Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. When people think of
the X Men, they often think about the political or social illusions that are
often used in them. Is Magneto Malcolm X and Professor X Martin Luther King?
Is the whole thing a metaphor for queer rights, or for racism or
for anything else like that? What would they be like as activists or or
the like as a meme that is going around now? Well, we're talking
about more than fifty years of comic books, and so we're easily going to
answer those questions in ninety minutes or less. And I'm doing all that with
good friend of the podcast, Steve Sorman. Steve has been on this podcast
a bunch of times, and I've been on his. He is a comic
book expert extraordinaire, but also has a large background in politics and activism and
love to talk about the kind of things that we talk about on this podcast.
So Steve, welcome and tell us about yourself. Thank you so much
for having me. Yeah, I'm really excited. So in addition to having
read most every X Men comic that's ever been printed, probably about ninety percent
of them, it's not a feat that I'm particularly proud of, but you
know, we roll with it. Yeah. My previous life was as a
activistic community organizer, starting from about age sixteen, you know, I was
a junior in high school in nine to eleven. Happened and kind of got
throw you know, grew up pour into the punk scene and kind of got
thrown into politics that way and started learning just like how to be specifically,
my background comes in politics in activism, comes from the sort of like Saul
Alinsky in school of community organizing. So you set a goal a group of
people, you go out, you create confrontations with the system and confrontations with
power that sort of like help you achieve your goal essentially, and and understanding
political power and the types of community power that normal people can can gather and
wield. And so that's that's kind of like, uh, you know,
I come from the anti war movement against the war in I Rock. I've
also you know, both as a freelance organizer or or a self directed organizer,
but also working for nonprofits. I've worked in the antinuclear movement. I've
worked for trying to get better access to mental health UH services, and been
in the occupy movement, et cetera. I've been all over the place,
but generally I think the important part is is that I really I believe in
this sort of the community or organizing model as as sort of a method,
and and I think that because we see all the movements and injustices as as
very intertwined. The in my opinion, is like you know what you work
on, like as long as you understand that you have allies and fellow travelers,
and you know people in in other movements are working towards the same goals
as you. I think which movement or which part of the movement you happen
to be a part of is is kind of a smaller part than or is.
It's more interesting to me how you're what you're doing, how you're doing,
what your outlook is. So that's kind of what I bring to the
table. No, that's awesome, And you don't actually have connected over this
before. Yeah, I come very much in the same school. I trained
as a community or organizer read a Lensky back to front, and a lot
of my career first in you know, uh in you know, pro choice,
pro choice doctor of justice work and they now more recently in some other
work all comes from that community organizing background. And part of what inspired this
particular discussion that we're having today is there was a meme that was going around
and I forget you sent it to me, or I sent it to you,
or our friend will send it to both of us. But it basically
was about, like, you know, there's a canard often that goes around
about, you know, why is it that the right is so incredibly well
organized in their activism but the left, you know, you take a bunch
of leftist activists and it's like trying to herd cats. And someone put up
this meme that was like the best metaphor to explain leftist activism or even liberal
activism or whatever is the x men, you know, in terms of how
they are all generally wanting to go in the same general direction, but they
all have different ideas, and they're always fighting with each other, and they're
always like disagreeing, and everyone's sleeping with each other all the time, and
it's a giant interpersonal mess and yeah, yeah, yeah, quick quick aside.
Because I was working for a politician at the time, I I couldn't
get involved more directly with occupy than I wanted to, but I was,
you know, it was a fairly left wing politician, and so I was
asked to kind of keep an eye on it. I made friends with a
lot of people and some of the occupy movements, and I, unfortunately just
have resting therapist face, and so if I make friends with someone, they're
probably gonna want to talk to me about what's going on in their life.
Sure, so I would have all these conversations with Occupy people i'd met,
and I'd want to be talking to them about how things were going in the
movement. But and I got some of that, but a lot of what
I got was, oh, yeah, but you know, I was sleeping
with this person in the movement and then this other person started sleeping with him
and this other thing, and I don't know how to feel. And so
yeah, that statement of that Steve made is not just a joke. But
I love the meme of it though, because it's a great way to look
at them. But also I think it is really interesting to think about how,
you know, we can have all these debates about like how much politics
was there or wasn't there in comic books, and you know, you get
who will be like, no, why why are they? Why is it
also awoke now? Why is it all the politics now? Which is somewhat
ridiculous, but I think, you know, there's a lot of ways in
which the the political ideas or the social ideas of the authors have often been
fairly subtle in a lot of the comics, and a lot of them it's
it's it's turned from being more left wing to more right wing to you know,
all over the map. With the X Men, it seems there's always
been this, you know, much more in your face kind of social ideology,
a metaphor for oppression, a metaphor for being different. And so I've
wanted for a while to get my hands around this, and this is just
such a great opportunity to do it. And today, just as we're still
doing this under the strikes, we're mostly gonna be talking about what happens in
the comic, some of the stuff that happens on screen. I'm sure we'll
come up we'll be talking more about general trends. And let me kind of
start there with Steve, Given that we have when fifty years of comic books
that we're talking about, can you say exactly like what Wolverine's politics are or
Professor X is a metaphor for a real life figure in American politics. Yeah,
so, yes, and no, I think these the like you said,
there's been sixty one sixty years encounting of X Men comics now, although
fifty is more accurate because there was ten years where there are nearly several years
where they're nearly canceled. Whatever the point is, Uh, there, You
can't you can't go through with a fine tooth comb of every single thing that
they've done in all the storylines and say this is you know, morally and
politically consistent character that's out the window. And so I might draw from examples
here and there, but generally I want to stick to like kind of the
conceptual true north of these characters, because that is pretty sticky. Right when
you do a new adaptation in film, in television, Uh, they character
usually has like a consistent like what makes them tick? What's important about this
character? That's what we're going to to uh focus on in the adaptation or
in a new comic story most often. Uh. And that's kind of what
I would like to talk to more about here on the show. So why
is it that you think the X Men in particular is so often seen as
the one that is the most social justice he focused or the most kind of
activism focused. What is it about the X men as a comic idea that
lends itself to that? Well, I think there's there's two things. The
first is that, uh, you know, the characters of X men or
mutants, Uh, they are a separate class of people, you know,
in this in this case it's genetically, but you can you can kind of
transpose that idea. And you know, many many creators of the comics and
the adapted media have always do right that this is and transpose that onto different
classes of people that are set apart, whether it's a black community or whether
it is queer community. Uh, you know, these this concept of this
being a people rather than and the X men or the representative like mutants who
villains or heroes or whatever are rarely they are the most visible ones, but
they they kind of like stand out from or speak for or kind of represent
publicly a much larger base of just like regular people who are mutants whose mutation
might be like they're they have a funny color skin, or they burp butterflies,
or just like something that doesn't translate to like you shoot laser blasts from
your eye, like nine of mutants have these extremely uh you know, much
more subtle, less flashy mutations, and so it is designed as the combat
mutation someone would take when building a character, to a lot of points for
yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it ends up being because
you have this as a separate class of people, it ends up being you
know, always always about difference and how difference get you know, gets dealt
with in society, right, and so so that's one part of it,
I'm sorry. The other part is that the most superhero groups I like to
think of superheroes as activists, the closest analog to activism that we have in
uh, in a lot of popular media, because they are there are people
who want to work for community benefit for altruistic reasons. And I think if
you look at like a lot of popular media right now, like we're kind
of just exiting the goal this sort of like peak TV, Golden prestige TV,
that's the word, this prestige TV era of like difficult male protagonists who
have you know, uh, complicated morally gray lives and all of that,
and and that you know, it's kind of like the classic hero of literature
is a much more The conflicts are internal, they don't deal with the outside
world, and they are largely trying to contextualize a hero's actions or protagonist actions
through their psychological factors rather than like a genuine desire to do good for the
world. And these are things that are not represented in a lot of pop
culture except through superheroes. However, superheroes also are extremely conservative as a cultural
formation, and the fact that when you go out to save the world,
you're basically trying to save the world as to continue to exist as it does.
You're not trying to change anything. And the way that the X Men
set themselves apart is inherently they are trying to change something. Their goal,
their mission isn't save the world. They do that to build credibility. They
do that to build sort of like goodwill towards the human world. But their
ultimate goal is utopian or progressive. They want to work for an equal society
where you know, humans, mutants have equal rights, live alongside each other,
et cetera. I love it, and I think it's really true.
I think it's it's funny because again, you know, all the discussion about
wokeness and which I bring up as a way to understand what's happening in politics.
I tend to think that to me, people when someone says like,
well, are you woke or I generally think is like, I don't think
I'm woke because I think that word doesn't have any meaning anymore. But the
people who are afraid of people being woke, I'm probably what they're afraid of,
yes, But also I don't want to. I don't want to,
uh. I don't want to demean anybody else by saying that their politics that
don't agree with me are unwoke, which to me connotates like they haven't woken
up to the truth yet they can have their truth that's different from mine,
right, exactly exactly, And yeah, there's so much to say there,
but it can help a shorthand for the kind of exactly you know what I
mean? Yeah, totally know. It's a good yeah. But to me,
I love the way you talk about that because although I think we're going
there, that originally is the yea that like, there's often a perception that
all these superheroes are now seen as so woke or whatever the heck that right,
I think You're making a good point that there is something inherently kind of
conservative about the idea of the not only fighting for the status quo, but
also of you know, the one strong person, often but entirely a man
today, but most of superhero history, a man who can use violence to
do what they think is right in the world. Absolutely, yeah, obviously
I mean it. I say a critique like that, which is often then
used to dismiss superheroes entirely, Ie, like I have this podcast. That's
not my position. I think superheroes are great, and I think can take
on all sorts of different social or political or cultural meaning. But I just
said it's important to name that as one lens through which that can be understood.
And I love looking at that as the X Men being different from that,
And I want to get more into this. But there's two kind of
questions I want to throw it you. First. One is because this is
the part that I've always stumbled a bit with it, and I think the
X Men to address this. But I want to hear you talk more about
how there's a great metaphor there clearly for the way we humans will look at
a group and say you are different and so we're going to treat you as
though you are bad or skinned and often like that, there's a lot of
fear of you. Yeah, and then a lot of the times that fear
is based on stereotypes and mythology and other ideas of difference that are wildly overblown.
Yeah. And you can look through history to you know, all the
myths that were believed for so long and some people still believe about, you
know, people of African descent being stronger but less intelligent than all the other
kind of racist canards or the ideas through history and that where we see right
now about queer people or especially trans people being groomers or coming for your children
or all these things that have literally no basis in fact. And that same
thing with the libels against Jewish people or Muslims or any of those things.
That the reality is in almost all these cases that the people were afraid of
are a lot more like us than we than than the fear would like to
have us believe. Yeah, with X men, it would seem that for
the most part that's not true. That the you know, this is a
group that is significantly different from humanity, at least on the surface, and
does have powers that you know, uh, you know in you know the
like well, but what if you know I played poker a lot and Paul
Hoppy, my regular one of my regular guests, is also a big poker
player. We've talked about like what would the ethics be around, like if
someone could read your mind at the poker table, or someone who like couldn't
get arrested by the police because they have like all the powers they do.
The police are terrible, you know what I mean? But how how do
you how is it you think that X men is able to square that circle
of they're a metaphor for all these groups that we're afraid of without any legitimate
reason, even though they are a group that is fundamentally different in a lot
of ways from the rest of humanity. And is there some justification to the
fear people have X men in a way that's not true for oppressed groups in
our own world. I think you come up on an incredible point here.
Yeah. No, they don't handle that well at all. Uh. It's
it's it's a it's an absolute mess. Uh. And it's a big hole
in contradiction and storytelling of trying to you know, it comes up sometimes but
it all it does is give the villains justification for like, yeah, we
are afraid of you. You're powerful. Is somebody, you know, one
of your guys almost blew up the world the other day, you know,
and so it's like, uh, and they're like, well that was the
bad mutants and we're the good mutants and they're like, I don't care.
So at this point, like it earns X Men, And this is one
of the things I want to argue later is it ends up turning the X
Men comics. They're not really about social justice. They don't do anything.
They're not activists in the traditional sense. They have this utopian goal, but
most of what they do is either policing other mutants essentially, like another mutant
is going off and planning some you know, terrible plot to hurt an inflavor
whatever, and they go and intervene, right, or they are reacting to,
uh, you know, the government just made new sentinels that are going
to round up all the you know, things that are are very uh.
They react to when whenever they have uh, whenever they conflict with the human
world and the bigoted world. Right. The their role is essentially reactive.
They're not out there doing lunch counter protests or you know, or organizing mass
support in sort of this Lynskin model that we're both familiar with to change power
relations with the human world, you know, and and actually work for mutant
equality. And I think that's mostly a fault of well, it comes from
sort of the background of most creators of superhero media not being of the oppressed
class or not being familiar with social justice movements and what actually creates change.
And so there's a lot of you know, uh, you mentioned the comparison
between Martin Luther King and Xavier at the top of the show, and I
think a lot of that comparison comes from the fact that they're both referenced as
having a dream. And if you look into the and and this is such
a like white liberal society reading of what Martin Luther King was, what he
stood for, what he did. I was like, Oh, he's just
a guy who made some speeches and he had a dream. It's like,
no, he was an organizer. He was creating confrontations with with white society
that he would win, and he knew he would win in order to advance
a larger goal of equality. All of that is completely missing from X Men
media, and it's it's a shame I remember to get where you're coming from
there. And in some ways it's the same complaint that I have about the
movies and the like of all superheroes. But it's like, in the same
way that you know, I would want Marvel Civil War to be Tony says,
we need accountability. Steve says, maybe, but your version of accountability
and the Zacovie chords really sucks. And in the next hour is the two
of them debating how the Zacovia A chords should be right. But that doesn't
sell tickets. You need somebody to punch somebody in the face at some point.
Yeah, yeah, And I'm guessing gets the same thing in an X
Men. I would push back though a little bit in that And maybe this
is just more what's on screen, but doesn't Professor X often like characters like
Professor X and Jean Gray, aren't They often like going to testify to Congress,
or meeting with the president, or or speaking out in ways they are
meant to allay the fears of the wider public about mutants. In the other
kind of way that like you're right, Martin lu King or any other activists
did so much more than that, but that is a part of that activist
work. Sure, yeah, you show up on you know, the news
talk shows or you give speeches, so it's more like an Al Sharpton,
you know, or adjust Jackson. Then while Jesse Jackson was pretty involved in
the the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, so maybe more Sharpton was too. But
basically, you know, it's that kind of public figure role rather than like
the organizer, which is fine, Like the movement needs everybody. The movement
needs people with all sorts of skills to do everything that they do. It's
important to speak to the public and give them a face of what you're fighting
for, what it's all about. But yeah, the generally when you're making
these comparisons, it there are also historically contingent based on how history views these
civil rights figures, you know, at different points, and that when you're
straining for the analogy, that also changes the characterization of somebody like Magneto over
years, where it's like, no, he's a villain, No he's a
hero. No he's a villain, No he's a hero. Right, they
are changing understanding through history of who these civil rights figures are often effects how
they are how the fictional characters are portrayed as well, and so Billy on
that, and I want to talk about Martin Luther King macam X think in
a second. But is it fair to say then that, because I do
think there is still obviously, and this is why we're talking about it,
there is still a lot of social justice to be found in the X Men
stories. But it's not that they are acting in the same way there's groups
would act in our own world, and so it's not a perfect analog,
but that they're meant to be a metaphor. It's meant to be that the
way that other people treat them is very similar. Even if you have maybe
the fear has some more justifications. But still, because as you said,
and I think there's something doesn't appear on screen anywhere near as often as it
does on pay and on the page, like if you just watch the X
Men movies, I think it's a fair statement to be like, huh,
it's kind of weird that genetically all the patients are deeply combat relevant. Yeah,
but you know, as you're saying, because that's actually not the case
in the comics, that there is all these people who are act that maybe
the the idea that all mutants are something to be feared and anything like that
is actually very much not true, that there are some standouts perhaps, Yeah,
so so do you think it is fair to say that like that?
That's where we find the social justice messages is when it's being used as a
metaphor, and when it's being used as like a person can say, like,
oh, even with all the powers they have, the way the mutants
are treated is really not fair. Oh wait, that is actually kind of
like the way oh wait, that's actually kind of like the way this other
group and in my own world is being treated. Yeah. And I think
there's one more thing that particularly resonates with the sort of the metaphor for the
queer community. And because like I said, the X Men have kind of
been stapled onto every social justice uh you know community that U anybody who's working
for equal rights, you've got you've got an analogy there. And and you
asked one time, I think it was on I forget Who's pod, but
you asked, particular particularly what is the difference between the X Men and other
superheroes? Why do we expect why do we accept that? You know,
the fantastic for the Avengers are universally beloved by the human population and the X
men are feared and hated. Right, what's this gap? How how are
they different? And I think the difference is it's because mutants are our children
are the humans children like it. And it's this sort of like the the
closeness that breeds fear and distrust. Anybody could be a mutant. Anybody,
these kids can end up being a mutant. And it taps into this H
metaphor with sort of lgbt q UH acronym plus uh uh communities where yeah,
you don't know, there's a theory called social reproduction right uh from sociology where
when you you know, the society reproduces itself by keeping people like in a
sort of familiar space from largely what they're used to growing up. If you
are a worker, you're going to continue be It's it's you know, had
it had its origin in marks and so it is largely viewed in class terms,
but essentially, uh it it's a counterpart to physical or you know,
like physical reproduction where you're making babies, and this is this is its counterpart
in sociology where society produces itself. And part of this is that you expect
your children to be like you in certain ways values. You know, if
your children have different, largely, wildly different values than you, that could
cause major strain. And for people who view a core part of their identity
as this sort of like white heterosexual cis gender. You know, you want
your kids to look like you, or act like you or in a certain
way. Right like, you have this expectation of of the social reproduction that
you're able to pass onto a future generation in order to essentially see yourself in
the world in the future. And mutants subvert that in the same way that
the queer community subverts that in a lot of ways. Right like, your
kids are going to have a wildly different life than you. They're going to
have these these these different experiences. They are not they might be less likely
to make more kids who are more like you, And and sort of it
throws a spanner in the works of human white straight humanity is conception of building
this future that they can support and recognize. And I think that is in
both cases can be a source of tremendous bigotry. I really like the way
you phrase that. I think it's really helpful model because I think, as
you said, like that fear of social reproduction is there with all these things,
you know, if it's the reason why people are afraid of, you
know, their children marrying someone who's not in the same race they are,
who doesn't worship the same god they do, or who has different values,
you know, who isn't you know, of the same economic class that they
are, or whatever it is. And then with the queerness, there's that
additional factor of a lot of time you know that it And then with queerness
there's a factor of there's this fear of recruiting. And I one thing I
remember distinctly from some of the movies, and I know it also came out
in the comics, especially in the nineties, was that, you know,
one of the fears was that like well, you know, parents saying to
two kids, like, have you just tried not being a muted you know,
as I said to Bobby in one of the movies, or as uh,
you know, this idea of that the fear is that Professor X or
any of them are are spreading you know, uh mutantism, which is very
much the fear you hear today about like grooming and stuff like you know it
absolutely yea, and so yeah, I think that's such an important way of
looking at it, of how that metaphor can be there. And we've talked
a lot about the and we kind of touched on the whole like the way
they're viewed that the the original kind of like oh, it's Martin Luther King
and Malcolm X. I don't want to talk more about that because I think
now there have been a lot of memes and other information going around like to
debunks that theory to some extent or another, and especially just in that like
the public perception among white America of who Mary King and Malcolm X were in
the sixties, but all the way through history has always been like the actual
real figures has been very different, and if anything, they were seen as
a metaphor of the way the media portrayed those two characters. There are two
factors though that I wonder if it's fair to say that, because I know
now when some of it, when I hear people say, oh, but
there's so these metaphors make no sense whatsoever. I don't want to push back
just a little bit to say, is there a way in which there is
some element of it, and part of it is it may also just be
like writers who are viewing it through those lands or seeing it. And what
I'm getting at is that I think often in activism, and this is a
trend throughout any activist movement, but Martin, Luther King and Malcolm X were
kind of slotted into these social roles. With groups like that that you're talking
about, there's often these two different perspectives, one of which is what's often
referred to as assimilationism or something like that, which is like, hey,
no, we are just like you. You need to stop being afraid of
us and let us be a part of what you are, because you know,
we want the two point three two point three kids in the white picket
fence just like h and that and also that the idea is and sort of
do that. We're going to confront your hatred, We're going to run your
fear, but we're gonna help try to understand that we are not scary in
the way that you seem to think that we are, that we should be.
Yeah, And on the other side there is the like, no,
fu, if you're scared of us, you should be scared of us because
we're going to fight back. We're not the same as you, We're different,
but we deserve the same seat at the table as you do. And
I'm taking two massive social movements and hugely generalizing them and hugely running them down.
But that I think like there's something I really study in school that you
see that kind of dynamic within a lot of social movements. And so it's
definitely in you know, Martin the King and Malcolm X are somewhat stand ins
for those two things. But to reduce those two actual historical figures to that
is very reductive. But you also get it within you know, feminist movements
or within queer movements. At the time of the nineties, there was very
much there was kind of like the even today we talked about how the Human
Rights Campaign does great work but seems to be very much like don't be afraid
of us and some other groups that are like as opposed to other groups that
are like, no fu, We're here to help you tear down you know,
the traditional ideas of you know, what generals should be and stuff like
that. Sure, yeah, so is it fair to say that there's some
element of that within the Professor X Magneto of one perspective is more on that
side of I we want to be like you. We want you not to
be afraid of us. We want to just be a part of your world.
Sorry for the little her maid quote and the other there is more,
No we are different, putting aside the supremacistness that Magneto sometimes gets into,
but just that more idea of no, we are different, and you're going
to stop treating us badly because well, we're going to fight back. Yeah,
We're We're gathering power that we we will use in self defense for sure.
Yeah. Yeah, I think there is, uh, that is definitely
a key difference ideologically between Professor X and Magneto. I wouldn't say that that
necessarily maps on particularly well to the difference between uh, doctor King and for
example, Malcolm X. Uh, but yeah, I think that there's well,
yeah, is it fair to say that it maps on not entirely,
but somewhat to the public perception of those two figures. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah yeah, and which, like we said before, changes,
uh you know, historically, based on how we are viewing these historical figures
at any given time. Totally agree with that. But I think if you
were to want to I want to make some comparisons now between the Civil Rights
movement, historical civil rights movement figures, and X Men characters meant to be
in good fun. I'm not a tremendous expert on the history of the Civil
rights movement. If this is meant to provoke discussion, please, if you
have another idea of like where you can find commonalities and metaphors, please,
you know, respond with them in the comments or whatever. Hit me up
on social media. I would love to discuss it. But I want to
do this in a way that is villain hero agnostic, because those constructs,
both in the comics and in history, is so contingent based on the historical
moment or what perspective you're viewing from. Right, Like, one group can
look at the Black Panthers and say, well, they killed a bunch of
cops. You know, we're involved with a bunch of shootouts with cops,
so like, you know, we see them as villains. And then another
group would be like, they fed free breakfast to thousands of kids and lifted
people out of poverty using only shootouts were often dam acting in defense, not
exactly exactly exactly, So I want, yeah, before you get into the
individual characters I do. I just want to use what you're saying just to
make I think you're kind of implying this, but I just want to state
it directly and see if you agree that part of how the character of Magneto
has changed quite dramatically from pure villain in the original too often seen as anti
hero or even like no, Magneto was right. Yeah, mirrors the way
you know, in the sixties Malcolm X was the boogeyman, was the like
the fear, whereas today I think for a lot of people, not all,
but for a lot of people, there's much more of like No,
Malcolm X was right about a lot of things, and yeah, or you
know, was a great leader and did one under full things and whether or
not you agree with all of his ideology, and I think there's a lot
to nitpick in there. You know, was was an incredible figure for first
civil rights and leadership and uh, you know, black power in a way
that was a strong positive for the world. And the doctor King and Malcolm
X we were actually and that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were actually much
closer than is generally believed, in the same way that now Magneto and Professor
X are getting closer. Uh. Anyway, so she's wanted to yes,
yes, yes, yes, thank you for scalling it out because I yeah,
I kind of like brushed past it a couple of times, but it
needed full elucidation totally. But yeah, let's talk about some of the other
specific characters and where they fit. Yeah. So I think if you're going
to look for I think the sort of like Nation of Islam uh uh comparison
to Magneto's group kind of make does make sense in a in a in a
way like separatist and maybe a undercurrent of supremacist in there. I'm who's to
say. It's not for me to particularly critique, but the sort of like
there's a strong almost religious following around a character or a figure like Elijah Muhammad
that you know, can kind of mirror somebody like Magneto, although he has
a tragic backstory that's closer to Malcolm X's, So there's something there. I
don't think that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was Martin Luther King's organization,
is a very good comparison for the X Men, because, like I
said before, like they're not designing confrontations with power. They're not going out
there with a with a particular a set of goals and campaign in mind for
how to achieve equal rights. I think really not using non violence as a
organizing principle or yeah, yeah, you wouldn't have the fun fight scenes that
everybody loves exactly exactly. So if you if you kind of look at like
community defense and providing services to your people as the core organizing principles of what
the Black Panthers were, I think that translates well to the X Men as
well. So that would put you know, uh, Eldritch Cleaver as Moira
McTaggart as sort of like a visionary. It's close to the Founders who kind
of goes a very hard different direction later in life. And maybe uh puts
like h Charles Xavier Moore is a Healey Newton kind of figure, which I
think is an interesting uh uh you know thing comparison. And then maybe like
the Fred Hampton is like Kitty Pride, like the somebody from the younger generation
who everybody just really really likes and it is brilliant and able to do wonderful
things over and then I don't know, there's a specific figure. I would
name this too, but I think it's a part of the movements a lot.
Yeah. You know, you go to any union move you go to
any organizing movement, and the word organizing essential there because there will often be
lots and lots of people who are affected by a social justice issue. But
when you say, okay, so come to this rally at this point,
at this time and place, are gonna say, uh, come on,
I don't want to be bothered. That's not gonna come to anything. Yeah,
I'm not a joining or whatever. Yeah, and I say that somewhat.
You know that sounds kind of derogaty of tory. I don't mean it
as that. Oh No, A lot of a lot of those rallies don't
do anything it it's not necessarily a reason to not show up. They're they're
they're organized to do different things. Most rallies are not directly the tip of
the spear for actually accomplishing social justice goals. And a lot of even putting
aside the rallies, a lot of social justice movements don't meet their goals.
And so I think the cynicism of a character like Wolverine is super important as
because to me, one of the goals of organizing is to helping. Like
it's the moment that Professor X, or often Jean Gray or someone else like
that is able to convince Wolverine to join the movement, to be a part
of what they're doing. And as you said, the fact that like,
sometimes he does it because he's convinced of the rightness of their cause. Sometimes
he does it because he thinks Cyclops is an a hole and he wants to
show him any better. Sometimes he does it because he wants a chance to
get closer to Jean Gray. And you know, a lot of people of
my dad's generation went to peace marches because that's where you found people who had
a lot more sexually liberal ideas. Like I'm not doesn't find it, I
think, but I'm saying sure, Yeah, the fact that Wolverine and a
lot of the others often have like it's not that they become diehard idealists,
no, dieheart idealists, but they still sign up and come involved. It's
actually a great part of the metaphor as well. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I was having trouble finding a good civil rights analogy for Wolverine,
so I didn't try too hard. But I'm sure it's out there somewhere,
but yeah, like I think if you were to try and again, hero
villain agnostic tactics agnostic. Who is the set of characters in the X Men
world who is trying to design these confrontations with the system, who is doing
big flashy public of you know, sort of confrontations to advance human mutant rights,
and uh, you know, has a history of sort of like cooperating
with the government when it suits them and working completely independent and being targeted by
the government when when it suits them. I would say that's Mystique's brotherhood called
the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. But again we're going agnostic here, and their
tactics are often things like assassination, which obviously wasn't what the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference was up to. But there's nobody else really in the X Men world
who is like I'm going to do this big flashy event that or or like
act up for example, like we're going to do something extremely public and extremely
like h targeted in a way that you is not only going to gain us
visibility, but is going to directly accomplish our goals and put the system that
we are in confrontation with put them in sort of a crisis point where they
have to respond to our demands or lose legitimacy. And just to further clarify
that for folks who might not know, act UP was a group of queer
and queer line activists who were really focused on the utter lack of attention to
a to HIV AIDS and how no research was being done in the eighties and
nineties and no attempt you know, there were no really and then it was
often beings written off as a gay disease or a drug drug user disease.
So we didn't care about it, and so act UP did, among other
things, because the Catholic Church in New York City and accruitt the world,
but especially in New York City where act UP was focused, was very one
of the strong people pushing against any attempt to look into this because like,
oh, you know, not that this was the official Catholic position, but
you know that that you know, if this is God's punishment and all that
kind of stuff, And there were definitely some high Catholic saying things like that,
and so they did things like die ins, like they went to a
st the cathedral Saint Saint Patrick's Cathedral in the heart New York City and just
took over the services in a lot of ways. And I think you're right
Mystique to me when I said about how like the the you know, the
two different polls of activism are replicated not only in civil rights but other things.
Act UP versus the more traditional gay rights movement is exactly what I'm talking
about, because in the same you know, because like a lot of the
more you know, traditional gay rights movement was horrified by act UP and they
thought what act UP was doing was terrible. But but a lot of the
others, you know, and there's been some great like histories of act UP
that were that were written in oral histories, and I love listening to some
of the people saying things like I had to publicly condemn act UP, but
I always knew that I needed Act Up to be scaring people enough. I
look reasonable enough that that that the society would would negotiate with me. And
I think that's such a thing. And so I love that idea of like,
yeah, that there's a way in which Professor X needs Magneto and Mystique
and others doing the more extreme things is a way to be like, hey,
talk to me, or they're going to bring the house down. Yeah.
No. And but also that like what act that would often do is
to and you said challenge the moral legitimacy in ways that I think mystique and
the others definitely do. Yeah cool, I'm glad. And like when we're
saying like villain agnostic or whatever, like if we take it from the standpoint
of the movement, where it's like the people who are working towards you know,
within the within social justice movements, they may have disagreements oppositions with each
other. This is the leftist in fighting, the herding cats that everyone's sleeping
with each other, the chaos ball that we were talking about before, Right,
But there is an opposition, there is a villain, there is an
enemy, and that is like the j Edgar Hoover, right, the ku
Klux Klan, like the people from outside your society who do hate and want
to kill you, and are you know in the in these and are lynching
normal people or lynching you know, the the non uh, the people who
are not part of your movement, who are not organizers or who are in
like j Edgar Hoover's case, actively assassinating and murdering your leaders. And so
you know, there's like we're not physically assassinating assassinating their character, or assassinating
their finances or do one of things to undermine their power and stuff like that.
Yeah, but also plenty of literal assassination as well. Like I'm going
through all these histories and I was doing all of the the you know,
the comparisons of all these characters, and I'm like, man, I wish
Fred Hampton got you know, fifty years of continuity, like like uh like
Kitty Pride. You know, I wish that we would would had the opportunity
to see, you know, later in life Martin Luther King or or Malcolm
X, and that these that these that these historical figures, these leaders would
be able to be revived and grow and change and continue to influence the world.
But you know, in real life they were just murdered by mostly by
the government. Well, and so let's talk about Yeah, I want to
acknowledge that more mportunate topic. No, And I think that's such a good
point. And I think that's in some ways one of the things that comic
books can do is they can tell. The reality is a lot of the
social justice movements that we have in throughout our society either flat out lost or
felt like they lost at the time, but they wound up having like some
degree of victory, you know that they don't only really showed up, you
know, through social reproduction and these kind of thing decades later. And I
think it's one of I know that as an activist I often needed hope,
and like West Wing was a show that I watched all the time. And
funny how today it's West Wing is viewed as a liberal utopia that by leftists
often looked at. It's like, this is all the problems with with liberalism
and with like the Clinton takeover of the Democrats and all that kind of stuff.
At the time the show was coming out, I was working for,
as I said, a much more left wing politician, and for those who
know, it was Tom Dwayne who was the first openly gay and openly should
be positive politician. I think I'm one of the first elected office of any
kind after Harvey Milk, but but certainly one of the first in the New
York City Senate and all that. Yeah, and I am a number of
the other like you know, staff aids from other or people who knew through
occupy or activism would often get together and watch West Wing because for us it
was a it was a fantasy, because there were so many times when the
president in that was faced with a choice that Clinton was faced with because coming
out like at the end of Clinton and then during Bush where you know,
he has the chance to say the era of big government is over, the
way Clinton did, and this fantasy president chooses not to, and so a,
I think it's funny and relevant discussion about how the way something can be
viewed its cultural context changes so much later twenty years later, so much twenty
much years later. But the point also was that it gave me. It
gave us hope, Like there were times when like it because it was an
inspiring show, and part of that's caustic. Is very good at right,
great characters, snappy dialogue. Yeah, and you analyze it war and you're
like, Okay, this doesn't make so much sense, but in the moment,
yeah, I'm fired up, and yeah I love Toby and I love
CJ and etcetera, etcetera. Absolutely, yeah, and I think there's some
value in the same way when an X men like, Yeah, maybe the
social justice movement wins an awful lot more of the time, and that's good.
You know, it gives us the kind of hope and inspiration there.
I want to shift to it because we've kind of also been touching on this
idea of like the historical evolution of things. One of the things that I
think we've been talking about. You know, as I said, one of
the reasons why the King Malcolm X breaked one of the reasons why the King
Malcolm X metaphor idea breaks down a lot is that, you know, as
socially liberates as is because you know, someone like stan Lee and Jack Kirby,
like they were people who were trying to be as as aware as they
could at these movements, and they cared about them. They were also trying
to sell comics and make money. I think you could say Jack Kirby a
little more than Stanley, but yes, absolutely think that's very fair. But
still it was also it was white guys trying to do their best to understand
a black civil rights movement, or then straight guys trying to do their best
to understand the queer movement. Yes, that's changed and to I mean not
just like in the last two years. But you know, over the last
fifty sixty years, the representation of who is writing X men comics has shifted
a lot and is not just white, straight sis men as much still much
more than maybe it should be, but not as much. Do you think
that has if we can talk about general trends over you know, eight different
comic book lines over sixty years. But do you think that there are ways
in which you can see that more and more these are stories being written,
that if the stories are a metaphor for oppressed groups in the United States or
in the world, that more and more it's being written by people who are
in those oppressed groups. Yes, absolutely, and and that it's slowly starting
to do a better job of kind of taking these metaphors tackling them much more
intelligently rather than you know, from the outside, like engaging overly much in
respectability politics or trying to trying to say that somebody gave a speech was the
turning point for an entire social movement or something like that. Right, So,
like, for example, a couple recent one one recent book in particular
that I would love to highlight, if you don't mind me giving a comic
recommendation on here is New Mutants by Vita Ayala, and that just wrapped up
last year. All those run went for a couple dozen issues something like that.
Easy to pick up and read relies it draws heavily from continuity of knowing
these characters. I don't because I also have that continuity in my head.
I don't know how much the story relies on the reader already knowing these So
it might be a difficult one to pick up. But it's so good because
so Vita Yala is a non binary, black queer writer and they are they
you know, got put they got the job on New Mutants and completely upended
the entire tradition of how character development happens in comics. And I don't want
to understate how momentous that is, because most going back to the days of
you know, Chris Claremont, who is sort of like the the most influential
writer on X Men and actually in comics in general. I would argue from
the seventies, eighties into the nineties, Claremont had a theory of character development,
which was you just punish your characters, you just subject them to horrendous
torture all the time you push them past their breaking point and in where they
become, where they go, where they become in that sort of torture,
in that pushing, that is where your character development happens. And Iala and
some other contemporary mostly female and femine queer creators are saying, like, no,
that's trauma. Trauma isn't how you how you grow. Healing from trauma
is how you grow. And so they take all of these like horrible things
that have happened to these characters, and they do it within a lens of
conflict that makes them fun, compelling, readable stories, but they actually show
their characters confronting trauma, healing from it, changing based on the healing.
And uh, this is the kind of like smaller piece of perspective maybe that
you're talking about, of like how storytelling can change and how how these stories
can can be better developed from more diverse creators who know a little more what
the hell they're talking about when they take on, uh, you know,
writing the stories of characters from these oppressed, oppressed and underprivileged groups and draw
from personal experience in them, and it ended up in some really spectacular stories.
So you contrast that with something like, uh, even just ten fifty,
like ten years ago. Uh, there's a white guy named Rick Reminder
who wrote a run combining like X Men and Avengers. They're called the Uncanny
Avengers, and it had hav giving a speech about how he hates the word
mutant and you know he's going to be a leader, but just don't call
him a mutant and was wild widely reviled as just like totally tone deaf,
just the worst kind of tone deaf politics. And so, yeah, it's
comics is getting more diverse, and it really reflects well in a franchise like
X Men, where it the intent was there all along to to speak to
these issues, they just didn't let themselves do it. Well. Yeah,
I hear that. I hear that. We've gone with an hour and there's
kind of there's so much more we can talk about this. This is I
become a series we do more of because I'd love to analyze individual characters or
like small groups within the larger things. And by the way, we are
going to talk more about the everyone's sleeping with each other section member section,
stay tuned for that. But the last thing I want to kind of touch
on it, and I'm curious how much do you think this plays in I
think one of the reasons why a lot of superheroes are often seen as kind
of like speaking to a more and we say conservative, I don't mean in
the kind of way it's defined today in terms of like Republicans democrats of today,
but like one of the kind of like essential ideas of like American history
often but often just the way we view history is, you know, like
the one great man of history, Like there's one person who, as you
said, one person gives one great speech and everything changes or one part.
And in superheroes it's more often like one person defeats one evil person InCom punished
guy in the face hard enough that it, yeah, and everything falls apart.
Yeah. And I actually had Becky Allen on the Star Wars podcast a
while ago to talk about the significance of Star Wars moving towards more of ensemble
shows with things like rebels and uh one and stuff like that, or about
like a team working together instead of just one individual person. Interesting, yeah
talk, And I'm curious how you if you see kind of a similar dynamic
in that one of the like that, because it seems to me that another
way the X Men is kind of a standout from a lot of other comics
is that, you know, in some cases, like you have one strong
person who has their team of like you know it's Arrow and the Arrow Team,
or like you know, Batman and the Robins and Overwatch or something like
that. But then The X Men is much less the story of one strong
individual and much more the story of this large ensemble of people. And it
alone feels like it's a big challenge to like kind of overall mythology of the
one strong man. How you see that? Oh, I totally agree.
That's a fantastic point, and I would say that it's not even it even
goes bigger than that, like the ensemble cast that you would expect in like
a super like Avengers, you know you've got like a seven person team or
something. You've got like a much more bounded limit. X Men are just
notoriously messy for like they because they just they were so popular in the eighties
and nineties that they just kept and the team concept is so core to it
that the team books have always done much better or have been a much stronger
like part because like you said, this is you're practicing solidarity you're part of
a family. You're part of a found family, which is another important part
of the queer metaphor, and and and so it's in your in your like
cooperation, your confrontation, your your interactions with other mutants that you develop sort
of like who these characters are and what they stand for. And then they
just kept adding more and more and more and more teams, so you know,
and then they wanted to keep everybody gets invested in these minor characters that
get added to one team back in nineteen eighty five, and then now they're
like, okay, we need to make sure that all of our characters are
accounted for in some books. And now you have like a hundred two hundred
different mutants who have been part of a team at some point and they're part
of this, and then like hundreds more like recently in the comics, all
of the mutants have created a nation called Krakoa. We've talked about it on
this pod before, where it's kind of like a mutant separatistic nation that wants
to deal with other other contemporary nation states to establish equality. So it's kind
of a fusion of Xavier and Magnetos visions and apocalypse as well, but that's
for another time. And and it's uh, it's huge. They're just hundreds
of thousands of residents of Krikoa, and and it they really done their work
into making this feel not just like an ensemble, but a society like this
is this massive group of people who disagree in fight, have to come to
consensus, need to build solidarity with one another. They've been you know,
enemies for most of their lives and are figuring it out. And and that
is unique because it goes even beyond sort of the team ensemble and into full
social like it's not uncommon in this Krocoa era to just have cameos from people
who are outside of the main team of the comic all over the place,
and you're like, wait, am I supposed to know who this person is?
I do, because I've read all the freaking comics. But you know,
they come in, they fill a purpose, they represent a particular point
of view, and then they might drop out for another, you know,
a dozen issues or so, and and it really builds a vision of of
this as as a full society, as as something far beyond just even the
small group unit of a family or an ensemble. Yeah, And I just
think that's so important. And I think that that's one area where I am
so glad that you're so knowledgeable about the comics because I think that, you
know, for me, as someone who's mostly watched the X Men on screen,
yeah, I think that they definitely capture some of the kind of social
justice aspects. You know, you watch X two and it's so clear that
it's yeah, it's so clear that it's about gay rights and queer rights and
things like that, and you know, that's where that parental scene I was
talking about comes from. But like I was trying to do the math in
my head, and I'm probably gonna be wrong, and please don't yell at
me ask Paul about how good my math is in general. But if you
were to take every named character who's a mutant in every single live action X
Men production that's been on, probably maybe like three dozen at the most,
you know, in any individual movie, just because of the nature of the
movie, like maybe you have like six to ten, you know, and
and I think you'd be I think it'd be easy to watch those movies and
think the primary characters of every X Men movie are Professor X Magneto, Mystique,
Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Gray Rogue, and maybe one or two others,
and then the rest just kind of come and go. Is bit players
and hundreds of main characters in X Men comics, and and they're they're all
great. There's so many great characters. And as you said, also like
yes, Iron Man and Captain America and all them do team up into the
Avengers, and there's a lot of other team ups that happen. But whereas
like I'm gonna get guess here, and you can coming if I'm wrong,
but I would guess that like if you count up the total number of appearances
that that that Tony Stark and Steve Steve Rogers have had Captain America and iron
Man, that the overwhelming majority of times they appear is in a Captain America
comic or an Iron Man comic, with a small but growing number being when
they appear in stuff that's under the name Avengers, where it would say would
it would be closer to fifty fifty or slightly an Avenger is favor just because
you can turn it. They published so many freaking Avengers books. You know,
they'll usually only have one like one Captain America iron Man book going at
once, but they'll have like three or four Avengers books, so it's fair.
Yeah, yeah, well, I guess my question though, would you
say that like the number of individual Wolverine comics versus times Wolverine appears in an
X Men comics in a similar ratio, because my guess is that the ratio
Wolverine or a Cyclops or Jean Gray has going much higher to well, maybe
let's say Wolverines maybe the bad example, but for like a Magneto or a
Cyclops or Jean Gray or total. Yeah, Cyclops has been you know,
a member of the X Men most of its existence for you know, fifty
sixty years whatever, and he's he's very rarely had a solo title at all,
you know, like you could, I would guess that he's had maybe
two dozen issues of solo titles m and he's you know, yeah, his
poster child for this sort of like found family aspect of of of the X
Men. Cyclops a very interesting character that doesn't get translated into into adapted media
ever. But that's fine. Earlier, if we're looking at protest movements,
Psyclops to me as the person who's like okay, but we have to make
sure that we have every permit and that our protests never jay walks, and
that, like, I would disagree with that, but that's a that's a
comics reading. I would I would characterize Cyclops as the march tactics organizer that
is also is absolutely making sure that both the Black Block and the street medics
are extremely well organized and prepared, as well as the you know, the
police lady is on or whoever. Okay, here's a character I'd love for
us to talk about more about at some point, because I think in the
movies at least, Yeah, my impressions a stick in the he's normal,
he's normal, Vanilla white guy is stick in the mud, represents rules,
he's the contrast to us. He's just Wolverine's foil essentially. Yeah, exactly.
He's the person who's there to make it clear why Jane Gray should choose
Wolverine instead of him, which in the comics I know is because I remember
we talked about this and you were like, yeah, I kind of like
Socbops and I was like, what, he's such a dork, but like
anyway, yeah, we weren't talk about there, all right. Uh.
One thing I want to mention, by the way, because I was thinking
about this as I said it and then didn't get a chance to put it
in. I earlier said that, you know, stan Lee and Jack Kirby,
like often were writing about they were writing metaphors from movements that they weren't
a part of. Yeah, I do want to say that they were white,
they were cists, they were straight, least as far as we all
know. They were Jewish at a time when I don't want to minim is
anti Semitism. Today it still very much exists, and I'm not going to
get into debates about like, you know, we are Jews fall exactly,
but I think it is important to understand that at the time they were writing,
being Jewish was a much more overtly oppressed you know, non favored group
vanity is today in some parts of today, et cetera. Again, Jack
Kirby would go out and find neo Nazis and beat the hell out of them
for fun. Right, But it's not even mean Nazis like actual Nazis.
Well, yeah, yeah, that's right, it was. It was the
time in which they were actual Nazis. Yes, But I just wanted to
say that say that thing anyway. Are there any other last comments you want
to make or throw in here? Uh No, I think we had a
great conversation and we touched on. Anything else that we didn't touch on,
we can always come back and talk about again. And of course, listeners,
if you think there's something we didn't touch on, or something you want
to argue us about or tell us you agree with, or tell us about
your own experience as any of these things, please let us know. If
you go to the website, the Ethical Panda, or just find us on
the True Story FM web page, or just look at the show notes,
you'll find all the ways to contact us. You can reach out on Facebook,
on Twitter, on TikTok. I'm going to be trying to make a
post about these episodes every week in both. I'm gonna revitalize the Facebook page
and also do something on Twitter. Right now, I know there's a lot
of people leaving Twitter, I think for very good reasons. As far as
I can tell right now, they're all leaving to eight different ships. And
I just I wound up within a span of four days, I created three
different profiles on three different things that everyone's telling me. No, this is
going to be the main Twitter replacement. I can't, so I'm gonna stay
on Twitter for the moment, but once it kind of solidifies, if you
think there's one I should be on, let me know, but certainly let
us all know, or just send us an email. Whatever you want to
do, I will share it with Steve. If Steve will be back on,
We'll make sure to go over that feedback when that happens. Steve just
gave a thumbs up, which you can't see becausistant streaming, but I definitely
wanted to report it. I'm not like my co host Will, I will
verbalize things. I was just waiting for a conversation to do so well.
And look, Will is a streamer first and foremost, so it totally makes
sense, and we have streamed some of these episodes, so it's fine.
But yeah, let us know. In the show notes, and of course
by going to the ethical Pana dot com, we're finding us in a true
story. You can also find all the information about my other podcast, Star
Wars Universe podcast. During the strike, we are continuing to cover. We're
not covering the stuff that appears on screen, but it turns out actually there's
a huge amount of Star Wars content. There are comic books, there are
novels. There are people who do as both professionals and just because they as
amateurs. They love it. Incredible work making lightsabers and cosplay and the fiction
of their own fan fiction in the Star Wars universe. So there's lots to
talk about there. And of course, if you want to support these podcasts,
the best way to do it is to become a member. I've mentioned
this before, but I want to kind of reiterate. I've now officially shifted
these podcasts over to the True story dot fm family of podcasts. If you've
heard the Modevel movie a minute that I've been on, that's a big part
of it, and a lot of other great podcasts there. I think,
Steve, have you been on that at all? I know we haven't.
No, Just well, okay, I'll definitely make sure you get connected one
of them, because I think they just do great analysis of Marvel movies.
Again, you know, wait till after the Strike. But on the True
Story FM, there's so many other great podcasts and things like that. But
if through there you can become a member of this podcast. It's basically the
same as Patron just with a different different people running it less overhead costs,
but it's the same kind of a thing. All the patrons have gotten,
you know, their membership transferred over to there, and it's a great time
to become one. For five dollars a month or just fifty five dollars for
the year. You get every content, you get all the bonus content we
make, you get access to a lot of other cool things. And most
importantly, right now during the strike, twenty five percent of all the profits
that we make from that not all the profits, twenty five percent of all
the money that comes in through the membership plan is being donated to the strike
fund. So it's a great way to help support that great help support us
because it does, you know, take a lot of effort and time and
resources to make this podcast happen. So please think about doing both of those
things. There will be that member of the content in just a moment where
we get more into the tangled web of love lives of these characters. But
Steve for people who want to find more about your stuff, You've got a
podcast, You've got places you create content. Where can you find your voice?
So I co host along with my best buddy Will Freeland a podcast called
Hype is My Superpower. You can find it wherever podcasts exist. And then
I also write and self published independent comics if that's something that you're interested in
checking out. My first title was about is called The Pros. It's about
spies who work for an insurance company. It's kind of a absurdist comedy slash
political thriller. So if you're if you're interested in that, find me on
social media, send me a DM because my web store is working right now.
Okay, sounds good. Sounds good? Well do you? Thank you
as much for being a part of this. Hello over fans, Thank you
so much for listening. We have spoken. Thank you so much for having
me on. This was a great time and I really enjoyed this conversation.