Submitted by jamescookenotthatone t3_zsk6me in todayilearned
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You know, I saw an interview with Martin Luther King Jr. where he wasn't satisfied with what they had won. He saw it as the easy part because it was good for business to let everyone come in and shop equally. The hard part, in his mind, was the part that wasn't good for business. He was killed before any further progress was made. Some would argue very little, if any, progress has been made since his death. At least not the kind of progress he envisioned.
I know these two things are nowhere near equal in weight or importance, but thinking about that interview, and about Marvel arguing against its own message for tax reasons. I can't help but think social issues will always go the way that is ultimately good for business. Which is kind of sad.
I would argue it sends the message that our tax codes for toys are stupid. Why are action figures taxed differently?
It's actually more meta then you think. Plenty of groups want to be treated fairly but at the same time want to maintain advantages. Marvel was basically arguing that mutant toys need an advantage over human toys to be treated fairly. I know that was not the real reason but practically speaking it's not unlike people fighting for affirmative action policies to help based on race instead of other non race criteria. Pushing race based policies to help only some of the disenfranchised people instead of more general policies that would still help people belonging to races that are most disenfranchised. For instance, helping all poor people.
It's not unlike having programs to push girls into STEM jobs but not having similar programs for boys or even complimentary programs to help get them into careers predominantly filled by women (like teachers and nursing).
It's a very complex problem. Take the quota systems designed to help black and Hispanic students get into better colleges by reducing standards for them. Is it fair? No. Is it needed to help certain students? Debatable but certainly is effective in helping those students get access to better education.
Do you like your converse SLIPPERS? Cause shoes are taxed differently!
*very sad
I thought the best parallel was mutations and puberty. Teen bodies going through changes. I remember wondering what my mutant power was gonna be when I read X-Men comics at age 11.
I got a hairy ass as my mutant power.
Dr. McCoy, is that you?
Ah yes, "The Black Forest" as the guys in the locker room in high school would call it...
Good thing I like Black Forest cake
I got a robe
This. Anybody who feels different, like they don't fit in, who feels like a weirdo -- that's who X-Men is for. To imply that it's less for me because I don't belong to any marginalized groups of kinda heinous.
That's why it works so well for them to be teenagers.
I always thought this was funny. Like obviously we have humans being born thay can controls mind and kill a nornal person with a lift of a finger. Like I'm not gonna let someone walk around normal society with an M61 Vulcan auto cannon for an arm. Then again thinking that we need to separate and dominate different colored humans is as silly as people being born with the ability to control the weather.
Except... You're over-simplifying racism. It's not just you, however- people are ALWAYS over-simplifying racism by decrying "how can people hate others simply for the color of their skin???", so it's understandable how it gets repeated as if based in fact. I've lived my entire life in the supposedly-racist Southeastern U.S. and never ONCE in my life have I heard anyone say they disliked someone because their skin was a different color. Rather, skin color is often associated with different CULTURES, and it is the differences in CULTURE that people like or dislike, not the actual color of skin. The reason Europeans felt superior to Sub-Saharan blacks hundreds of years ago was not because the Africans' skins were brown, dark brown or black. It was because their culture was deemed "primitive" by European standards of that time. Unless and until people let go of the platitude that is "people hate simply because of the color of skin", we're NEVER going to get anywhere with the discussion of race relations.
On the other hand, real life minorities are no different from every other human, while mutants are inherently superior to regular, everyday humans. Seems kinda odd to use mutants as an allegory for minorities when taking this into consideration.
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The X-men were made by Jewish men, during the height of a very tumultuous civil rights movement that was going on in America at the time.
It was meant to be a very deliberate, and direct allegory to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X but it was explained in a way that kids could understand. Magneto was a Jew, and an actual survivor of the camps in Germany.
Magneto's back story wasn't established until way, way after Lee and Kirby left the book. He was mostly just an evil mutant with his group of evil mutants, and the X- men were the good mutants standing in his way. Roy Thomas has a little of the future paradigm in his collaboration with Neal Adams in issue 63, but it's more that Mags wanted to rule the world with evil mutants, not free all mutants from humans.
Claremont established his Jewish backstory in Uncanny X-men 150. Even in earlier appearances in Claremont's run (104, 113), Magneto is still just a super villain who is trying to beat the X-men and take over the world.
His group was even called "the brotherhood of evil mutants" lol
It really wasn't. The early issues were very generic. Not to say they were bad, but they were pretty straightforward. It wasn't until the relaunch that it gained depth.
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This comment stealing bot just woke up.
I think Stan got tired of "radioactivity" as the reason for everyone's super powers.
BTW, I had all the first 14 issues, and it was my favourite comic until my mom threw them all out when I was away at scout camp.
I vaguely recall a documentary where Stan said something to the effect of he felt like making them all mutants felt like a cop-out but he couldn't feesibly come up with unique origin stories for that many characters
Why'd she do that?
She was a DC fan.
LOL
My dad had the first issue as spiderman as a kid, threw it out after a few years because at the time it had little value
Next you are going to tell me you sold the 25 bitcoins you mined for $100
in the 90's when the comic boom happened, my dad bought 20+ first issue copies of different lesser known comics in the hopes they would one day blow up in price.
They did not. I've got stacks of the fucking things. Turok was not the money maker he hoped for, but the bone collection might go for an ok price.
Mark my words... Mere DAYS after you finally throw out the Turoks, they WILL announce a new movie and they WILL shoot through the roof. I cannot TELL you how many times over the years this has happened to me. I swear to all Gods- the old and the new- I once had an opportunity to buy literally DOZENS (if not hundreds) of Near Mint copies of New Mutants #98 for twenty-five cents each, no tax. At the time, I thought to myself "Why in the hell would anyone buy this book even for a quarter???".
I swear if I do ever offload these things and they shoot up in price i'm just gonna shoot myself.
You must know about the pizza that ended up costing (now) $229 million, right?
Plausible but still unlikely is the heart and core of fantasies, sci-fi und delusions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
My grandpa did that to my uncle after he joined the Marines. They never talked again
Did you ever tell her you could've bought her a car with those magazines?
Not just a flop. It was actually all but cancelled in 1970, after issue 66. Until Giant Sized X-Men #1 in 1975, the issues were just reprints of old stories rather than new content. I doubt many at Marvel in the early 70s would have believed that by the late 90s the X-Men would be more popular than Spider-Man or The Avengers or the Fantastic Four.
Starting in 1975, there was great writing from Chris Claremont, great art from many top talents, and the characters themselves had a lot of appeal. It was a killer combination.
This was THE comic when I was growing up. Only rivaled by Spiderman and perhaps Daredevil. Avengers was not in the same league in the mid80s. Funny how they are only an afterthought in this MCU stuff.
They are an afterthought now BECAUSE they were big before
Marvel had sold the movie license for most of their properties when they were in financial trouble. Then, When Marvel began the MCU they couldnt get back the movie license for Spider Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four, specifically because they were the most popular properties and the licensees kept them (On the other hand, stuff like Daredevil and Ghist Rider returned to Marvel). So Marvel was forced to start with their B-listers like Iron Man and Thor and the few A-listers they still had
Aaah .Good info didn't know that.
The X-Men movies did start to get better. And Logan is fantastic.
I think overall they were a mixed bag. It seems typically that for every two or so good x-men movies that get made, they follow with one or two that are widely regarded to be quite terrible.
X-Men: fairly good for its time (although superhero movies have come a long way since then)
X2: better than the first
X-Men - The Last Stand: complete and utter nonsense
X-Men Origins: started off decent I thought, but we all know what they did with Deadpool
First Class: very good
The Wolverine: I honestly do not have a strong memory of this one, but I believe I remember it being extraordinarily okay
Days of Future Past: also very good
X-Men Apocalypse: disappointing to say the least
Dark Phoenix: never saw this one, but I think by all accounts it was quite bad
Logan: obviously excellent
> Funny how they are only an afterthought in this MCU stuff.
If Disney had had the rights to the X-Men, they would not have been an afterthought.
My cousin had 2 subscriptions to spider-man and X-Men. One to read, one to collect. He would buy and sub, then unsub other books, but in the 90s, those 2 were king.
If there was a good story line, he'd put a stack of them in front of my brother, and I would read them as he finished.
X-Men were always crazy stories. The brood, Phoenix, people breaking off to join X-Force, X-Factor, eXcalibur.
And he always called everyone "Bub".
I was thirteen when the Byrne/Claremont work kicked in. Only had to wait 23 years for a film. For some reason, they cast a tall lean man for the short stocky Wolverine. Whatever.
For all the many, many problems with the X-Men movies, you can't deny that Jackman does a great job as Wolverine.
Professor X is supposed to be from New York City, but nobody seems to mind the British accent.
I think of all the X-men films, Jackman as Wolverine and Stewart as Professor X were the two best cast actors for their roles despite the differences from the source material. I only watched the 90s animated series, but these two actors really seemed to bring the characters to life. Wolverine’s height didn’t bother me, and I think the British accent for Professor X was actually an improvement.
And sir Ian as magnito
“Wizard! You shall not pass!”
He's not really a wizard. He merely used his acting skills to portray a wizard for the duration of the film.
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I think only short men get hung up on the "wolverine needs to be short" thing. I suppose it makes sense from a representation standpoint.
Just my opinion (and I'm not short), but... Being short and stocky was an actual "thing" insofar as Wolverine's personality in the '80s and '90s. He'd often "square off" with an opponent and they'd literally be looking down on him, as if to be under-estimating him. His fearlessness despite his stature is what helped to MAKE him who he was. It was constantly reinforced that, like a real Wolverine, he was small, but wasn't to be messed with. His height/build was literally part of his character. For us older guys to see him be portrayed by someone taller/thinner than the illustrations/stories we grew up on takes some of the familiarity we had for the character. My younger siblings complain about the change in aesthetics of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from one movie to another, so I think it's a fair thing to have a minor gripe about.
Awful take. Wolverine being short and hairy was a deliberate part of his physical character design for the entire history of the X-Men comic. It's a character design trait that really didn't need to be changed for the film at all. Jackman does a great job as the character so it's mostly irrelevant now but the annoyance was just because if you're going to make a comic book movie at least try to represent the characters that everyone already knows (unless it's a problematic representation).
In summary it made a lot of comic fans unhappy because it was ignoring a major element of the characters visual design. Remember this was an era where comic book movies were absolute trash because the writers/directors/producers didn't seem to give a shit about the source material, so casting a tall lean wolverine was not a great confidence booster.
It's not because short men don't feel represented.
And again, it didn't really matter in the end cos we got a great Logan out of Jackman, but it was a legit gripe.
Byrne was my favorite. I collected anything he did, even after the jump to DC. Loved Alpha Flight. Cockrum I couldn't stomach.
> Only had to wait 23 years for a film
Heh, there's a new issue of Miracleman coming out next week that comic book fans have been waiting 28 years for.
>Whatever
Whatever indeed smartass.
Cockrum. Lol.
Had to scroll way too far to find this.
Also, prior to the debut of the X-Men, "Mutants" were 1st introduced in an Agent Woo comic, even noting they looked the same as ordinary people.
1920's sci fi fantasy, fictions made worse the the Great Depression as escape behaviors.
The psych diagnoses of these are pretty grim to deal with. esp. in OCD.
“Stan Lee Made the X-Men”
There's an excellent r/HobbyDrama about Perlmutter trying to replace the X-Men in Marvel with the inhumans.
Also in a case of critical irony, Marvel successfully argued that mutants aren't human in court so they could avoid the extra import duties on action figures (humans were more expensive to import than non-humans).
So, you know, literally the exact opposite of the entire point of the x-men comics.
Initially, Professor X was attracted to Jean Grey.
https://preview.redd.it/kg2ezn9lgch61.jpg?auto=webp&s=ee152acb60f8524b5f1214a29a8822fc4831646d
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Cockrum is a bottom-5 spirit
Laziness is the mother of all invention
Initially a flop AND latest film was a POS
They are still a flop
being born with super powers is no more an explanation of their origins than any other. Esp. since universal laws of physics are being widely ignored & broken.
Dr. Jas. Lett: Guide to Critical Thinking.
https://skepticalinquirer.org/1990/01/a-field-guide-to-critical-thinking/
People hate mutants but they're okay with Captain America? A Nazi have him superpowers! He failed to kill Hitler!
Dr. Erskine was a Jewish German scientist who fled Nazi Germany after being enslaved in their research program, a fairly common occurrence at the time for highly educated Jewish people.
My Hero Academia calls it Quirk.
Idk why people are downvoting this, the inspiration is obvious.
As is the idea being stripped of all meaningful societal commentary after a decent start in favor of just basic shounen action.
Lol you wrote cock
blues-brother90 t1_j1899uw wrote
I knew that but always loved how Marvel made a parallel between mutants and minorities, both attacked for reasons they had no control on.