Welcome, readers new and old, to “Comics in Context” at its new home here at Kevin Smith’s Quick Stop Entertainment. This week’s topic is X-Men: The Last Stand, both the new movie and its novelization. 

But first, for the benefit of newcomers, allow me to explain what “Comics in Context” is about, who I am, and how this column came to be. 

“Comics in Context” is a weekly series of critical essays on comics, cartoon art, and related subjects. When the column moved to Quick Stop Entertainment, so did its vast archive, now comprising one hundred and thirty-three past installments. You’ll find extended critiques of comic book series both recent, such as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again (in “Comics in Context” #30, 31, and 34) and classic, like Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta (#126-131). I’ve also written extensively about comic strips (as in #66 and 71). 

From the column’s beginnings, I’ve written about film and television adaptations of comics, from Ang Lee’s Hulk (#2) through this week’s X-Men: The Last Stand. 

I’ll also write about works in other media that have been adapted into comics, or have been influenced by comics, such as Star Wars (#86). 

I also cover animation, ranging from early Disney hand-animated shorts to Pixar feature films, as you’ll see in upcoming weeks. The recent advances in blending computer animation and live action bring films such as Peter Jackson’s King Kong (#121) into this column’s territory. 

I do extensive reports on major comics conventions (San Diego in #5-10 and #94-99, New York in #123-125) and on comics industry memorial services for major figures of the artform (Julius Schwartz in #32 and Will Eisner in #80-81). 

Following the increasing mainstream interest in the artform, I also review gallery and museum shows about comics and cartoon art (such as the Museum of Modern Art’s Pixar exhibit in #120). I’ll even review theater works with connections to cartoon art (such as Disney’s Tarzan on Broadway in #133) and novels (without pictures) by authors who made their name in comics (such as Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys in #105-108). 

In every case my goal is to write serious criticism while making it accessible and, I hope, entertaining, to more casual readers. 

I believe my background makes me uniquely qualified to do just that. I’ve earned three Ivy League degrees in English literature, but I’ve also been writing about comics ever since becoming a regular contributor to the letter columns of editor Julius Schwartz’s Silver Age DC comics. Since then I’ve worked for fanzines (such as Amazing Heroes and Mark Gruenwald’s legendary Omniverse), become one of the main writers for DC’s Who’s Who and the original versions of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and even became Marvel’s first and only archivist. I’ve collaborated on documentaries about comics, including Constantine Valhouli’s Sex, Lies and Superheroes, and taught “Comics as Literature” as New York University. I’m now a reviewer and reporter on comics for Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week and an advisor to New York City’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. I’m also an author and contributing writer to several books about comics, most notably Marvel Universe for the leading art book publisher Harry N. Abrams. 

Yet three years ago my career was at a low point: like many other comics professionals from the Baby Boom generation, I was no longer getting work from Marvel or DC. In publicizing his documentary about comics, Constantine Valhouli had made contact with Ken Plume, who was then an editor at IGN FilmForce. Constantine persuaded me that what I needed was a “forum,” from which I could make my views on the comics medium known, and Ken offered me just that, in the form of a weekly online column. So “Comics in Context” started in July 2003, three years ago next month. 

Comics criticism is my artform, and every creative artist needs patrons who believe in the worth of what they are doing. Ken has been my loyal, constantly supportive patron. When he decided to take his new position here at Quick Stop, he asked me if I would come along. My immediate response was yes. 

It was time for a change, anyway. Last year IGN shifted “Comics in Context” from IGN FilmForce to its new site, IGN Comics, and eventually the Powers That Be (above Ken’s head) started tampering with my column’s titles and complaining about some of my topics. I had long wondered what IGN stood for. Now I know: I’m Gone Now. I’m hopeful that the old installments in the archive will now regain their correct titles. 

I recommend that you also check out the work of several of my colleagues from IGN who have also resettled on this new website. 

There’s Ken, of course, who is an excellent interviewer with an enviable ability to put his subjects at ease and draw out revelations they’d be less likely to give mainstream media interviewers. 

Then there’s “The Fred Hembeck Show,” starring the court jester of American comic books, who provides a unique blend of nostalgic affection for classic comics, critical insight, and wit. His weekly “show” never fails to entertain, and, as he would urge, you should also visit his website, www.hembeck.com. From time to time I find myself attempting to fathom the mysteries of Fred’s obsessions, such as his undying crush on 1960s Disney diva Hayley Mills (Would The Parent Trap be Two-Face’s favorite movie?) and his near-worship of a certain absorbent animated icon. Join Fearless Fred as he makes his journey from the world of SpongeBob to his new home in the kingdom of Silent Bob! 

Those of you with broadband (unlike myself) should also sample Quick Stop’s video show “Monkey Talk,” masterminded by award-winning animation writer Paul Dini (an old friend I’ve known for decades) and his wife, sultry sorceress Misty Lee (whom I’ve never met but whose legend precedes her). 

In future weeks I’ll be writing about Pixar’s Cars and Walt Disney’s 1930s Silly Symphonies; Doctor Who and The Wild Wild West; the new movie Superman Returns; The Eternals, both the original Jack Kirby series and the new Neil Gaiman version; and the landmark museum exhibition “Masters of American Comics.” 

As for this week’s topic, those of you who have not yet seen X-Men: The Last Stand are hereby given a spoiler warning. In order to critique any work properly, I usually need to talk about major plot elements, including the ending. 

 

 

Marvel and Twentieth Century Fox, which produced X-Men: The Last Stand, were unusually secretive about its story. I had to write about the film in the third edition of DK’s X-Men: The Ultimate Guide, yet Marvel would not tell me or DK anything about the film, and would not even release publicity stills that we needed for illustrations until close to our deadline. As it turned out, certain major plot elements, notably the deaths of Cyclops and Professor X, were reported on the Internet long ago. 

The previous X-Men movie, X2: X-Men United, strongly hinted that its director, Bryan Singer intended to tackle perhaps the greatest of all X-Men stories, Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s “Dark Phoenix Saga” (from Uncanny X-Men #129-137, from 1980), in the third film. 

X2 ended with Jean Grey heroically sacrificing her life (or so it appeared) in an oncoming deluge in order to save the other X-Men, and a strange, birdlike form – presumably the sign of the Phoenix – appeared on the water’s surface afterwards. 

But when Singer agreed to direct Superman Returns for Warners, Fox fired him, and replace him first with director Matthew Vaughn, who dropped out and was replaced by Brett Ratner. With Singer gone, what about his set-up for “The Dark Phoenix Saga”? 

Avi Arad, who until recently was CEO of Marvel Studios, told Empire Online that “It should never be this one story. The main characters are more important than Jean Grey. . .This is a bigger story. Everybody’s expecting Dark Phoenix, but Dark Phoenix would never be the main show. She’ll be one of the characters, that’s it. There are a lot of stories to tell.” 

Since when is Jean Grey not one of “the main characters” of the X-Men? She is one of the original members of this team of superhuman mutants, as it first appeared in X-Men #1 back in 1963. Chris Claremont, the writer of “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” was the appropriate choice to write Del Rey’s novelization of the film. In that novel, Claremont rightly calls Jean the “heart” of the X-Men. That is what made “The Dark Phoenix Saga” that rarity of the superhuman genre: a genuine tragedy. 

In case there are any readers who do not know, in the comics Jean Grey (Marvel Girl) and her teammate Scott Summers (Cyclops) were the romantic leads of Marvel’s X-Men comics series. Like so many heroes co-created by Stan Lee in the early 1960s, Scott and Jean’s love for one another was initially unspoken: unable to control the powerful energy beams from his eyes, Scott felt cut off from the possibility of romance. (This is not very different from Rogue’s dilemma in both the X-Men comics and movies: she cannot touch anyone she loves without rendering them comatose.) Although they finally admitted their feelings for one another, circumstances separated Scott and Jean from time to time, including the arrival of the “new” X-Men when the series was revived in the mid-1970s. 

In X-Men #100 (in 1976), during a mission in space, Jean heroically volunteered to pilot the escape craft taking the X-Men back to Earth, even though she was thereby exposed to intense radiation from a solar storm. The escape craft crash-landed in a bay, but Jean had not died: instead she rose from the waters, declaring herself to be the Phoenix. 

She had apparently activated her unsuspected full potential, and, as we would soon learn. could now wield enough power to save the universe from destruction, as she did in issue 109. 

Jean was linked with the “Phoenix Force,” cosmic energies that could manifested themselves around her in the form of a fiery bird. This was a force with great potential for creation or for destruction. 

(Later retconning by Kurt Busiek and John Byrne established that Phoenix was not the real Jean, but was the sentient Phoenix Force, which had duplicated Jean’s body and consciousness. Still later, Claremont established that Phoenix bore a portion of the real Jean’s consciousness, which returned to Jean after Dark Phoenix’s demise: hence Dark Phoenix was partly Jean. The original intent of the “Dark Phoenix Saga” was that Jean was Phoenix, and for simplicity’s sake, that is how I am interpreting the story here.) 

During another twist of fate, during which Jean thought Scott was dead, she underwent temptation by the devilish mutant Mastermind, who projected illusions into her mind that she had led a decadent life in an earlier incarnation in the 18th century. Claremont and Byrne were doing something revolutionary here, showing that even as pure and loving a heroine as Jean Grey had a dark side within her subconscious. 

Reunited, Scott and Jean finally consummated their love in a memorable scene that Claremont and Byrne set on a desert mesa, in which Jean used the power of Phoenix to block Scott’s optic beams, thereby performing a miracle that made their sexual union possible at last. Though Claremont and Byrne got the point across through implication, and showed nothing explicit, this too was a revolutionary move for the mainstream comics of that period. 

As a result of Mastermind’s psychic brainwashing, Jean soon became the malevolent Black Queen of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, the X-Men’s enemies. But Mastermind, like Dr. Frankenstein, had unleashed a monster that he could not control: Jean broke free of his mental control, but his meddling with her mind turned her into the insane Dark Phoenix, a threat both to the X-Men and to the universe. The duality of human nature, of course, is one of the principal themes of the superhero genre. 

Through psychic combat, the X-Men’s mentor, Professor Charles Xavier, succeeded in inducing Jean to revert to her normal personality. But the X-Men’s alien allies, the Shi’ar, demanded her destruction lest she threaten the universe once more. The X-Men engaged in a trial by combat to save Jean’s life. Reunited, Jean and Scott battled alongside each other. But Jean’s Dark Phoenix persona resurfaced, and in a brief moment of sanity, Jean committed suicide, before the horrified Scott’s eyes, to prevent herself from reverting permanently to Dark Phoenix. 

Here lies the tragedy: that this young woman, who normally exemplified love, courage and heroism, who had proved capable of becoming a goddess in human form, was doomed by a fatal flaw in her psyche and by the evil within the world around her. The Phoenix Saga ended in issue 137 as it had really begun in #100: Jean’s ultimate act of love for Scott and her friends was to destroy herself. 

There is no “bigger story” in the X-Men comics canon than this. Indeed, it rivals Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Galactus trilogy (Fantastic Four #48-50, from 1966) as one of the greatest of all Marvel storylines. 

Since Jean is called Phoenix, it should be no surprise that Marvel later resurrected her. The longrunning story of Scott and Jean’s troubled romance even found a happy ending with their joyous wedding in X-Men (second series) #30 (1994). 

 

 

21st century Marvel has since destroyed this love story by having Scott act totally out of character and embark on an affair with Emma Frost, the Hellfire Club’s White Queen, of all people. Eventually, I hope, this too will pass, and wiser heads will reinstate the Scott-Jean romance, which, like Jean herself, is the heart of the series. 

We can now see that X-Men: The Last Stand basically consists of two major, interlocking plotlines: Magneto’s attack on the human race, provoked by the creation of a “cure” for mutation, and the Dark Phoenix Saga. “Dark Phoenix” is considerably more important to the film than Avi Arad had suggested. Yet perhaps his insistence on minimizing its importance suggests why the treatment of Dark Phoenix goes awry in the film. 

I did not have high expectations for the Last Stand movie, so I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. In large measure that’s because the writers, Simon Kinburg and Zak Penn, draw more fully on the imaginative richness of the X-Men comics canon than the previous films did. That doesn’t mean that Last Stand doesn’t have serious problems. 

There are X-Men comics readers who dislike the movies because of the changes they make to the comics continuity. I expect movies and television shows to create their own variant continuity. This can be done well, as in the case of the 1990s Batman animated series. It doesn’t bother me that in the movies Angel is not one of the original X-Men, or that the movie Magneto is not still in his physical prime like the comics Magneto. 

I did not expect Last Stand to send Dark Phoenix into outer space to destroy the planet of the D’Bari (the “asparagus people”) or to bring in the Shi’ar, or to stage the climax on the moon, as the comics did. John Byrne has an unlimited special effects budget; movies do not, so I expected that Last Stand would have to rework the Dark Phoenix Saga to keep it earthbound. 

What is more important is that film and TV adaptations should be faithful to the characterizations and themes of the comics. This is where Last Stand goes astray in the case of Dark Phoenix. What the filmmakers should realize is that by failing to fully comprehend what makes the “Dark Phoenix Saga” work in the comics, they ruined dramatic opportunities that would have made Last Stand a stronger, deeper, better movie. 

Here’s the first problem: do people who only know the X-Men from the movies even care about Jean? In the comics “The Dark Phoenix Saga” drew upon the readers’ warm feelings towards the character, not only from Claremont’s previous stories but, for longtime readers, from Stan Lee’s and Roy Thomas’s X-Men tales from the 1960s. In his review of Last Stand in New York Magazine (May 29, 2006), film critic David Edelstein refers to “Xavier’s dull assistant Jean (Famke Janssen), who sacrificed herself for her colleagues at the end of X2. . . .” He’s right. Despite that act of heroism, the previous two X-Men movies did not inspire fondness for Jean. 

I was quite pleased with the opening scene of Last Stand, set twenty years ago. Here were Xavier and Magneto, when they were friends and colleagues, visiting John and Elaine Grey to recruit their prepubescent daughter Jean, into Xavier’s school for mutants. However the filmmakers managed to make actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, who portray Xavier and Magneto, look twenty years younger, it was remarkable. I was happy to see that the screenwriters had here drawn upon Chris Claremont’s X-Men stories. It was Claremont who established in Uncanny X-Men #161 (1982) that Xavier and Magneto had been friends decades ago, and that Xavier had first met Jean when she was a child, to help her cope with her newly emerged psionic abilities, in Bizarre Adventures #27 (1981). 

During this sequence, not only does X-Men co-creator Stan Lee make his expected Hitchcockian cameo (as “Waterhose Man,” according to the credits), but so does Chris Claremont, as “Lawnmower Man” (without apologies to Stephen King). Considering that Claremont is the most important author in X-Men history next to Lee, having written and molded the characters since 1975, this is a gesture that is both welcome and long overdue. 

Of course, it would be even better if he got some onscreen acknowledgment of having written the stories that inspired much of the movie, and even a cut of the profits, but since he wrote them as work for hire, such is not to be. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal Frank Miller is “conservatively estimated to have made more than $10 million” so far from the Sin City movies, based on comics he wrote, drew, and owns. (See here) It makes you think, doesn’t it? 

Moreover, whereas the Hulk and Fantastic Four movies rightly bear a credit that they are based on comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, I saw X-Men co-creator Kirby’s name nowhere on Last Stand. And so it goes. 

But what is Jean like in this opening sequence? She’s angry and dangerous, glowering at the guests, and levitating all the cars in the neighborhood (and Claremont’s lawnmower) in a display of power. (Has she done this sort of thing before? If so, why haven’t all the neighbors headed for the hills?) Remember Superbaby? Meet Li’l Dark Phoenix: Red Skelton’s Mean Widdle Kid with a sex change and cosmic powers. She reminds me of those sinister, super-powered children in movies like The Omen and Village of the Damned. So why should we like her? 

Claremont’s novelization provides a different perspective. I like a great deal about the novelization. Claremont delves further into the emotions and psychology of the characters and fills out their backgrounds, aligning the movie’s story more closely with the established comics continuity. Claremont even supplies many little grace notes that should please faithful readers of X-Men comics. In the novel he supplies Rogue and Moira MacTaggart with the accents – deep Southern United States and Scots, respectively – they lack in the movie. Claremont works in references and sometimes even appearances by X-Men characters unseen in the film, such as Forge and Bishop. The movie doesn’t give its President a name, so Claremont christens him President David Cockrum, in a commendable salute to the artist who co-created the X-Men Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Storm. Claremont and Cockrum also jointly devised Jean’s Phoenix persona. It’s fun to see Claremont dub an unnamed mutant in the film “Weezie,” the nickname of former X-Men editor Louise Simonson. 

I also enjoy Claremont’s clever shout outs to some of the actors in the film. Though the comics have never given the Beast a sibling, Claremont tells us, “He enjoyed fine wines with his brother, the Jungian psychiatrist” (p. 55) a sly reference to Kelsey Grammer’s most famous role as Dr. Frasier Crane and his brother Niles, played by David Hyde Pierce. Towards the book’s end Claremont even engages in a touch of metafiction, informing us that a movie has been made about the mutant battle in San Francisco, “with one of Britain’s finest Shakespearean actors, a knight no less, tapped to play the role of Magneto,” a nod to McKellen (p. 334). 

Much more importantly, though he faithfully recounts Xavier and Magneto’s visit to the Greys, Claremont begins the novelization with a different scene, closely based on his description of how Jean’s powers first emerged in that Bizarre Adventures tale. In the comics, Jean’s telepathic powers awakened in her childhood when her best friend, Annie, was mortally injured in an automobile accident. (Oddly, in the comics Annie’s last name is Richardson, but in the novel it is Malcolm. The novel also manages to misspell Magneto’s last name consistently: it should be “Lehnsherr.”) Jean telepathically experienced Annie’s emotions as she died in her arms; as the novel states, Jean “collapsed into what was later described as a fugue state brought on by extreme trauma” (p. 8). 

Now this Jean is a little girl who deserves our sympathy, having been psychologically shattered by a dreadful experience. How many other origins in the superhero genre involve a child confronted with mortality through the sudden loss of a loved one? The death of Annie is metaphorically the death of the innocence of Jean’s childhood. Significantly, Claremont refers to their “shared lives,” as if recognizing that symbolically they are one (p. 6). 

Returning to this scene he first chronicled a quarter century ago, Claremont adds intriguing new touches. Jean angrily refuses to accept that Annie is dying: “The passion surprised them both, a fierce rage that outlined Jean, just for a moment, in a corona of fire, like a star casting forth a solar flare.” This is the birth of Phoenix, linked to the surge of passion. 

There is also the suggestion that the Phoenix represents the potential of the human spirit. Jean psychically perceives herself and Annie as “a pair of galaxies, islands of breathtaking light and color, all by themselves against the backdrop of infinity” (p.5). Then the Phoenix power, released within Jean, becomes “an absolute of light. Against such a display, Annie was too small to even quantify” (p. 6). Unable to cope, the child Jean feels “cast into a maelstrom” (p. 6). 

That image, of being cast into a maelstrom, perfectly suits even the adult Jean, her sanity overwhelmed by dark passions surging from her subconscious in the comics’ version of “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” If only the movie had conveyed that this is what its Jean was also experiencing, her behavior might have awakened stronger audience empathy. 

Following the Jean flashback, the movie segues to a sequence of the X-Men in combat at a time identified by onscreen titles as “in the not too distant future.” I find that I am not the only person who was put in mind of Claremont and Byrne’s other greatest X-Men story, the “Days of Future Past,” set in a dystopian future (Uncanny X-Men #141-142, from 1981), and indeed, the head of one of the giant mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, severed by Wolverine, drops into view. By this time I had guessed that this was the “Danger Room,” the X-Men’s hologram-generating practice room, at long last making it into one of the X-Men movies. Am I the only one who, upon seeing that “not too distant future” caption, thought of the theme song for Mystery Science Theater 3000? 

It was also fun to see Colossus throwing Wolverine in their “fastball special” maneuver, familiar from the comics. I suppose that now moviegoers will think that Last Stand is copying the way Aragorn tosses the dwarf Gimli into battle in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002). Was Jackson intentionally copying Colossus and Wolverine? If so, Jackson got the point of the maneuver: that Colossus is so much bigger than the short but powerful Wolverine. On seeing the first X-Men movie I was astonished at how much Hugh Jackman, in wig and makeup, facially resembled the comics Wolverine, one of the relatively few heroes in superhero comics with a distinctive face, and I like his performance in the role. I suppose it was too much to hope for that the filmmakers would cast someone who was 5’3″ in a leading role like Wolverine. (When I see Jackman doing musical comedy on television, he is utterly unrecognizable as Wolverine!) 

It’s not clear how much time has elapsed in the world of the X-Men films since the second and third movies, though a new President has taken office. It doesn’t bother me that Scott is still unable to recover from the death of Jean: remember, in the comics, he left the team afterwards. In the novel Claremont makes clear that Scott is suffering from clinical depression. 

I like Claremont’s extended description of Xavier’s mansion and its history at the start of Chapter Three. (I wish he had worked all of this out back when I was co-writing the Marvel Universe Handbooks!) I’ve also grown to like the building used as Xavier’s school in the movies. It may not have the familiar cupola from the comics, but I like the ivy-covered walls, as if the Xavier school represented the Ivy League for mutants. 

 

 

There follows a scene about Rogue and her inability to touch people without triggering her absorption power. The movie Rogue may have the same power and problem as her comics counterpart, and even the same white streak in her hair, but she’s not the same person. Imagine if the movies had given us the sassy, feisty Southern woman that Rogue is in the comics. What a great part that would be for an actress! (Watching The Incredibles again recently, I realized that Holly Hunter’s vocal characterization for Elastigirl could work for Rogue.) But, as we shall see, the X-Men movies are a study in missed opportunities. 

That even applies a little to Kelsey Grammer’s performance as Dr., Henry McCoy, the Beast. I think this was brilliant casting: Grammer’s sonorous voice, and refined, dignified manner perfectly make clear the contrast between McCoy’s high intellect and his bestial physical appearance. 

The Beast makeup works perfectly, in sharp contrast to the Thing suit in last summer’s Fantastic Four movie. I was happy to see the Beast make his entrance characteristically hanging upside down, and, doubtless thanks to special effects, he moved convincingly in the battle scenes. I even liked hearing Grammer utter the Beast’s trademark (and nonsensical) exclamation “Oh my stars and garters!” from the comics. 

So what’s the missed opportunity? In the comics the Beast can be funny! Why cast Kelsey Grammer, a superb comedy actor, in the role if the filmmakers don’t give him the Beast’s characteristic witticisms to speak? 

Then the film introduces us to Bolivar Trask, but this Trask isn’t the fanatical anti-mutant scientist who created the Sentinels, but a military man, who barely makes an impression as a character in the movie. Why use the name of Bolivar Trask but not the real character? 

Marvel has been claiming that this is the final X-Men movie, yet Last Stand ends with scenes that clearly set up the next one, and considering how much money Last Stand is making (the second largest opening day box office in history, and the biggest Friday opening ever), it’s hard to imagine that Marvel and Fox will resist the temptation to do X4. So what if they decide to use the Sentinels (such a natural in the age of CGI) for that movie? 

Shouldn’t they have saved the name “Bolivar Trask” for their inventor? 

This reminds me of one of the strange coincidences of 1960s pop culture. In X-Men there were Bolivar Trask, who debuted in 1965, and his son Larry, who conducted “witch hunts” against the mutants in society. And the 1960s television series Dark Shadows had its own Trask family, literal witchhunters, the first of whom debuted in 1967. Was this mere accident, or was someone on the Shadows staff a Marvel fan? 

In the movie and novel, McCoy refers to the “mutant community.” In the X-Men comics of the 1960s (except for the original Mesmero storyline) there appeared to be very few superhuman mutants on Earth. It was Grant Morrison, during his stint writing the New X-Men comic a few years ago, who made it clear that mutants constituted a sizable minority of Earth’s population. Claremont embraces this idea, and, indeed, later on in the novel he even establishes that a sequence in the film takes place in “Mutie Town,” the mutant “ghetto” in Manhattan from the District X comics. 

Ironically, Marvel has recently reversed course in the comics, whittling down the number of superhuman mutants to roughly two hundred as a result of the House of M limited series. I see the point that the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe had gotten out of hand: having too many superpowered beings in the population would make Marvel-Earth overly different from the real world of its readers. 

Still, one of the basic premises of X-Men is that a new race is evolving that may supplant “normal” humans, a prospect some (like Bolivar Trask) fear and others (like Magneto) welcome. If there are no more than a few hundred mutants within Earth’s population of several billion, what’s the problem? 

It is revealed in the film that Dr. Kavita Rao, sponsored by Warren Worthington Jr. (the father of the winged mutant Angel), has developed a “cure” for mutation, which suppresses the functioning of the “x”-gene. The elder Worthington regards mutation as a disease. Joss Whedon and John Cassaday introduced both Dr. Rao and the cure in the initial storyline of their Astonishing X-Men comics series (see “Comics in Context” #42 and 43). Mr. Whedon has just gotten a lesson in how work for hire functions in comics. 

Look at how movie critics have reacted to the cure. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times declares that “The story this time partly turns on a new cure for the mutant gene, which pushes the series’ gay metaphor without developing it in any interesting way,” and likens the winged Angel to “seraphic visions of Angels in America,” Tony Kushner’s epic theater work about the gay experience in the United States. Other reviewers made similar comments. But limiting the metaphor of mutation in X-Men to a single meaning is shallow thinking. 

Doubtless Bryan Singer, who is openly gay, recognized that mutation can serve as a “gay metaphor.” But much of the brilliance of the X-Men concept is that mutants can be a metaphor for any minority group. After all, the series was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, both straight, in the early 1960s. If they were aware of the metaphorical aspect of X-Men, they were more likely thinking of the black civil rights movement of the time, or of their own Jewish-American heritage. 

 

 

Roger Ebert realizes that the mutant metaphor can’t be restricted to any one minority: in his Last Stand review he wrote that “There are so many parallels here with current political and social issues that to list them is to define the next presidential campaign. . . . I thought of abortion, gun control, stem cell research, the ‘gay gene’ and the Minutemen. ‘Curing’ mutants is obviously a form of genetic engineering and stirs thoughts of ‘cures’ for many other conditions humans are born with, which could be loosely defined as anything that prevents you from being just like George or Georgette Clooney.” 

In Tom DeFalco’s new interview book, Comics Creators on X-Men, Claremont reveals that he identifies with the X-Men’s outsider status because he remembers what it was like being a British-born child growing up in a strange country – the United States. Hence mutants can even represent the sense of alienation felt by a minority of one. 

When the first X-Men movie came out, the comparison of Xavier and Magneto to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, respectively, was much commented upon: in that film Magneto even repeats Malcolm X’s famous line, “By any means necessary.” Notice that in Last Stand, the President, taking extreme action to suppress mutant rebels, uses that same phrase. 

In the film and novel Magneto displays the number tattooed on his wrist, making evident that anti-mutant bigotry can also symbolize anti-Semitism. In the novelization Claremont has the Beast delve more fully into that comparison. 

Claremont also has Storm make a speech to Rogue that reminds me of Pixar’s The Incredibles, in which the “supers” represent people who are forced to suppress their talents and individuality in the name of fitting into a dull, conformist society (see “Comics in Context” #62). Storm says, “there’s nothing to cure. You might as well cure Mozart of writing music, or da Vinci of the ability to make machines, or Edison, or Archimedes, or Shakespeare” (p. 78). 

I’m far from finished on the subject of X-Men: The Last Stand, and my critique will continue next week. 

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF  

I’ve lifted the name of this section from the title of a book by Norman Mailer. It seems appropriate for my plugs for my other current projects. I have two new books out: DK’s X-Men: The Ultimate Guide – The Third Edition, which I wrote and have updated for 2006, and The Art of X-Men: The Last Stand: From Concept to Feature Film, to which I contributed an essay on the X-Men’s history in the comics. 

Moreover, Marvel has just published Volume Two of its Essentials reprinting of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Deluxe Edition, from the mid-1980s. I wrote, expanded and updated more entries than anyone else for the Deluxe edition, under the editorship of the late Mark Gruenwald. I am amazed that this is the fifth book this year which I either wrote entirely or contributed to writing. And there are still more to come! 

I’ve also been interviewed once again by the BBC, as you can see on their website. 

You can also find recent articles I’ve written for Publishers Weekly‘s Comics Week here and here. And they’re free! 

This weekend (June 24 and 25) I will be interviewing comics artists Frank Brunner and Jerry Ordway at the Big Apple Con at the Penn Plaza Pavilion in Manhattan. 

My suspicions about the alleged boom in academic interest in the comics medium continue unabated: only one person signed up for my course, “The Graphic Novel as Literature,” at New York University this summer, so it was canceled – yet again. 

However, my monthly lecture course, “1986: The Year That Changed Comics,” continues at Manhattan’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. 

At 6:30 PM on Monday, June 26, I will be lecturing on Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil: Born Again. (It’s a follow-up to my June 6 talk about Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which went quite well.) And it too is free! Feel free to come! 

Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson

 

 

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