BW Media Spotlight

I’m not really a fan of the X-Men and I’m not sure why. Granted there are few Marvel heroes I really gravitate to. For example I don’t really care about the Fantastic Four either outside of their historical importance to the history of Marvel Comics and comics in general. I respect that but I’ve never really been into any incarnation of the FF in comics or TV. Even the X-Men I can say I liked X-Men: Evolution, but that’s pretty much it.

What’s always bothered me is the idea that mutants are always hated and feared but other superheroes don’t suffer that issue…on a regular basis anyway and before the Civil War nonsense. The X-Men group of titles and related titles are supposedly an analog for bigotry, racism at the time though it makes sense that modern readers would throw in homophobia, transphobia, and whatever else is out there. (Though its always about what you are and not who you are. There is no analog for various worldviews because that the internet has decided we’re allowed to hate people for and not bother to figure out what they actually mean. I went over that on Monday with Dr. King’s speech.) However there are two reasons why this analog doesn’t really stand up.

The first is the reason I mentioned and the one that is usually used by critics of the mutant idea, that there isn’t a huge difference between Nightcrawler and Spider-Man outside of specific abilities and the fact that only Peter’s costume is creepy, due to Spidey’s origins in a mild horror comic and Kurt being a Christian forced to look like a classic depiction of a demon. However, there’s another argument that was brought up on Twitter recently. Comics By Perch recently looked at that Twitter discussion and pointed out that maybe the X-Men are just bad analogs because there’s a difference between the mutants and the aforementioned marginalized groups. Maybe their concern has some merit. Or would if not for the follow-up video I have from NerdSync that cancels both theories out in a very stupid way.

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