X-MEN 713
from a public unable and unwilling to understand that mutants deserved the same rights
as humans. Yet Xavier’s liberalism contains an implicit contradiction: mutants can, in
fact, by their nature pose signifi cant threats to public safety. Unlike racialized minorities
or homosexuals, the danger posed by mutants is not a social construction; it is real and
palpable. Liberal reasoning can easily refute homophobic claims that gay people pose a
danger to society; but charges that mutants are dangerous are wholly legitimate (if in-
complete), given the extraordinary powers they possess, and are often borne out in the
stories themselves through powerful characters like Onslaught. In that context, when
anti-mutant crusaders like Senator Robert Kelly propose Draconian measures to regis-
ter, control or cure all mutants, it is not altogether impossible to sympathize with their
position, even if the execution of their plans sometimes makes readers recoil.
Indeed, despite attempts by writers to show the dark and dehumanizing nature of
these measures, depicting scenes that can evoke the most horrifying images of the Jew-
ish Holocaust, the Soviet police state or Apartheid in Israel, there remains the consis-
tent problem that mutants’ powers give them uniquely destructive powers that German
Jews, Soviet dissidents, or Palestinians under occupation do not. As a result, the books
might be seen to partly legitimate the very discrimination they seek to critique; after all,
if registration or genetic re-confi guration is a legitimate response to “the mutant prob-
lem,” what is to say that sterilization is not a legitimate response to “the gay problem?”
Naturally, this is not the intention of the writers, but rather it is a logical fl aw inher-
ent in the use of potentially dangerous mutants to dramatize the liberal ideology to
which the books try to adhere. It is notable, too, that while Xavier and his brood preach
tolerance and respect, their writers are reluctant to embrace that same spirit; gendered
behavior norms are regularly reinforced and there have been very few gay or lesbian
characters in the X-books. Some characters, like Northstar, Destiny and Mystique, were
given “gay characteristics” but Marvel Comics refused to allow any explicitly gay charac-
ters until Northstar, then a member of the Alpha Flight team, outed himself in 1992.
In the mid-1990s, a homoerotic attraction began to develop between two members of
X-Force, Rictor and Shatterstar, but before it could blossom into an explicit relation-
ship, new writers took over the title and the storyline was abruptly dropped. Th e two
characters have since shared an on-panel kiss in the X-Factor series. Indeed, by the early
21st century, gay and lesbian characters were more widely accepted by American culture
as a whole, and Northstar offi cially became a temporary member of the X-Men in 2001
and a regular member in 2002. Th e dynamic of the X-books was signifi cantly altered in
2005 in the “Decimation” crossover. During that event, a deranged and hysterical Scar-
let Witch inadvertently caused the un-mutation, and in some cases the death, of all but
200 of the world’s mutant population. Th is posed newer, tougher questions for the re-
maining mutants: are mutants a separate and now-endangered species that should seek
to rebuild its genetic stock, or were they always simply the human products of genetic
‘accidents’ who should greet the end of these mutations as an invitation to re-enter the
human society from which they came?
Tyler Shipley
