nightcrawler’s most impressive ability, and it is evidence of just how much comfort people can find in God when the majority tells them that they are misfits or abominations.  While religious people have an unfortunate history of being just as hateful as any other group, God loves the oppressed and the oppressor alike, going so far as to live among us as Jesus Christ and die a humiliating death to reconcile humanity to God.  Nightcrawler might embody that spirit more than any other X-Men character.  In his own words,

Looks like someone's been reading their Peter Abelard.

The increasingly diverse X-Men team

New Applications

Throughout the X-Men’s nearly fifty years, the comics have taken on a number of issues affecting various minority groups beyond the simple MLK/Malcolm X comparison.  Prior to Magneto’s takeover of Genosha, the fictitious island nation actually functioned as an apartheid state where mutants were imprisoned in labor camps, and this storyline coincided with the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa.  The recurring subplot of American government officials attempting to round up and control mutants often carries with it Holocaust connotations, making Magneto’s mutant supremacist views all the more relevant and sympathetic.  Throughout the 70s and 80s, with the rise of globalization, the team became increasingly international with the additions of Storm (Kenyan raised in Egypt), Nightcrawler (German), Wolverine (Canadian), Colossus (Russian), Sunfire (Japanese), and a slew of other characters from around the world.  The comics of the 1990s featured a recurring plot point known as the “Legacy Virus,” a disease that specifically targeted mutants but was later seen to affect non-powered humans as well.  Hundreds of mutants were infected with the disease throughout this storyline, and the similarities to the AIDS epidemic were not difficult to detect.

Hank "Beast" McCoy (now with blue fur)

Most recently, beginning in 2006, television writer Joss Whedon (probably best known as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) began writing for the X-Men comics.  Whedon came up with a new concept: a cure for mutation, a way for the mutants to shed their abilities and be just like normal humans.  For mutants whose appearances and abilities kept them from fitting in, the idea of a cure would be an enticing offer.  For example, Rogue (who can drain someone’s life force and superpowers whenever she makes physical contact with a person) would finally be able to touch people, and this became a key plot point of the film X-Men: The Last Stand.  Of course, in the comics, Whedon chose to focus on another character’s decision over whether or not to be cured, a character who had long stood as a champion of mutant rights: Beast.  Tired of the constant hatred his appearance evokes, Beast strongly considers the cure, but Wolverine must talk him out of it, saying that for such a prominent mutant leader to accept the cure would send the wrong message about mutation.  It would prove the X-Men’s detractors right, and it would be a potent weapon in the arsenal of anti-mutant activists and hate groups.  Of course, I find it interesting that this storyline coincides neatly with a group of Arizona psychologists announcing that, after just three weeks, Rev. Ted Haggard had been completely cured of his homosexuality.  Yep, these comics are some of the most fascinating cultural commentary out there.

“Have you tried not being a mutant?”

Of course, as relevant as all of the X-Men storylines have been, as much as the characters in these comics speak to the conflicting emotions of people who struggle under oppression because of physical attributes beyond their control, it’s not so much the words of Xavier or Magneto, but of Desmond Tutu that I’ve been thinking about lately.  In a sermon in London in 2004, Tutu outlined that Christians are called to respond to injustice anywhere, to love all neighbors regardless of their skin color or their gender, and he paid special attention to the issue of sexual orientation.  A fuller excerpt is available here, but I’ve pulled some sound bites:

For me this struggle is a seamless robe. Opposing apartheid was a matter of justice. Opposing discrimination against women is a matter of justice. Opposing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a matter of justice. . . . It is also a matter of love. Every human being is precious. We are all -- all of us -- part of God's family. We all must be allowed to love each other with honor. Yet all over the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are persecuted. We treat them as pariahs and push them outside our communities. We make them doubt that they too are children of God. This must be nearly the ultimate blasphemy. We blame them for what they are. . . . The Jesus I worship is not likely to collaborate with those who vilify and persecute an already oppressed minority. . . .

Look, I realize that whether or not homosexuality is a sin is a contentious subject, so I’m just not even going to address that here.  On the other hand, I think we can all agree that the treatment of LGBT peoples all over the world is abominable.  I openly admit that I’m kind of on the fence about same-sex marriage --as someone who is neither gay nor married, I just don’t really have a stake in it either way--, but as Christians, we are still called to love those around us, particularly those who have been repeatedly beaten down by the world.  When I was in San Francisco, I met people who had been kicked to the curb by the church and called abominations their whole lives.  I met people who had been physically abused to the verge of lynching because of a predisposition they had from birth.  I met an oppressed minority who need to be reminded that God loves them in spite of what they might have heard growing up.  I will admit that I think pride can be taken too far sometimes, regardless of what movement it’s affiliated with; I see it as kind of a Magneto approach when the world really needs more Professor Xaviers.  Instead, I support cooperation, solidarity, and loving acceptance.  The Bible tells us that, whether male or female, black or white, gay or straight or endowed with superpowers, we are all God’s creations, fallen and messed up though we might all be.  We are called to show God’s love to one another, never giving in to blind hatred and prejudice.  As Paul wrote to the Colossians,

But now you must get rid of all such things-- anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.  In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!  As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:8-15)

Whether we as Christians condone homosexuality or not, the biblical call is unequivocal:

We are to love our neighbors, and that means speaking out when they are persecuted.

That's what the X-Men are all about.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom