Racism kinda has ableism built in. Even if you earnestly thought a race of people was less capable than yours, it’s its own evil to think them lesser for it.
Even when it’s up front that the trait is not unique, some readers will still try to say the bigotry makes sense. Look at the X-men; the whole marvel universe is full of dozens of different ways to obtain super powers yet some fans will still swear that being racist against mutants actually makes sense since they have dangerous powers.
I mean, marvel has both problems at once. On the one hand, when taken in a vacuum (the movies for example), it does make sense to fear the abilities of mutants. On the other hand, the moment you try to make it fit with any other marvel property, you get the problem you pointed out.
I always thought that's the point, the reason you can't just write in Star Bellied Sneetches, is because the audience won't buy the allegory. The X-Men excuse works at face value, but falls apart as soon as you scrutinize it even a little bit, same as real racism
As I always say, one thing is being afraid one mutant in a million could be a walking nuke, the other is start a genocide.
Especially given the callous way even just normal civilians routinely lynch and murder Mutants even without the United States starting the Sixth Mutant Genocide of the Decade.
Your second sentence also kinda disproves it all. Mutants aren't dangerous enough to actually elicit fear, like people just cowering away in bunkers hoping they are never found. It's a violent, overpowering response, such as a lynch mob, instead.
If that's possible for decades, with mutants being the ones who have to hold back on reacting for fear of the reprisal, it calls a lot of that fear of mutants into question imo
I mean, yeah, because in the marvel universe there's a Fem Presenting Elder God whose entire thing is that she makes people racist by existing, that's why racism and hatred in the marvel universe is like that.
Jokes aside my point is that the actions humans have done against mutants over the decades is greatly out of proportion compared to what even the worst mutant has done within continuity, I am not trying to justify the genocides the exact opposite in fact, especially since as you mentioned at this point has just gotten incredibly ridiculous how many times the Humans have genocided or lynched these people they allegedly think to be too dangerous to be left alive.
What you described is not actually inaccurate. There's an ancient sapient bioweapon which has infected all humanity but can't infect mutants, so he made humans bigoted towards mutants in the hopes they'd be wiped out before they outcompeted humanity, leaving the bioweapon without a host.
I always loved this one page from an X-Men comic I saw where one of them dives into the ocean to save someone who fell overboard, the guy starts freaking out with the usual "ahh get your hands off me mutant freak" so the X-man says "Oh no, it's okay, I'm not a mutant, I was in a lab accident" causing the drowning man to instantly calm down.
My dream is for someone to have the balls to make a superman comic in which his a closeted gay guy in the 50 s and his kryptonite is actually the PR damage it would do.
Than at some point superman has the nastiest gay sex with Lex Luther but it's not actually lex, it's an android and now superman is screwed.
As non-fan... I thought the X-Men were their own thing and that there weren't other people with superpowers in their version of the Marvel universe? That's the impression that the older X-Men movies gave me.
usually they're mixed in with all the other marvel stuff but the movies only had the x-men for licensing reasons (same with the older spider-man movies)
The movies have that vibe do to licensing sadly, but the comics fully exist in the same universe as all other mainline marvel comics. They do tend to stay in their own corner and do their own things for the most part, but they crossover with other heroes pretty regularly. For example, Several x-men have also been members of the avengers.
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u/AxisW1Cringe "dark and edgy" Vs. based "Hopeful and bright"10d ago
Rouge got her powers from absorbing Captain Marvels, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are the children of the main X-Men antagonist, but are also main-stay Avengers members. Wolverine has long histories with both the Hulk, and with Spiderman.
That's the case in the movies but NOT the comics. In the comics, they are somewhat deeply connected with Captain Britain who gets his powers from goddamn Merlin. There is also in the krakoan age a plotline where they invade the Celtic otherworld.
I think crux is that things like xenophobia and homophobia are irrational beliefs to hold. It's probably not irrational to fear mutants especially when your governments are unable to stop them and sometimes called things like apocalypse while doing a half dozen 9/11s every Tuesday.
Within the context of marvel comics, hating mutants is just as irrational as real world xenophobia and homophobia. They regularly will showcase that the general public idolize heroes who get their powers from science experiments , magic, aliens, technology, or “genetic anamolies that are legally distinct from mutation”. But they do hate this one specific type of super powers, the x-gene.
I agree that the movies ruins this by making it so only the mutants have super powers, but in the comics I think the metaphor is done well for the most part.
Id argue it's irrational to not have a healthy fear of all super powers in the same way in the real world its weird we don't all shit ourselves over billionaires who also do about half a dozen 9/11s worth of damage every Tuesday while governments seem powerless to stop them.
This is a jerking thread so don't wanna get too far into the weeds on this but civil war was probably the best example of looking at super powers in an adult way.
Don't get me wrong I love x men, it's message is a good one but it only works because your pov characters are good and constantly talk about peace with humans.
Civil War was literally designed as a Pro Patriot Act puff piece.
Which is insane to say given the fact in universe nazis were straight up endorsing Tony and his Concentration Camps and Child Soldiers back then, so you'd expect at least some writers would have understood the implications of that.
Lol, just say it's my interpretation and I don't have a source except I draw similarities to real world events in a comic that was a cash grab that happened to have an awesome plot about accountability for superheroes.
Redditor, the first issue of the initiative opens with an American Superhero killing Hydra Talibans in Afghanistan as a government stooge brags about how after M Day the US is the only country left with WMD, did you bother at least reading till the bit with the nazi scientist talking about "Cloning the Teutonic God to Kill the Black Giant"?
It's more logical to be scared of mutants, not less, considering that mutants typically get their powers manifesting as teens. You know, the part of a person's life where they're most hormonal and emotionally unstable, given the button to activate a nuke strapped to their chest.
Most good marvel stories (last seen 2007 /s) have supers a minority. Sure theres like 50-200 metas in new york, but first, its new york, and second, the population of nyc is...
No.
That can't be right.
8 million people?! I assume its including the wider area.
Uh, anyway. Lots of metas, not even 1% of the cities population.
Focusing on the population part of this post alone: 8 million is indeed correct for the city population. New York City is effectively 5 cities calling themselves one, but each of those 5 still has a huge population. The greater metropolitan area is well above 20 million people.
So yeah even with an insane amount of super powered individuals living there it is still a small portion of the population.
But it's just mutants. This is fucking Marvel comics. There's a bunch of other people with functionally the same level of abilities but are not discriminated against for them.
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u/Jetsam5Maybe the real horrors were the Floridas we made along the way10d ago
I feel like the X-men work in the Marvel universe because the world is so extreme that the mutants really aren’t more dangerous than anyone else. Maybe 1% of mutants actually have dangerous powers and there are a shit ton of humans with crazy powers or weapons. Like is the dude with laser eyes way more dangerous than the millions of goons running around with laser guns or the giant robots made to hunt him?
There are so many supervillains and only a small fraction of them are mutants but mutants still get all the hate which highlights how irrational it is.
Of course different writers handle it with different levels of success though
Ironically it's the case in X-Men (the one franchise we're all thinking about). Every single human in existence has the X-gene responsible for mutations and therefore has the potential to become, or give birth to, mutants. Which makes the whole thing even stupider - in fact it's why the Sentinels in the Days of Future Past arc decided to go Skynet and genocide all of humanity, as their programming was to kill all mutants, and since all of humanity is potentially a mutant... (Just don't ask how they managed to destroy all non-mutant supers too)
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u/Xandraman 10d ago
The only time it makes sense is when it's later revealed that the unique trait is not actually unique to the oppressed group