When viewers tune into the new X-Men ‘97 animated Disney+ series at the end of March, they’ll notice that shapeshifting mutant Morph has undergone some changes since the character’s debut in the original X-Men: The Animated Series. Not only have the showrunners moved Morph away from the original cartoon’s haggard vice-principal look in favor of the pale, blank-faced design used in Age of Apocalypse, they’ve also announced the new version of Morph will be non-binary.
The decision makes sense, considering that the character’s entire powerset is rooted in identity fluidity, even if the trope of a queer shapeshifter is a little on the nose (or would be, if Morph had a nose). But this of course led to predictable howls of outrage from A Certain Type of Internet Man, who sees fresh new evidence of the “woke mind virus” whenever a global entertainment megacorp makes a modest alteration to modernize their intellectual property.
The overwhelming response to these people was heartening to see. Commenter after commenter pointed out that if you’re coming at the X-Men for being “too woke,” you’re about half a century too late. For decades, the mutant metaphor has proven to be especially flexible for issues of race, gender, sexuality, cultural identity, and so much more.
However, in the well-intentioned rush to shut the bigots down, an inaccurate alternate history of the mutant metaphor has started to take root — one that insists Professor X and Magneto were always intended as stand-ins for Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X, and that X-Men sprang from the minds of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby fully formed as an obvious metaphor for the Civil Rights struggle.
This revisionism risks depriving certain creators of the credit they deserve, as well as underappreciating the boldness of some of the stances that early Marvel took. But most importantly, when you’re up against pinheads who attempt to suppress any facts that conflict with their own fictionalized version of history, it’s worth the effort to make sure you’ve got the real story right.
X-Men #1 (Marvel Comics)
X-Men #1 hit the stands in July of 1963 (the same month as Avengers #1, believe it or not) to take advantage of a slight loosening of the draconian, DC Comics-owned distribution arrangement that Marvel was stuck with during its formative years. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, Lee and Kirby wasted no time pulling together a couple of new titles in the mold of Marvel’s already popular superhero series.
In context, it’s clear that X-Men was reverse-engineered from Marvel’s early successes. It was a team book in the mold of Fantastic Four, Marvel’s most popular comic at the time, starring a cast of young super-students a la comics’ first solo teen superhero, Spider-Man. (Allegations that elements of X-Men were lifted from DC’s Doom Patrol are a bit specious, considering Doom Patrol basically started out as Fantastic Four with half the serial numbers filed off).
The X-Men’s first (and still most famous) antagonist, Magneto, was a one-dimensional baddie with generic world-conquering ambitions, a far cry from the militant mutant separatist with a quasi-sympathetic backstory he became. There would be no mention of Magneto as a Holocaust survivor until Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum’s Uncanny X-Men #150 hit the stands in 1981, 18 years later. The fact that the retcon graft took so well is evidence of how little there was to rewrite.
Even the idea of mutants as a separate race was more of a labor-saving storytelling mechanic than anything else. Lee admitted as much in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, when recounting his contributions to the creation of the X-Men:
“[O]nce I figured out what powers they’d have, I had to figure, how did they get their powers? And they were all separate people that weren’t connected to each other, so I knew that would be a helluva job. And I took the cowardly way out, and I figured, hey, the easiest thing in the world: they were born that way. They were mutants. So I thought that would be one way to get around having to find new origins.”
Amazing Spider-Man #87 (Marvel Comics)
While many of Marvel’s creators might have been personally sympathetic to the Civil Rights struggle, it didn’t really come through in the comics until the late ‘60s, after Lee had spent time with students on the college lecture circuit. Lee and Gene Colan gave us the first African-American superhero, the Falcon, in the pages of June 1969’s Captain America #117. Two months later, another African-American character, the Prowler, made his debut in Amazing Spider-Man #78, in a story that consciously parallels Spidey’s own origin.
Boxer Eddie March became the first Black man to wear the Iron Man armor in Iron Man #21, published in October 1969, quickly followed by Sam Wilson putting on the Captain America uniform in March 1970’s Captain America #126, 44 years before Rick Remender did the same. Two months after that, the Prowler’s alter-ego, Hobie Brown, does Spidey a solid by dressing up as him, so Peter Parker can preserve his secret identity in Amazing Spider-Man #87.
X-Men didn’t have its chance to deliver a bold message about equality, because by the time the rest of the Marvel titles were saying their piece, it was already canceled. January 1970’s X-Men #66 was the last original issue of the series until 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1, in which the first class of X-Men were succeeded by the most racially and culturally diverse team in comics up until that point.
Although Len Wein is the writer credited with the X-Men reboot, Claremont quickly took the reins and truly unlocked the power of the mutant metaphor. He wasn’t the first creator to position mutants as a persecuted minority (that began with the first appearance of the Sentinels, in X-Men #14), but he made it such a fundamental concept of the book that it created an infinitely repurposable platform to examine prejudice in all of its forms.
By making Magneto a militant separatist who survived a genocide, X-Men was able to explore how oppression creates oppressors. By aiming an evangelical army at mutantkind, the 1982 original graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills examined the corrosive effects of religious intolerance. And by unleashing the Legacy Virus, an incurable disease that only mutants could contract, Claremont gave himself the opportunity to talk about AIDS at a time when it was still considered a “gay plague.”
When editorial standards or societal mores prevented him from making more explicit statements, Claremont coded characters as queer, trusting that his audience would pick up on it. Marvel wouldn’t have an openly gay mutant until Northstar declared “I AM GAY!” while punching an opponent dressed as a Mountie in 1992’s Alpha Flight #106, by Scott Lobdell, but Claremont insisted that he always intended for Destiny and Mystique to be a couple when he introduced the former in 1981. The relationship has only become canon within the last several years.
God Loves, Man Kills (Marvel Comics)
Lee and company certainly deserve credit for laying the groundwork of the mutant metaphor. They all created work that was unquestionably progressive when viewed in the context of the time in which it was published, as Marvel always strived to represent “the world outside your window.” Even if it’s not explicitly in the text, the Marvel Universe had to be talking about civil rights in the ’60s, because that’s what real people were doing in the real world.
It takes nothing away from Marvel’s mutants to point out that they weren’t explicitly designed as the perfect way to examine society’s contemporary and future ills. The power of the mutant metaphor, like mutants themselves, is in its ability to evolve and grow, and serve new stories that resonate with new audiences. That adaptability is the reason the X-Men will continue to be relevant, and why they’ll always continue to be a thumb in the eye of those who hate and fear change.
Every February, to help celebrate Darwin Day, the Science section of AIPT cranks up the critical thinking for SKEPTICISM MONTH! Skepticism is an approach to evaluating claims that emphasizes evidence and applies the tools of science. All month we’re highlighting skepticism in pop culture, and skepticism *OF* pop culture.
AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.
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