X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor (5 page)

Roberts makes a valid point. Arguing that a character represents an actual person becomes problematic when the character is written by many different writers in hundreds of different situations and with varying motivations. Obviously the parallels will not always work. Even more significant than the problems with the Xavier/Martin Luther King Jr. comparison are those with the assumption that the 1960s-era Magneto was meant as some sort of comparison with Malcolm X. The Magneto who appears in this period has little resemblance to the sympathetic concentration camp survivor who is concerned for the welfare of mutants that will be portrayed in later comic books. In the 1960s Marvel comic books, Magneto is a supervillain seeking world domination, not a protector of his people whose motivations you can understand while disagreeing with his methods. However, even while acknowledging flaws in the often cited comparison between Professor X and Martin Luther King Jr., it should be admitted that identifying specific stories that are clearly meant to reflect moments in world history can be enlightening and at times almost unavoidable.

For example, in
The Uncanny X-Men #199
(Nov. 1985), Magneto reveals that he was a Jewish child kept in German concentration camps who saw his parents murdered for being Jews. He explains this while he is standing in the National Holocaust Museum, and he expresses his hopes that a similar fate does not befall mutantkind just before he is attacked by a group sponsored by the U.S. government to hunt down mutants. The allusions in the story are far from subtle and rather unavoidable for the reader. It is not “myopic” in this instance to identify the parallels between the treatment of mutants in the fictional narrative and the historical treatment of Jews in the real world.

Chris Claremont, who wrote the adventures of the X-Men for sixteen years, has said, “The X-Men are hated, feared and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants. So what we have here, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry and prejudice” (Wright 117). Although it can, and perhaps should be, debated whether or not Professor X was meant to be a fictional stand-in for Martin Luther King Jr., it is clear that a dominant theme in X-Men comics is a condemnation of prejudice.

Because the series was created in the early 1960s, at one of the most intense periods of the Civil Rights movement, one might expect to encounter clear examples of this theme from the very first issue. However, for a series with such an obvious metaphor that includes racial prejudice in the United States, the writers seem to have forgotten to include race. Although there are certainly other minorities in America besides racial ones, in the 1960s the prevalent public concerns about prejudice regarded race, specifically prejudice toward African Americans. Eventually, Marvel would introduce the first black superhero, the Black Panther, but it would not be until 1966. The Falcon, the first African American superhero in mainstream comics, would not be introduced by Marvel until 1969. In 1963, with the X-Men’s initial roster, the team that many interpret as representing minorities was entirely white and middle class. The only exception to this was Angel, who was still white, but upper class.

Making the absence of race in
The X-Men
even more notable is that Stan Lee was not shying away from the issue of racial prejudice, including using racial minorities, in another series he was writing at the same time. Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs identified
Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos
as a notable example of Lee and Kirby’s collaborative creations containing a “brazen acknowledgment of ethnicity.” Amongst the Howling Commandos are a Jew, an Italian, and Gabe Jones, one of the few black characters to appear regularly in this era of comic books. Gabe Jones’s presence wasn’t an accurate reflection of the military. During World War II, when the
Sgt. Fury
comic book is set, the military had been completely segregated. Lee and Kirby even had to fight to ensure their vision was printed on the page. “When the color separators made Gabe look white, Stan wrote memos until they got it right. He and Kirby were doing more than selling comics, they were making a statement” (71). Lee and Kirby didn’t just include an African American in the group and pretend that would be accepted by all; they acknowledged the prejudice such a character may have encountered in the military in
Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #6
(Mar. 1964).

Pierre Comtois argues that Lee decided to use his war comic as an educational tool. At the same time that headlines were “dominated by the national struggle over civil rights then being waged by men like Martin Luther King and punctuated by such landmark court decisions as Brown vs Board of Education,” Lee was using
The X-Men
to address prejudice metaphorically and
Sgt. Fury
to address it explicitly (68). In
Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #6
(Mar. 1964),
Dino Manelli is injured and is replaced by George Stonewall, who refuses to sleep in the same barrack with Jones, the African American member of the group. Fury calls out Stonewall for his bigotry. Stonewall rescues Izzy in the heat of battle, and then Izzy saves a wounded Stonewall through a blood transfusion. However, in the end Stonewall doesn’t completely overcome his prejudiced attitudes. Comtois explains:

Unlike other writers who would’ve had Stonewell either be killed off for his sins or get over all of his earlier prejudices, Lee allows the character’s feelings to remain ambiguous with Fury delivering the final lines: “The seeds of prejudice, which take a lifetime to grow, can’t be stamped out overnight . . . but if we keep trying . . . keep fighting . . . perhaps a day will come when ‘love thy brother’ will be more than just an expression we hear in church!” (68)

Besides tackling civil rights issues so clearly in stories such as this one, Lee and Kirby also introduced the first African American superhero in mainstream comic books when the Black Panther appeared in
Fantastic Four #52
(July 1966). The Black Panther later joined the Avengers and would be the first minority character to appear in an X-Men comic book when he was featured in a single panel of
X-Men #45
, in which the X-Men and the Avengers had a brief crossover story.
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In 1971 Stan Lee gave an interview with
Rolling Stone
that touched on the themes he tried to present in his work. He comes off sounding a little exasperated in the piece:

You know I’m very square and preachy sometimes, but the more I realize that people are to some degree affected by what we write, the more I’m aware of the influence we have, the more I worry about what I write. [. . .] I think the only message I have tried to get across is for Christsake don’t be bigoted. Don’t be intolerant. If you’re a radical, don’t think that all of the conservatives have horns. Just like if you’re a John Bircher, don’t think that every radical wants to blow up the nation and rape your daughter. (Green 34)

Despite the lack of diversity in the roster of the X-Men, you can clearly see an anti-prejudice message in the series.

The idea of mutants being hated and feared is stated clearly in
The X-Men #1
(Sept. 1963). Professor Charles Xavier tells a new recruit to the X-Men that,

When I was young, normal people feared me, distrusted me! I realized the human race is not yet ready to accept those with extra powers! So I decided to build a haven . . . a school for X-Men! Here we stay, unsuspected by normal humans, as we learn to use our powers for the benefit of mankind . . . to help those who would distrust us if they knew of our existence! (4)

However, despite this very clear distinction between normal humans and mutants (Angel refers to humans as Homo sapiens in this issue, and in the following issue we will find that mutants are called Homo superior) and the statement that people feared and distrusted Xavier, evidence of prejudice toward mutants only appears sporadically.

In 1949 Robert Merton offered one of the first analyses of prejudice and discrimination. In “Discrimination and the American Creed,” Merton explains that “[p]rejudicial attitudes need not coincide with discriminatory behavior” and further outlines the interrelationship of prejudice and discrimination by identifying four types of individuals:

The unprejudiced nondiscriminator—the all-weather liberal

The unprejudiced discriminator—the fair-weather liberal

The prejudiced nondiscriminator—the fair-weather bigot

The prejudiced discriminator—the all-weather bigot

Using this schema, and based on Xavier’s description of humans’ attitudes toward mutants, readers would expect to encounter either prejudiced nondiscriminators or prejudiced discriminators in the X-Men comic. Surprisingly, in the first several issues the normal humans are entirely unprejudiced nondescriminators.

At the conclusion of the first issue, a high-ranking military officer says, “You call yourselves the X-Men! I will not ask you to reveal your true identities, but I promise that before this day is over, the name X-Men will be the most honored in my command!” (31). This authority figure is behaving as one of Merton’s all-weather liberals and plans to use his authority to ensure the X-Men are respected and honored. This is hardly the reaction the reader would expect after they have been warned that humans will not trust mutants. Oddly, this trend of characters describing prejudice but not encountering any discrimination continues for several more issues.

In the second issue, we see several unexpected displays from normal humans, especially considering how often we were warned that normal humans will fear mutants. After a threat appears in the form of the villainous mutant the Vanisher, the X-Men are called by Professor X to gather for battle. The X-Men had been out in New York City, and Angel and Marvel Girl must fly to meet the rest of the team. The narration explains that Angel stopped briefly to rest his wings when he “suffers a temporary setback”
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(34). The setback is in the form of a mob of adoring women who, apparently unable to control themselves, throw themselves at him to get autographs and kisses. This behavior is as far from discriminatory as it is possible to get. A mob has formed not for the purpose of lynching a mutant, but because of loving him. A couple pages later, Cyclops is also stopped by a pair of construction workers he has saved from danger. One wants to shake Cyclops’s hand. He exclaims, “Say! You’re Cyclops aren’t you? One of the X-Men! I never thought you jokers were for real! Put it there, pal!” The other thanks Cyclops and asks how his powers work (36).

The most discriminatory behavior comes from the Vanisher toward normal humans. After publicity about his crime wave, perpetrated by using his ability to teleport from one location to another, has spread, “Every denizen of the underworld who isn’t in jail flocks to the side of the seemingly invincible Vanisher” (43). The criminals beg for the Vanisher to let them serve him, and he replies that “[i]t is only fitting that homo superior should be served by the inferior homo sapiens. Therefore I shall allow you to become my lackeys,” which prompts jubilant cheering from the just-insulted crowd (43).

The X-Men #5
(May 1964) features a fascinating moment, one that delves into many of the issues surrounding the perception of African American athletes from the white fan’s perspective. This is the first instance in the series where we see a mutant facing the same type of prejudice an African American in the United States may have faced. In the story, Magneto hopes to have the X-Men recruit the Toad, a member of his recently formed Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. To draw the X-Men’s attention, the Toad enters a track meet where he uses his mutant powers, leaping ability and greater agility, to perform feats no normal human could. His ploy works, and as the X-Men watch the track meet on television they conlude that he must be a mutant. However, the people in the crowd also react to the feats of the Toad, and rather than cheering the great performance they’ve just witnessed, they begin to yell and boo. In the end, the crowd is surrounding the Toad and threatening to attack him when the X-Men arrive to rescue him (114–115).

What is particularly interesting about this episode is the analysis of the crowd’s reaction provided by one of the X-Men: “They’re calling him ‘fake!’ They feel it must be a trick of some sort—they want to believe that—it makes them feel less inferior!” This argument reflects many interpretations of how white society has reacted to the rise and dominance of African American athletes in many professional sports.

When African Americans began to succeeed in sports, white commentators would often excuse a white athlete’s loss by explaining that African Americans were born with more innate talent. Thus, if a white athlete won, it was an example of David beating Goliath, whereas if an African American athlete won, it meant he was the benefit of a quirk of nature. One example of this concept is the persistent urban legend that African Americans have an extra muscle in their legs that allows them to run faster and jump higher than white athletes. A Google search of “Do African Americans have an extra muscle in their legs” returns tens of thousands of links to online forums and question-and-answer sites where this question has, it can be assumed in most cases, been posed seriously.

In “Consuming Blackness,” Daniel Rosenweig analyzes a commercial that aired in 1990 that featured a white catcher watching tape of Rickey Henderson, an African American baseball player who was on the verge of setting the career record for stealing bases, repeatedly stealing bases. The catcher is alone in a darkened room, watching film of Henderson stealing bases over and over, seemingly putting in extra hours after the rest of the team has completed practice. As Rosenweig notes, “The catcher’s dilemma links two standard white dystopic narratives: white men cannot compete physically with black men and whites must work harder to earn what they have” (113). Flying in the face of much of the history of the United States, white men are the underdog in this interpretation of the racial dynamic. The analysis continues: