I grew up on superhero comics, and although they usually leave a lot to be desired, I always find myself checking in on the X-Men. Their struggles mirrored my own as a child, and the mutant metaphor draws many minority groups to them.
In the world of the X-Men, mutants, people with unique abilities, are presented as a marginalized and oppressed group. Many of them have physical mutations that make them targets for hate. Others try to hide their mutant status and blend in among “normal” people.
I still remember being around ten years old and reading about a mutant who desperately tried to make it to the X-Men for help. He was being pursued by a hateful, racist mob that beat him to death just before he reached the heroes.
The allegory was slathered onto the page, but it was made simple enough for my young mind to find the horror in it. As a Black child, it was easy enough to see the parallels to the real world.
The X-Men were created in the 60s, and for the most part, their plight grew more desperate with every decade. By the 2010s, there were only 200 mutants left on the planet. By the end of the decade, Marvel, the company that owns the X-Men property, seemed to be actively trying to kill the comic because of movie deal shenanigans.
Through it all, the characters continued to sacrifice for “normal” people. They constantly put themselves in the line of fire for people who hate them. Characters constantly died in the process.
In 2019, something changed. The X-Men moved to a mutant island, created medicines unlike any the world had seen, and defeated death. They brought back fallen comrades. They lived, laughed, and loved for the first time in what felt like decades.
I don’t want to pretend the in-universe system was perfect. Stories need conflict, and there was plenty of it. This was not limited to the angry “normal people.” Even the mutant leaders were shady and manipulative. Still, stories that involved sacrificing oneself for a racist were gone, and fresh stories took their place.
Granted, everything in comics reverts to the status quo, and after five years of bliss, the X-Men lost everything and were thrown back into a world that hated and feared them.
ICE Allegory
In the real world, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is more powerful than ever. The government has seemingly given them unlimited power and financial motivation. Although I don’t have firsthand experience with ICE, I’ve heard the stories of masked men sweeping down with demands but no identification. Students have told me how they’ve been questioned by strange men only weeks before the kids disappear from my class. It isn’t hard to find videos of masked ICE agents attacking people.
A concentration camp was opened in Florida to detain…let’s be honest…whoever the government wants to detain. They will find justification for it, not that they have to work too hard. Support, apathy, and fear stifle most forms of resistance.
Still, most Americans do oppose ICE’s approach. Most people would consider them the bad guys in a fictional story. It is one of the easiest villains to write: the evil government agency that uses violence to oppress and maintain control.
In most of these stories, we find a hero to rise against this system. So, when we find an agency parallel to ICE in the X-Men universe, what do you think happened?
Well, I guess it depends on who you ask.
Are the X-Men bad guys or good guys?
The X-Men have always operated in a grayer area than other superheroes. They aren’t just individuals deciding to help people; they also represent a marginalized minority group. It is difficult to defend a system that oppresses your people.
Many X-Men mainstays are former villains. This includes everything from former villains to would-be world conquerors. In the 2019 era of X-comics, all mutants were given asylum and forgiveness for their crimes. Many of them became heroic in the process, now living in a supportive system and no longer surrounded by constant racism. Others proved to be evil to the core.
Nevertheless, many “fans” started complaining about the X-Men being villains. Why are they working with the bad guys? Why aren’t they giving their medicines to other countries for free? Most importantly, why aren’t they sacrificing themselves for the “normal” people anymore?
All of these stories are more nuanced than these “fans” would lead one to believe:
- Allowing for real redemption should be the goal for any society. I can’t help but think back to when I worked at a detention center for children who were serving out criminal sentences. Many of those kids excelled once removed from the environments in which they were raised. Sadly, once placed back in those environments, they felt forced back into the criminal lifestyle.
- Many mutants wanted to give medicine freely; they understood that the medicine was power. The mutants still created a black market to get medication to people who couldn’t afford it. However, the mutants have tried to build their own homes before, and they were always destroyed. Again, this mirrors real-life experiences of marginalized groups, especially Black people in America. The medicine was something they could hold over other countries.
- As for sacrificing for “normal” people, well, this is something the X-Men never completely stopped doing. Sure, they were no longer going easy on Nazi wannabes, even some of the more morally innocent mutants killing them with little mercy, but they continued to spend a majority of their time saving civilians.
From what I understand, the books sold well during this era, especially with minority groups. However, some long-term readers felt alienated. I guess they related too much to that nazi being sliced up.
Eventually, a new era arose, once again changing everything, but this time by taking a huge step back. The island nation is destroyed. The mutants are once again dispersed across the world and even more hated than ever. Most of the mutants once again fall back into old habits. Many of the X-Men go back to sacrificing even for the most notorious type of human, while many of the recently reformed villains go back to committing petty crimes or worse.
Want to know how people responded? Many people said, finally, the X-Men are heroes again. I disagree.
ICE and the X-Men
In the most recent era of X-Men, a new government agency is in charge of capturing and detaining mutants. Like ICE, they seem to have full support of the government while committing inhumane acts. They also have their own concentration camp, built inside the former home of the X-Men. Many fellow mutants and friends are currently imprisoned, while the count steadily increases.
We are talking about a superhero story, so surely the heroes rebel against the corrupt government to save their suffering friends.
Nope.
The most egregious example, and the reason I’m writing this, comes from a story called the Hellfire Vigil. It plays on the tropes of the previous era and seems to promise something for the fans who miss that more hopeful time.
Before they lost their island, each year the mutants had a celebration called the Hellfire Gala. In-universe and in the real world, it was about celebrating themselves and each other. It was about love and embracing yourself. There was, for the most part, a positivity to it.
The Hellfire Vigil had a lot of this, including a concert by in-universe celebrity Dazzler. It is the Dazzler concert, however, that is the point of contention.
In the middle of the concert, our ICE surrogate arrests Dazzler. Dazzler, a former X-Man, allows this to happen. An audience of superpowered fans and literal superheroes watches as this happens.
Many real-world fans celebrated because the X-Men are heroes again. They aren’t doing what is easy. Do you know what I hear whenever people identify this as heroics?
I hear that marginalized groups should sit down, take it, and trust in the system. We should be okay with having our rights slip away and not move as the boulder picks up speed. We should be quiet and assimilate into mainstream society as much as possible because if we fail to do so, we forfeit our rights.
And our heroes?
They will just watch as we are taken away.
There was enough backlash that the author of this section of the story did apologize. He explained he didn’t realize how bad the ICE situation would be once the story was released. I guess I buy this because it is so easy for people to be ignorant of issues that don’t directly impact them, and as we have seen, some people are willfully ignorant to maintain their bliss.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any apologies from the editorial team, who seem passionate about this being the way for X-Men to be perceived as heroes. They have been pretty open about this. (The editor is also the one who believes Black men who are X-Men aren’t popular enough to be successful. A long story you can check out here.)
With the return of the X-Men films in the near future, they have the opportunity to do something special. They could make the X-Men the heroes we need in this dark time. However, with the characters being so neutered in the comics and Disney being risk-averse, my hopes aren’t high.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of LG Ware's work on Medium.