Opinion: What’s The Problem With The X-Men?

When it comes to superhero comics, chiefly those published by Marvel and DC Comics, status quo is  king. Entire universes are built around circular events, always returning to well-trod paths for their most popular characters.

Sometimes the status quo isn’t a bad thing. There are creators that have done inventive, fun, or mind-blowing things with the perceived been-there-done-that status quos. Other times it just means getting shades of stories that we’ve read before.

Often, big character-changing or line-changing eras are followed up by runs that are far closer to the mainstream ideal of the character(s).

So, what does any of that have to do with the question that is the title of this article? Everything.

See, the status quo of the X-Men is, essentially, they lose.

Now, you might be saying “But plenty of superheroes are losing all the time” since that is part of the fallible human aspect of Marvel’s mythos. True, but it’s not quite the same.

Take Spider-Man (be it Peter or Miles) for example. Since they are my favorite superhero of all.

Spider-Man loses, we know this. When he does though it’s the loss of a relationship, a loved one passes, loses a job, a fight, or misses out on life things because of heroic responsibilities. Pretty standard relatable stuff really. Which tracks since the concept of Spider-Man is that he is very much the epitome of the “common man” story element.

Meant to be a stand-in for all of us regular people, dealing with many of the trials, tribulations, and world issues that we find in life.

Whereas, when the X-Men lose, well, they tend to lose everything.

That’s essentially because their inevitable outcome within the universe is one where the bigotry tends to win out. Hated and feared, fighting for the humans that want nothing to do with them, and saving the world from ‘bad’ mutants and humans alike. This is the status quo that has endured and no matter what they achieve, it is the status quo that circles back around.

We’re seeing that right now with the From The Ashes relaunch that is following the five years known as The Krakoan Era. Five years where mutants still had to deal with bigots and villains, but they found success. Through a community, nation, of their own. No more were they forced to live under the thumb of their oppressors, able to try and forge their own society and destinies.

Until those same in-universe oppressors ripped it all away and the publisher powers that be decided it was time to shove the X-Men back into their losing box.

To be fair, the aforementioned The Krakoan Era wiped out all it’s success by having Orchis (the bigot group du jour) by winning against the team until they were defeated. In the end, they still won (even after their destruction) because Krakoa is gone and mutants are hated and feared (to a bigger extreme) for this new era.

I’ve been a fan of the X-Men since I picked up my first comics so long ago. Grew up on the 90s animated show, and really loved the 2000s animated series. My return to comics as an adult (using my own money at last!) came at the end of the Morrison era, and it was Spider-Man and X-Men books I grabbed first. I’ve been reading the X-Men pretty much straight through from 2003 till this year, when I’ve decided to mostly take a break.

There is a whole other article about why I’m taking a break, but the TLDR of it is essentially this article. The X-Men being stuck in a time loop of losing and bigots winning has reached a tiresome point. Especially when in the real world all of us marginalized folks are watching with dread and fear as a person dead set on wiping us all out threatens to snag the land’s highest office, for the second horrifying time.

That’s not to say that comics should be scrubbed of these things, becoming just pure escapism. In fact, I always counter that every piece of artistic expression should be open to really looking at the world around us. Art and life are intertwined, and despite what some out there claim, all art is ‘political’ in some fashion. That’s because what we just call politics, very much is life.

Since politics are about deciding the life and death realities of every person under the particular governmental umbrella.

That’s a long way around to state that I’m not against reflecting reality in various ways in comics.

At a certain point though, status quos, be they real or fictional, become tiresome. There is a reason that we as a people have overturned various status quos since the dawn of time. The time comes when the status quo is not accepted, and a new status needs to be found.

For the X-Men, the time for something new, is long past.

Bring back the soap opera, that teams, the flashy heroics, or whatever else. All of that is fine. Just find a way to do it that doesn’t strip the characters of any semblance of success, keeping them under bigot thumbs all the time. Building the characters up, only to invariably rip them back down becomes less and less effective over time, when the outcome is going to be some variation of the same.

For every success the X-Men and mutants might have, the threat that editorial edict, writer inclination, or publisher whims will bury them under bigot rubble again is always looming. There are ways to make mutants the “metaphor” for those who are marginalized in the real world, without things being exhaustively dialed back to the worst for the characters. The whole relatable aspect begins to be lost, when reading about these characters means being constantly reminded that sometimes the hateful keep on winning.

Trust me, we don’t need a comic book to remind us of that. I’ll just turn on the TV or boot up social media, and see the face of our reality’s own deluded, garbage spouting, orange tinged William Stryker.

Fixing the problem with the X-Men is not a hard one.

Just one that those in charge have to want to fix. Right now, though, they seem totally fine with the problem.

What a shame.