X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor (13 page)

To a certain degree, the change was mandated by the editor of Marvel Comics at the time, Jim Shooter. Shooter insisted that Phoenix needed to die as a punishment for the genocide she committed, whereas Claremont and Byrne simply wanted her to be depowered. But depowering Jean Grey would have still carried a similarly conservative message, with implications that sexual awakening in women has dire consequences unless removed. Cyclops, who was obviously a participant in Phoenix’s sexual experience, has no such repercussions. In fact, he will go on to be romantically attached to several women before Jean Grey returns.

In a drastic change from the first period, several strong female characters are among the villains the X-Men face. A new version of the villainous team the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants appears during this run, but this time the team is led by a female, Mystique. Mystique has the ability to change her form into any appearance she desires, but her natural state is with blue skin, yellow eyes, and red hair. Another group the X-Men battles is the Hellfire Club, which has a group of four in charge of the organization. Included in this group is Emma Frost, the White Queen, and, albeit briefly, Jean Grey as the Black Queen. Another female leader in this period is Callisto, who serves as leader of the Morlocks, a group of mutants whose deformities have caused them to live in the New York sewers to avoid persecution. With Storm leading the X-Men, Mystique leading the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the White Queen as one of the leaders of the Hellfire Club, and Callisto leading the Morlocks, the number of women in roles as leaders is remarkable in this period.

In all, this period is at times progressive and at times problematic in the treatment of minority and female characters. Storm is a leader on the team, but often sexualized in how she is portrayed visually. Jean increases in power, but her sexual appetites are linked to her turn toward genocide. The X-Men are more diverse, but still a team largely comprised of white males. The team is certainly more diverse than the previous period, but the portrayal of the minority and female characters is not without stereotypical problems.

Notes

1. A Google search of “unresolved X-Men subplots” conducted on August 2, 2013, provided nearly 1 million results.

2. His cooperation with Factor 3 was revealed to be a result of a threat on his life from that group. When that threat was removed, he helped the X-Men.

3. To this point Thunderbird has not been resurrected (though his corpse was animated for one storyline). It is always possible in the continuing saga of X-Men comic books that a future writer will resurrect Thunderbird. There was a longtime maxim at Marvel Comics that only Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben and Captain America’s World War II sidekick Bucky stay dead. But then in a 2005 storyline Bucky was brought back from the dead, so any dead character can be revived.

4. It is later revealed that his real name is James Howlet, not Logan, but he can’t remember his original name.

5. Later, Jim Shooter (then the editor in chief for Marvel) will mandate that the relationship between Colossus and Kitty Pryde will end when he discovers she is only a young teenager. In the 1984 miniseries Secret Wars, Colossus finds a new love interest and later dumps Pryde. Subsequent writers, after Pryde has aged an indeterminate amount, resume the relationship between Colossus and Shadowcat.