I would have guessed that there was also a sort of racism angle with it. I mean I'm 99.9% sure Reed has zero problems with mutants since... he's a hero and all. But he also lives in the same world as the X-Men and that whole "mutant/racism" thing. So I could see him saying "Oh crap he's a mutant and has to deal with all that bullshit too".
Reed Richards is fantastically rich, rich mutant's do just fine. He's also fantastically naïve* and has as recently as Civil War II said that if the world only heard the personal stories of good mutants and inhumans all the prejudice would just evaporate, an illusion he still labors under despite it not doing any good for his entire life.
*-"Look, I built an extrajudicial concentration camp for superheroes."
"You, uh... you kind of sound like a Nazi."
"I'm very smart and thought this through!"
I'd like a condensed history that just shows all the dumbest plot choices they've made. Like, all of them.
"I'm Peter Parker, and I'm Spider-Man. *beat* Oh hey Satan, could you do me a favour?"
Peter Parker wants dirt on Joe Biden?
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
I'd like a condensed history that just shows all the dumbest plot choices they've made. Like, all of them.
"I'm Peter Parker, and I'm Spider-Man. *beat* Oh hey Satan, could you do me a favour?"
Peter Parker wants dirt on Joe Biden?
To be fair, Cornpop sounds like a 60s/70s Spider-Man villain
They're also gearing up for Fantastic Four vs X-Men next year. What I'm saying is, maybe Reed is just racist
Does the comic side have anything in their toolbox other than "every other hero group fights the X-Men"? Jesus christ. I hope none of that crap makes it into the MCU.
They're also gearing up for Fantastic Four vs X-Men next year. What I'm saying is, maybe Reed is just racist
Does the comic side have anything in their toolbox other than "every other hero group fights the X-Men"? Jesus christ. I hope none of that crap makes it into the MCU.
I'm actually hyped for it because it's probably going to be Hickman writing it. So yeah, I hope ALL of that crap comes to the MCU instead of another lame 90s retread https://www.cbr.com/mcu-x-men-dawn-of-x-inspiration/
Avengers vs X-Men was 7 years ago, though a previous mini did the same thing (the fight was over Magneto, and wasn't a full-blooded fight anyway) a couple of decades before. Heroes fighting each other is a staple of comics, but they only pitch the X-Men as a group fighting against another hero group as a special story very rarely.
But the Avengers and the X-Men make for groups that would probably fight in certain circumstances. The Avengers are mostly lawful neutral/lawful good, whereas the X-Men are (usually) outlaws hiding from a world that hates and fears them, persecuted and murdered where they aren't just shunned. And the Avengers conspicuously don't do very much about it. I mean, they're very busy, and no one's seriously suggesting they're co-signing the persecution, but more than once when the Avengers rock up to the mansion whomever answers the door politely inquires where Thor was last week when Rahne Sinclair was being chased through Central Park by an angry mob of racists?
Avengers vs X-Men was 7 years ago, though a previous mini did the same thing (the fight was over Magneto, and wasn't a full-blooded fight anyway) a couple of decades before. Heroes fighting each other is a staple of comics, but they only pitch the X-Men as a group fighting against another hero group as a special story very rarely.
But the Avengers and the X-Men make for groups that would probably fight in certain circumstances. The Avengers are mostly lawful neutral/lawful good, whereas the X-Men are (usually) outlaws hiding from a world that hates and fears them, persecuted and murdered where they aren't just shunned. And the Avengers conspicuously don't do very much about it. I mean, they're very busy, and no one's seriously suggesting they're co-signing the persecution, but more than once when the Avengers rock up to the mansion whomever answers the door politely inquires where Thor was last week when Rahne Sinclair was being chased through Central Park by an angry mob of racists?
See the problem I have with all that is its borne out of logistical issues, not genuine planned storytelling. It feels disingenuous. The Avengers arent showing up because some other writer is doing some other thing with them and the X-Men writer is doing this other thing and they're on different deadlines and so and so doesn't have permission to use such and such character etc etc.
It's like, there's no in character reason for the Avengers to ignore giant murder robots hunting down mutants. Or to stand aside and not challenge racist legislation. Except that the writers need them to because plot, or the X-Men writer hates the Avengers so when he does get the chance to use them he makes them look like assholes. Any time heroes fight each other in comics it comes off like a bunch of petty nerds going no MY favourite hero is better. Especially when theres a billion and one great villains to use.
That's why I've always wanted the X-Men to exist in their own universe, because if you wrote the rest of the heroes to NOT be convenient assholes around mutant issues then those issues wouldn't exist.
It's certainly arguable that the X-Men would work better in a separate universe, but they don't. But all hero teams are separated by false logistical issues. Hero teams exist in their own books, and solo heroes in theirs, and that's what the book's about. The reason Cap doesn't call up Iron Man to give him a hand with this Hydra nest, even though they're incredibly dangerous? It's Cap's book, not the Avengers.
It's certainly arguable that the X-Men would work better in a separate universe, but they don't. But all hero teams are separated by false logistical issues. Hero teams exist in their own books, and solo heroes in theirs, and that's what the book's about. The reason Cap doesn't call up Iron Man to give him a hand with this Hydra nest, even though they're incredibly dangerous? It's Cap's book, not the Avengers.
That's different, though. Cap and Iron Man have separate lives, and the Avengers don't always fight together. There are plenty of stories to be had with smaller groups of them where it's not convenient to contact others. But one of the primary principles of the X-Men is anti-mutant prejudice, something the Avengers can combat on their own schedule. Nobody's asking for Thor to swing by and Mjolnir some Sentinels, but the notion that he completely ignores the sentiment all the time, and never says anything about it in public? That's kinda nonsense. The whole thing would make more sense (and be a better parallel) if it were clear that anti-mutant hysteria is not the dominant attitude, or even that of a plurality, and the Avengers do oppose it. Because prominent opposition doesn't squelch a sentiment, and Victor Von Doom is still ruler of Latveria, Sentinels can still be a thing, but the whole affair wouldn't seem so absurd.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
It's comics, you gotta rotate opponents since the timelines never end and nobody ever stays dead. Which is why I've come to enjoy the MCU quite a bit more than their source comics; in the vast, vast majority of cases, somebody dead in the MCU is dead. The stakes actually mean something because consequences actually stick. In the comics, self-sacrifice is temporary, victory is fleeting, and everybody fights everybody else at some point.
I'd like FF vs X-Men to be like, one issue long. Four people versus all the X-Men available should be like the Squirrel-Girl vs Doctor Doom strip.
Whenever there's a "vs" event like this, it's never quite that easy - the involved teams will frequently reshuffle and other teams or individual heroes will align on one side or another to balance the teams. For Avengers vs. X-Men, the X-Men were joined by a number of Brotherhood members, but also saw a bunch of big names leave. At least one of the new teams thus formed took the Avengers' side.
The FF also have like twenty former fill-in members kicking around, most of which have their own teams. The Thing was a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy just last year, for example. Reed Richards has also fought superhero wars without actually leaving his lab before just by leveraging his connections. Reed Richards has also had a hand in at least one version of the Sentinel program, and used them during the fist Civil War.
It'll probably end up being "Three of the FF and half the Guardians and Ant-man and a Sentinel vs. Two-thirds of the current X-Men but not Wolverine and the other FF and also three Spider-men but nobody's really keeping track of which three it is."
Are there any Lawyer X-Men? I want an Avengers vs X-Men court room battle. Murdock and Walters vs Xaviers cadre over the custodianship of a mutant baby who's parents were killed in an abduction attempt.
Evangeline WhedonEvangeline WhedonEvangeline Whedon is the only one I can dig out of the wiki.
Edit: Holy crap that is a copy/paste fail. I'm going to leave that one for posterity, I don't even know how I managed to get her name three times and only one of them was inside the link.
Hevach on
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
By the way, the FF vs X-Men is centered around Franklin Richards, who's an Omega level mutant and as in the comics the X-Men are now their own mutant nation state, want to bring him to join them. But the FF starts seeing them as mutant supremacists
Zdarsky was inspired by House of X #1, which featured a scene in which Cyclops talked to the Fantastic Four and invited Franklin to Krakoa. "I knew it needed to be expanded upon," he explained, "so when I saw the opportunity to pitch this mini, the Franklin question was the heart of it." Franklin is one of the most powerful mutants in the world, and it's safe to assume that the X-Men will go to any lengths to keep him. Meanwhile, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman are unlikely to just accept it if their son chooses to join a group who increasingly look like mutant supremacists. https://www.comicsbeat.com/marvel-dawn-of-x-giant-size-x-men-fantastic-four/
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Being a mutant in a world where people get similar powers after they are born but are treated as heroes makes the whole X-Men allegory fall apart. That's the basic gist of it. If society treats the Avengers the same way they treat mutants than there is no reason for mutants to be called out as a super special group.
Being a mutant in a world where people get similar powers after they are born but are treated as heroes makes the whole X-Men allegory fall apart. That's the basic gist of it. If society treats the Avengers the same way they treat mutants than there is no reason for mutants to be called out as a super special group.
Except it's another way for humans to judge and imprison people based not on their actions, but who they are born as. Super-human individuals are few and far between even in the MCU, where there's maybe 40ish heroes and only half have actual powers.
Mutants also develop as teens where most heroes don't start hero-ing until adulthood. So young mutants with big powers and emotional problems leads to dangerous situations.
Imagine the nightmare if children woke up with guns for hands suddenly across the world
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, you can't really have the Avengers be liked and the X-men be hated in the same setting with any kind of internal consistency involved.
Racism against metahumans? Absolutely. Aside from the basic primal fear of being totally outclassed by another human being, superpowers would kick off all kinds of religious and racial prejudices. Even though the Wakanda Accords were bullshit, the cause of them makes 1000% sense as people would be absolutely terrified that there are people out there with the power to turn a whole city into a planet-busting weapon, and also that there are people powerful enough to stop said weapon.
Imagine the nightmare if children woke up with guns for hands suddenly across the world
There are a lot of mutants without any of the crazy gun-hand stuff, though. Yeah, it'd be pretty scary to deal with a kid that can evaporate a building on accident, but what about things like the mutant that can heal cancer patients or lift stuff into orbit for no energy cost? There are hazards, but there is also awesome potential for advancing society. And statistically speaking, the number of mutants who would use their powers to antisocial ends would be pretty tiny; people like being safe and having good food and a warm place to sleep, they aren't going to just go insta-crazy because they've got some built-in firepower now.
Being a mutant in a world where people get similar powers after they are born but are treated as heroes makes the whole X-Men allegory fall apart. That's the basic gist of it. If society treats the Avengers the same way they treat mutants than there is no reason for mutants to be called out as a super special group.
Except it's another way for humans to judge and imprison people based not on their actions, but who they are born as. Super-human individuals are few and far between even in the MCU, where there's maybe 40ish heroes and only half have actual powers.
Mutants also develop as teens where most heroes don't start hero-ing until adulthood. So young mutants with big powers and emotional problems leads to dangerous situations.
Imagine the nightmare if children woke up with guns for hands suddenly across the world
Hmm... this'll be interesting. Let's categorize, for heroes. The one issue is, does supergenius intellect* count as a superpower in and of itself, or not?
Obviously, some of the definitions of people that count as heroes are subjective too. For example, I count Happy as one, but don't count Howard Stark. Because for my definition, I require them to not only be a part of the Universe, they've got to mix it up, or at least try to. Also, it could be argued that Groot and Mantis aren't "powered", because they're aliens and it's their default, but I don't see it that way. Aliens that don't appear to have powers beyond modestly improved strength/speed/endurance I count as normal.
Yes, but on the other hand, teenagers.
The idea of giving 1000 adolescents across the country the equivalent of an assault weapon that doesn't need reloading and can't be taken away from them* terrifies me.
Their brains literally aren't done yet, and a lot of them don't really understand consequences.
* Especially what happens when someone inevitably tries to anyway. Or someone shoves them or calls them a name. Or they decide they want to be on all the news channels.
Yes, but on the other hand, teenagers.
The idea of giving 1000 adolescents across the country the equivalent of an assault weapon that doesn't need reloading and can't be taken away from them* terrifies me.
Their brains literally aren't done yet.
(* especially what happens when someone inevitably tries to anyway.)
Yeah, I think this is the big one. Adults who get their superpowers in their 20s or 30s or later, even if they're supervillains, use them for adult ends. The thought that any random 12-15 year old in your kids school could become a minor god at any moment would have to be somewhat terrifying.
Like...Xavier is probably a minor saint for turning out to only be 'kind of an asshole sometimes'. How many 13 year old boys with his powers would turn out more like the Purple Man?
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Yeah, you can't really have the Avengers be liked and the X-men be hated in the same setting with any kind of internal consistency involved.
Yeah you can. You totally can. I in fact would argue that having mutants/the X-Men in a universe all by their lonesome destroys the whole point.
If you have the mutants in their own world, well then yeah you could see the point of the bigots. Their hate would still be immoral, but when you don't know if the kid down the street is gonna turn into a walking nuke who can't control himself when he turns 12, well...it kinda makes sense to be wary when you find out there's mutants on your block and to want to know who they are and above all, what they can do.
Prejudice isn't rational, though. An attempt to be metaphorically opposed to bigotry that paints bigots as having a point makes the debate into "well yeah they have some arguments but they take it to far" or "they're being big ol' meanies about it", rather than "they're wrong, because they're just repeating stereotypes and not relying on facts."
Racism isn't just about hating, e.g., black people. It's about being prejudiced against black people and giving white people a pass, even though both are equally as likely to be good or evil, helpful or dangerous.
What if that kid down the street gets violent with his powers? Every single Avenger has turned crazy or evil and killed people and the average Marvel citizen loves them while hating the kid down the street who can turn any flower they want blue.
Not to mention that even normal kids do awful things to each other without the ability to read minds, go invisible, walk through walls or teleport. How do you discipline a kid like X-23 or one that can literally become intangible.
Anyways the real answer is writing, and the MCU has had excellent writing so far. I trust them to handle mutants in a nuanced way. Same goes for F4 and Doom. Can't wait to see what they do.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, you can't really have the Avengers be liked and the X-men be hated in the same setting with any kind of internal consistency involved.
Yeah you can. You totally can. I in fact would argue that having mutants/the X-Men in a universe all by their lonesome destroys the whole point.
If you have the mutants in their own world, well then yeah you could see the point of the bigots. Their hate would still be immoral, but when you don't know if the kid down the street is gonna turn into a walking nuke who can't control himself when he turns 12, well...it kinda makes sense to be wary when you find out there's mutants on your block and to want to know who they are and above all, what they can do.
Prejudice isn't rational, though. An attempt to be metaphorically opposed to bigotry that paints bigots as having a point makes the debate into "well yeah they have some arguments but they take it to far" or "they're being big ol' meanies about it", rather than "they're wrong, because they're just repeating stereotypes and not relying on facts."
Racism isn't just about hating, e.g., black people. It's about being prejudiced against black people and giving white people a pass, even though both are equally as likely to be good or evil, helpful or dangerous.
What if that kid down the street gets violent with his powers? Every single Avenger has turned crazy or evil and killed people and the average Marvel citizen loves them while hating the kid down the street who can turn any flower they want blue.
Except that the public would never be willing or able to keep it straight who is a mutant or who isn't, and it would get especially more complicated with the Avengers because they take both mutants and metahumans. The general public isn't even willing to put in the effort to distinguish between religious zealots who want to wipe out everybody who isn't their form of zealot and regular folks with skin color that's just a little too dark for comfort.
The whole situation would instantly and permanently become "does this person have weird scary powers or not?", with absolutely no regard for how they got those powers. For anybody that's afraid, it wouldn't matter two shits that Cyclops was born with his powers and Steve Rogers got his via an experiment; both would be scary superhumans.
Pretty much the only kind of person that would get a pass would be the likes of Stark, and ONLY if he's able to make it ultra-clear to the public that he's just a smart guy instead of mutant smart. Mutant versus metahuman would be entirely pedantic, because the folks who would flip out against mutants would flip out against metahumans just as hard.
Arguing over how people would react to super powered people in the REAL world is a pointless exercise. In the MU people react differently to mutants than to those who came by their powers in others ways. That’s it.
You can rationalise it any number of ways, from seeing mutants as a dangerous aberration rather than the result of a patriotic science project, tech wizardry, a nuclear accident or alien friendship. Mutants can crop up anywhere, and some of the bad ones talk about being homo superior, replacing humanity wholesale. It would absolutely matter to lots of people that Steve Rogers got his powers as part of a war-winning patriotic science project and Cyclops got them by accident. One is a volunteer hero; one is a dangerous freak.
And more than one non mutant hero is hated and feared as well. Daredevil and Spidey get shit constantly.
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
If Spidey is shit upon and he isn't a mutant than what differentiates his situation from mutants'? If there isn't a difference then why have mutants? If there is a difference then how does that make sense given there are non-mutants with terrible powers who have done far worse but aren't stereotyped?
Spider-man's story resonates on a personal level. The mutant story resonates on a sociological one.
For me, the X-Men allegory is strongest when all mutants are treated the same regardless of what they do or who they are. It feels like it hits the wall of credulity more quickly when people make action figures of the Hulk even after he rampages through a city while simultaneously shitting all over a kid who can make butterflies out of paper.
They get hated on for different reasons, usually the 'masked vigilante, what gives them the right, who holds them accountable' angle.
Plus a lot of the time Spidey (and probably Daredevil too, I don't read enough of them) are assumed to be mutants anyway.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
They get hated on for different reasons, usually the 'masked vigilante, what gives them the right, who holds them accountable' angle.
Plus a lot of the time Spidey (and probably Daredevil too, I don't read enough of them) are assumed to be mutants anyway.
Actually, JJJ has time and time again been very very clear that mutant hate is a)bullshit, and b) the menace Spider-Man is not a mutant.
Maybe not by JJJ, but the general public have been 'get the hell away from me, mutant freak' on some occasions.
The point is, unless the person with powers opens up about how they got them, they're assumed to be mutants.
Of course, if it was just that easy any mutants who wanted to escape persecution could just lie about their powers. No Cyclops isn't a mutant, he just used some gamma-exposed eyedrops one time.
Heroes are not particularly loved in the Marvel universe. Prejudice is skewed heavily toward mutants and inhumans, but most superheroes are seen as a destructive drain on society, and most of the problems the solve are a result of their existence. Even cosmic megathreats generally show up because supers put Earth on the galactic map.
It really doesn't help that the Avengers kept the Hulk around for so long when he was considered the biggest threat to public safety in the world, or that the companies that clean up after superbattles are generally owned by rich superheroes.
This is very much Marvel's brand, and always has been. It appeals to the same audience as all those YA novels where it's the misfits, the angsty teens, who always have to save the fucked-up adult world from itself and/or external threat(s).
Tony Stark is a human with human made tech. Steve Rogers is a human made physically perfect with human science. It was outer space alien shit that made Ben Grimm an orange, rocky thing, but it was during understandable human exploration and Ben himself is still human.
Mutants are not human. Because of that, they can't be understood, and thus implicitly cannot be trusted, no matter their individual morality. Also, their powers manifest suddenly, with no warning. With a gun you at least know the danger. And weapons of all kinds can be tracked and regulated. Mutants can't be understood, can't be trusted, can't be tracked, can't be controlled. No wonder they are feared and scorned.
Or you can just say it's all Magneto's fault. Anti-mutant prejudice was not a thing until Eric Lensherr, delusional and paranoid from his experience with Nazis, made it so.
Everyone Hates Mutants wasn't even the focal point of the X-Men comics for like. A long time. During Claremont's original Uncanny run the anti mutant bigotry was still there but it didn't dominate literally every aspect of their slice of the world. They had tons of stories about shit that didn't involve people hating them for no reason. And in the last issue before the start of the Outback era, the X-Men were caught on camera sacrificing themselves to save the city and were hailed as heroes by the public.
So some balance would be fuckin nice because the state of the comic universe right now re: mutants is exhausting.
Everyone Hates Mutants wasn't even the focal point of the X-Men comics for like. A long time. During Claremont's original Uncanny run the anti mutant bigotry was still there but it didn't dominate literally every aspect of their slice of the world. They had tons of stories about shit that didn't involve people hating them for no reason. And in the last issue before the start of the Outback era, the X-Men were caught on camera sacrificing themselves to save the city and were hailed as heroes by the public.
So some balance would be fuckin nice because the state of the comic universe right now re: mutants is exhausting.
yeah, well, the state of the real world re: minorities of all stripes (which mutants have always been stand-ins for) is also... not good.
(so let's put it in our fictional entertainment too, so it's inescapable! some say "yes, absolutely, don't look away from it", while others...)
yeah, well, the state of the real world re: minorities of all stripes (which mutants have always been stand-ins for) is also... not good.
(so let's put it in our fictional entertainment too, so it's inescapable! some say "yes, absolutely, don't look away from it", while others...)
But that's precisely the problem I have with it. The world is shit. I know its shit. The news continually tells me it's shit. Maybe our fictional media can present a positive message to combat that shit, like that mutants are like anyone else and their weird powers don't make them less human in their wants and fears. Maybe mutants can actually make progress towards societal acceptance instead of being the punching bags of the marvel universe.
Like, literally everything for the mutants has gotten worse and worse in universe. Their situation has never changed for the better. So the message of the comics is basically "hey minorities, everything sucks for you and it will continue to suck forever, in multiple dimensions and timelines, and nothing you do will make it better"
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I also feel like the X-Men work best as a Saturday Morning Cartoon Show. And I don't mean that facetiously. We're in this age now where "nerd culture" (and everything else, really) is now being rebuilt and repurposed for adult consumption. But I feel like we're losing sight of this place where some stories are meant to be told to the young.
Yeah, I'm gonna need some backstory there. Why does Richard's care if anybody is a mutant? Is he talking about his son? Did Galactus get lost in downtown traffic again? Why the fuck does everything look so shitty?
Marvel has these new Grand Design comics out that basically codense all the years of continuity down into a couple issues. And the latest Fantastic Four Grand Design suggests Franklin Richards, one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel universe, that baby Reed is kissing, is really Sue and Namor's baby https://www.cbr.com/fantastic-four-namor-actually-franklin-richards-father/
Important thing to note: the two Grand Design comics (X-Men and Fantastic Four) are standalones and their own continuity. Especially FF: Grand Design is filled with little jokes that are not meant to be taken as the new status quo.
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Reed Richards is fantastically rich, rich mutant's do just fine. He's also fantastically naïve* and has as recently as Civil War II said that if the world only heard the personal stories of good mutants and inhumans all the prejudice would just evaporate, an illusion he still labors under despite it not doing any good for his entire life.
*-"Look, I built an extrajudicial concentration camp for superheroes."
"You, uh... you kind of sound like a Nazi."
"I'm very smart and thought this through!"
Peter Parker wants dirt on Joe Biden?
To be fair, Cornpop sounds like a 60s/70s Spider-Man villain
Does the comic side have anything in their toolbox other than "every other hero group fights the X-Men"? Jesus christ. I hope none of that crap makes it into the MCU.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
I'm actually hyped for it because it's probably going to be Hickman writing it. So yeah, I hope ALL of that crap comes to the MCU instead of another lame 90s retread
https://www.cbr.com/mcu-x-men-dawn-of-x-inspiration/
But the Avengers and the X-Men make for groups that would probably fight in certain circumstances. The Avengers are mostly lawful neutral/lawful good, whereas the X-Men are (usually) outlaws hiding from a world that hates and fears them, persecuted and murdered where they aren't just shunned. And the Avengers conspicuously don't do very much about it. I mean, they're very busy, and no one's seriously suggesting they're co-signing the persecution, but more than once when the Avengers rock up to the mansion whomever answers the door politely inquires where Thor was last week when Rahne Sinclair was being chased through Central Park by an angry mob of racists?
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See the problem I have with all that is its borne out of logistical issues, not genuine planned storytelling. It feels disingenuous. The Avengers arent showing up because some other writer is doing some other thing with them and the X-Men writer is doing this other thing and they're on different deadlines and so and so doesn't have permission to use such and such character etc etc.
It's like, there's no in character reason for the Avengers to ignore giant murder robots hunting down mutants. Or to stand aside and not challenge racist legislation. Except that the writers need them to because plot, or the X-Men writer hates the Avengers so when he does get the chance to use them he makes them look like assholes. Any time heroes fight each other in comics it comes off like a bunch of petty nerds going no MY favourite hero is better. Especially when theres a billion and one great villains to use.
That's why I've always wanted the X-Men to exist in their own universe, because if you wrote the rest of the heroes to NOT be convenient assholes around mutant issues then those issues wouldn't exist.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
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That's different, though. Cap and Iron Man have separate lives, and the Avengers don't always fight together. There are plenty of stories to be had with smaller groups of them where it's not convenient to contact others. But one of the primary principles of the X-Men is anti-mutant prejudice, something the Avengers can combat on their own schedule. Nobody's asking for Thor to swing by and Mjolnir some Sentinels, but the notion that he completely ignores the sentiment all the time, and never says anything about it in public? That's kinda nonsense. The whole thing would make more sense (and be a better parallel) if it were clear that anti-mutant hysteria is not the dominant attitude, or even that of a plurality, and the Avengers do oppose it. Because prominent opposition doesn't squelch a sentiment, and Victor Von Doom is still ruler of Latveria, Sentinels can still be a thing, but the whole affair wouldn't seem so absurd.
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Squirrel-Girl is an unfair comparison.
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Whenever there's a "vs" event like this, it's never quite that easy - the involved teams will frequently reshuffle and other teams or individual heroes will align on one side or another to balance the teams. For Avengers vs. X-Men, the X-Men were joined by a number of Brotherhood members, but also saw a bunch of big names leave. At least one of the new teams thus formed took the Avengers' side.
The FF also have like twenty former fill-in members kicking around, most of which have their own teams. The Thing was a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy just last year, for example. Reed Richards has also fought superhero wars without actually leaving his lab before just by leveraging his connections. Reed Richards has also had a hand in at least one version of the Sentinel program, and used them during the fist Civil War.
It'll probably end up being "Three of the FF and half the Guardians and Ant-man and a Sentinel vs. Two-thirds of the current X-Men but not Wolverine and the other FF and also three Spider-men but nobody's really keeping track of which three it is."
Edit: Holy crap that is a copy/paste fail. I'm going to leave that one for posterity, I don't even know how I managed to get her name three times and only one of them was inside the link.
Except it's another way for humans to judge and imprison people based not on their actions, but who they are born as. Super-human individuals are few and far between even in the MCU, where there's maybe 40ish heroes and only half have actual powers.
Mutants also develop as teens where most heroes don't start hero-ing until adulthood. So young mutants with big powers and emotional problems leads to dangerous situations.
Imagine the nightmare if children woke up with guns for hands suddenly across the world
Racism against metahumans? Absolutely. Aside from the basic primal fear of being totally outclassed by another human being, superpowers would kick off all kinds of religious and racial prejudices. Even though the Wakanda Accords were bullshit, the cause of them makes 1000% sense as people would be absolutely terrified that there are people out there with the power to turn a whole city into a planet-busting weapon, and also that there are people powerful enough to stop said weapon.
There are a lot of mutants without any of the crazy gun-hand stuff, though. Yeah, it'd be pretty scary to deal with a kid that can evaporate a building on accident, but what about things like the mutant that can heal cancer patients or lift stuff into orbit for no energy cost? There are hazards, but there is also awesome potential for advancing society. And statistically speaking, the number of mutants who would use their powers to antisocial ends would be pretty tiny; people like being safe and having good food and a warm place to sleep, they aren't going to just go insta-crazy because they've got some built-in firepower now.
Hmm... this'll be interesting. Let's categorize, for heroes. The one issue is, does supergenius intellect* count as a superpower in and of itself, or not?
Clear powers - Hulk, Thor, Heimdall, Loki, Quill, both Maximoffs, Vision, Parker, Strange, Wong, Tilda, Groot, Mantis, Danvers (15)
Arguable - Rogers, T'Challa.
Normal (but possibly techno-enhanced) - Stark*, Rhodes, Bucky, Peggy, Hawkeye, Widow, Coulson, Hill, Fury, Potts, Happy, Wilson, Rocket*, Gamora, Drax, Nebula, Yondu, Lang, Hank Pym*, Hope van Dyne, Sharon Carter, Valkyrie, Korg, Reet, Okoye, M'Baku, Ross, Shuri, Beck. (29)
Obviously, some of the definitions of people that count as heroes are subjective too. For example, I count Happy as one, but don't count Howard Stark. Because for my definition, I require them to not only be a part of the Universe, they've got to mix it up, or at least try to. Also, it could be argued that Groot and Mantis aren't "powered", because they're aliens and it's their default, but I don't see it that way. Aliens that don't appear to have powers beyond modestly improved strength/speed/endurance I count as normal.
The idea of giving 1000 adolescents across the country the equivalent of an assault weapon that doesn't need reloading and can't be taken away from them* terrifies me.
Their brains literally aren't done yet, and a lot of them don't really understand consequences.
* Especially what happens when someone inevitably tries to anyway. Or someone shoves them or calls them a name. Or they decide they want to be on all the news channels.
Yeah, I think this is the big one. Adults who get their superpowers in their 20s or 30s or later, even if they're supervillains, use them for adult ends. The thought that any random 12-15 year old in your kids school could become a minor god at any moment would have to be somewhat terrifying.
Like...Xavier is probably a minor saint for turning out to only be 'kind of an asshole sometimes'. How many 13 year old boys with his powers would turn out more like the Purple Man?
Yeah you can. You totally can. I in fact would argue that having mutants/the X-Men in a universe all by their lonesome destroys the whole point.
If you have the mutants in their own world, well then yeah you could see the point of the bigots. Their hate would still be immoral, but when you don't know if the kid down the street is gonna turn into a walking nuke who can't control himself when he turns 12, well...it kinda makes sense to be wary when you find out there's mutants on your block and to want to know who they are and above all, what they can do.
Prejudice isn't rational, though. An attempt to be metaphorically opposed to bigotry that paints bigots as having a point makes the debate into "well yeah they have some arguments but they take it to far" or "they're being big ol' meanies about it", rather than "they're wrong, because they're just repeating stereotypes and not relying on facts."
Racism isn't just about hating, e.g., black people. It's about being prejudiced against black people and giving white people a pass, even though both are equally as likely to be good or evil, helpful or dangerous.
What if that kid down the street gets violent with his powers? Every single Avenger has turned crazy or evil and killed people and the average Marvel citizen loves them while hating the kid down the street who can turn any flower they want blue.
Anyways the real answer is writing, and the MCU has had excellent writing so far. I trust them to handle mutants in a nuanced way. Same goes for F4 and Doom. Can't wait to see what they do.
Except that the public would never be willing or able to keep it straight who is a mutant or who isn't, and it would get especially more complicated with the Avengers because they take both mutants and metahumans. The general public isn't even willing to put in the effort to distinguish between religious zealots who want to wipe out everybody who isn't their form of zealot and regular folks with skin color that's just a little too dark for comfort.
The whole situation would instantly and permanently become "does this person have weird scary powers or not?", with absolutely no regard for how they got those powers. For anybody that's afraid, it wouldn't matter two shits that Cyclops was born with his powers and Steve Rogers got his via an experiment; both would be scary superhumans.
Pretty much the only kind of person that would get a pass would be the likes of Stark, and ONLY if he's able to make it ultra-clear to the public that he's just a smart guy instead of mutant smart. Mutant versus metahuman would be entirely pedantic, because the folks who would flip out against mutants would flip out against metahumans just as hard.
You can rationalise it any number of ways, from seeing mutants as a dangerous aberration rather than the result of a patriotic science project, tech wizardry, a nuclear accident or alien friendship. Mutants can crop up anywhere, and some of the bad ones talk about being homo superior, replacing humanity wholesale. It would absolutely matter to lots of people that Steve Rogers got his powers as part of a war-winning patriotic science project and Cyclops got them by accident. One is a volunteer hero; one is a dangerous freak.
And more than one non mutant hero is hated and feared as well. Daredevil and Spidey get shit constantly.
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Spider-man's story resonates on a personal level. The mutant story resonates on a sociological one.
For me, the X-Men allegory is strongest when all mutants are treated the same regardless of what they do or who they are. It feels like it hits the wall of credulity more quickly when people make action figures of the Hulk even after he rampages through a city while simultaneously shitting all over a kid who can make butterflies out of paper.
Plus a lot of the time Spidey (and probably Daredevil too, I don't read enough of them) are assumed to be mutants anyway.
Actually, JJJ has time and time again been very very clear that mutant hate is a)bullshit, and b) the menace Spider-Man is not a mutant.
The point is, unless the person with powers opens up about how they got them, they're assumed to be mutants.
Of course, if it was just that easy any mutants who wanted to escape persecution could just lie about their powers. No Cyclops isn't a mutant, he just used some gamma-exposed eyedrops one time.
It really doesn't help that the Avengers kept the Hulk around for so long when he was considered the biggest threat to public safety in the world, or that the companies that clean up after superbattles are generally owned by rich superheroes.
Tony Stark is a human with human made tech. Steve Rogers is a human made physically perfect with human science. It was outer space alien shit that made Ben Grimm an orange, rocky thing, but it was during understandable human exploration and Ben himself is still human.
Mutants are not human. Because of that, they can't be understood, and thus implicitly cannot be trusted, no matter their individual morality. Also, their powers manifest suddenly, with no warning. With a gun you at least know the danger. And weapons of all kinds can be tracked and regulated. Mutants can't be understood, can't be trusted, can't be tracked, can't be controlled. No wonder they are feared and scorned.
Or you can just say it's all Magneto's fault. Anti-mutant prejudice was not a thing until Eric Lensherr, delusional and paranoid from his experience with Nazis, made it so.
So some balance would be fuckin nice because the state of the comic universe right now re: mutants is exhausting.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
yeah, well, the state of the real world re: minorities of all stripes (which mutants have always been stand-ins for) is also... not good.
(so let's put it in our fictional entertainment too, so it's inescapable! some say "yes, absolutely, don't look away from it", while others...)
But that's precisely the problem I have with it. The world is shit. I know its shit. The news continually tells me it's shit. Maybe our fictional media can present a positive message to combat that shit, like that mutants are like anyone else and their weird powers don't make them less human in their wants and fears. Maybe mutants can actually make progress towards societal acceptance instead of being the punching bags of the marvel universe.
Like, literally everything for the mutants has gotten worse and worse in universe. Their situation has never changed for the better. So the message of the comics is basically "hey minorities, everything sucks for you and it will continue to suck forever, in multiple dimensions and timelines, and nothing you do will make it better"
Which uh. Is kinda shitty, in my opinion.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
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Important thing to note: the two Grand Design comics (X-Men and Fantastic Four) are standalones and their own continuity. Especially FF: Grand Design is filled with little jokes that are not meant to be taken as the new status quo.
They are also fantastic nostalgic fun.