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Post by Stone Cold Eleanor Shellstrop on Nov 6, 2017 20:51:12 GMT -5
Mutants are way more likely to look different than the norm. I kind of disagree with this, because most of the X-Men for a long time, starting with the Lee/Kirby era and going until the end of Claremont's run, were often drawn to be conventionally attractive. Even someone like Nightcrawler, who homo sapiens have feared because he looks like 'a demon', is basically blue Errol Flynn. It seems like the X-Men were always populated with otherwise generic pretty people until the late 90s. Imagine a character like Beak on the team in the 60s books or a Glob Herman-type on the Giant Size X-Men #1 team.
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Post by Kevin Hamilton on Nov 6, 2017 20:52:25 GMT -5
That's true, but I meant like currently. I should've specified. It's another thing they've added on there.
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Post by WoodStoner1 on Nov 6, 2017 21:00:16 GMT -5
It's magic! We don't have to explain it!!
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Post by Goldenbane on Nov 6, 2017 21:03:48 GMT -5
I do think the fact that the overwhelming majority of telepaths are mutants might have something to do with it. I mean, one moment you're sitting on a subway and some blond bombshell gets on board. You smile at her and think quietly to yourself, "wow, she's pretty, I wish I had a girl friend like her..." or something like that and you go about your day, waiting for the subway to get to your destination. Meanwhile your inner most darkest thoughts of course are thinking "WHOOAAAAA I'd bang that broad and put a baby in her belly so fast, that blond hair would go black! Heh heh heh heh!" Of course, that blond, who happens to be Emma Frost, is a complete bitch, reads your dark thoughts, and absolutely rapes and obliterates your brain for...well...no reason at all, really. You're a complete vegetable, if you don't get killed and are actually lucky enough to find your way back to your family, your life is completely ruined, and no doctor can find what's wrong with you (hopefully another telepath comes along...maybe a bald wheelchair bound one) and either tells your family the problem or...hopefully...fixes you. Considering that bald, wheelchair bound telepaths are usually dead or "missing" 90% of the time, fat chance of that happening. Maybe a hot redhead telepath could help, but she's probably too engrossed in her own love life trials to give two craps about you or your family.
This is a scary thing to think about, and that probably contributes a lot to mutant fear. If mutants and X-men were real, I'd honestly be all for registration/sentinel programs actually.
If Spider-man were real, after the 83rd retraction to yet another "SPIDER-MAN: THREAT OR MENACE?" newspaper story, I'd be wondering why anyone listens to flat top Hitler mustache guy, since Spidey keeps proving over and over and over again that's he's an alright dude.
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Post by SHAKEMASTER TV9 is Don Knotts on Nov 6, 2017 21:22:29 GMT -5
I've been doing a read on X-Men so from the beginning, while there was a mistrust of mutants, it wasn't overt stand-in for prejudice yet. X-Men were a known superhero team and the fear was mostly to authority figures like politicians and law enforcement wondering if they could trust the X-Men and then at the end realize they could. X-Men would appear and a bystander would yell that they're mutants and the rest would defend the X-Men as good guys who just saved them. More simplistic than it really was, but that's the basics of it.
The 70s brought it out a little more with Nightcrawler being introduced. He was usually the target of anti-mutant attacks because of how he looked which I think makes sense. The X-Men of the 60s maybe mutants, but they dressed like superheroes. Nightcrawler looked like he could've been a bad guy and made more obvious in God Loves, Man Kills when Stryker points at Nightcrawler in that famous panel. And there was equating calling someone mutie to the n*****. That doesn't age well, but this was written for kids and young adults and trying to teach a lesson so I give them a pass. Then there was the introduction of the Morlocks, more "mutanted" looking mutants who couldn't find acceptance on the surface. The prejudice is still there, but it's not as there as you'd expect.
New Mutants had an issue that has a very special episode vibe, but I think works for kids. A young teen that Kitty Pryde likes tries to hide he's a mutant with anti-mutant jokes. Kitty hates him after that and then he's found out anyway by those non-powered humans who threaten to call X-Factor, the mutant hunting group, on him. The kid kills himself and it's an important lesson for the New Mutants, but not really for those humans who never get exposed. Then there's X-Factor whose mission was to find and train mutants under the disguise of being mutant hunters. There was actually a lot of people within the series who opposed the mutant hunting and in one issue fought to try to stop them from taking Boom Boom.
I don't think Mutant hating became as big a thing until the late 80s to early 90s and then amped up when the TV came on. It was probably in this time Stan Lee starting equating the Professor X and Magneto to King and Malcolm X because they weren't like that when he wrote it. Magneto was pure Silver Age cheese villainy, his appearance on the old Fantastic Four cartoon was pretty accurate to his character IMO. It wasn't until the late 70s when Claremont began softening him up until a complete face turn in the 80s after Xavier left Earth. By the late 80s with storylines like Mutant Massacre and Inferno, Magneto started an "ends justifies the means" philosophy to protect mutants.
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Post by Red Impact on Nov 6, 2017 22:07:49 GMT -5
Someone here had an explanation that I liked, so I'll expound on it.
Take the frame of reference for the average Marvel citizen. Superheroes include people like the Fantastic 4, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and so forth. These aren't, for the most part, normal random peoples. They are individuals who got their powers either through great intelligence, training, etc. or through events that are not replicable. The jerky kid who rides through your lawn isn't a Norse god or an alien from another planet. You know for a fact that he wasn't potty trained until he was six, so he's not smart enough to build a suit of power armor or fly into space and be bombarded with gamma radiation. He'll be a jerky kid until he's a jerky teenager and eventually a jerky CPA or Deli Owner.
But he might be a mutant. And if he is, he might have the ability to summon a tornado on your house or turn your family into demonic duck puppets (The average Marvel citizen probably has very weird anxiety if you think about it). And that is inherently more terrifying, because at worst he lowers your property values by being 9 feet tall an covered in pink fur, but at worst he has a black hole for a head and can turn your kids into demonic duck puppets.
To someone in the Marvel universe, the "average" superhero is one of the elite of humanity who was skilled or fortunate enough to have skills to help humanity. But mutants are completely, totally random, and there's no way of knowing or stopping anyone, even the jerky kid who you know wants to make demonic duck puppets, from becoming a mutant.
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Post by MrElijah on Nov 6, 2017 22:44:06 GMT -5
Because Marvel citizens suck.
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Post by ERON on Nov 6, 2017 23:27:32 GMT -5
Non-mutant superheroes were born "normal" and got changed somewhere along the way. Mutants were born "different." Sure, it's irrational, but most prejudices are.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2017 23:39:51 GMT -5
I think its because superheroes are celebrities. They are out in public, take credit for everything, and are part of billion dollar groups.
Mutants, however, are secluded, mysterious, and having to rely on castes. Because mutants can't be public because of public fear and hatred, it only encourages further scorn.
Basically, and this is the irony, but getting an unnatural power makes you cool, but getting it through genetics makes you a freak.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Nov 6, 2017 23:42:36 GMT -5
There are villains that specifically hate all super powered beings in the Marvel universe (and not like Thanos who hates everyone but humans that hate super types because they have powers) . Not to mention things like Civil War started out of the latent mistrust that these super beings working independent of everyone with no oversight.
So for one heroes aren't universally loved.
And yes as stated basic idea is to be a stand in for isms and prejudice that doesn't particularly make sense either.
If someone saves your life why the hell do you care about their skin color or gender or more recently what they do in their bedroom.
Same deal, why do you care that they got their powers in a science accident over being evolutionary anomalies.
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Post by Welfare Willis on Nov 7, 2017 2:40:15 GMT -5
"Because f*** you!" - some asshole from Marvel comics. Probably. Sitting on his giant pile of cash.
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Post by Ash Kingston on Nov 7, 2017 3:46:06 GMT -5
Non-mutant superheroes were born "normal" and got changed somewhere along the way. Mutants were born "different." Sure, it's irrational, but most prejudices are. This is what I was gonna come in here to say. Most superheroes (and super villains) are "above average" people who either got their powers from an outside source (Daredevil, Hulk, Captain America, Spider Man, the Fantastic Four), are aliens (Thor, Loki), or don't have powers but make up for it in other ways (Iron Man with the suit, Black Widow being a highly trained assassin). Mutants, on the other hand, are... as you said, born different, although when their powers develop can vary. And most mutants, because of that, tend to be outcasts on top of that, which likely plays a factor in why they don't get the same love that most superheroes do. Guys like Ben Grimm tend to be the exceptions, since I doubt someone who doesn't know his story is gonna assume he's NOT a mutant. ...I should have just said 'yeah, probably this'.
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Post by Hit Girl on Nov 7, 2017 4:00:26 GMT -5
Superheroes are usually created through accidents or are aliens, whereas mutants are a naturally evolving species who could exist within your own family and community, which brings it closer to home and leads to fear and prejudice.
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Post by No Longer a Produceman on Nov 7, 2017 13:33:25 GMT -5
I think even bigger than the mutant issue is how, in Marvel with the registration act, and DC with Checkmate or Cadmus, no one seems to ask, "Wait, why do you suddenly have FAR more resources to handle superheroes than you've ever devoted to dealing with supervillains?" No, really, what the f*** is the explanation for that? I'm also curious why someone like Doctor Doom wouldn't have taken advantage of the House of M mutant crisis or the Registration act and gone on a recruiting spree. Someone who could trivially grant powers to the newly powerless or give amnesty to fugitive heroes would probably benefit immensely. He’s too busy tooting his own horn ![](https://pics.me.me/do-not-toot-iti-fool-doctor-doom-toots-as-he-2960403.png)
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Post by Allie Kitsune on Nov 7, 2017 13:41:39 GMT -5
And that is inherently more terrifying, because at worst he lowers your property values by being 9 feet tall an covered in pink fur. And what, exactly, is terrifying about that? *glare*
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Post by hossfan on Nov 7, 2017 13:53:33 GMT -5
Mistrust of superheroes was a pretty common trope even of early Marvel. Besides the X-Men, you had Spider-man, the Thing, Hulk, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (mutants themselves), Silver Surfer, and Namor. And given how they almost always wound up fighting each other whenever they crossed paths, you could argue even the good guys were a bit paranoid.
But I'd say the big difference between mutants and 'regular' superhumans in terms of perception was that the former were seen as a threat to overthrow and replace regular folk ('like Cro-magnon did to the Neanderthal'). It didn't help that the most well-recognized known mutant was Magneto, who was vowing to do just that.
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Post by Bub (BLM) on Nov 7, 2017 14:03:42 GMT -5
Mutants were believed to be the next evolutionary step for mankind and theorists like Boliver Trask depicted them in propaganda as monsters bent on enslaving their genetic inferiors in the coming future. It's one thing to have a brilliant scientist like Reed Richards galavanting around the world with his media maven wife or a living legend like Captain America in a commercial telling his fellow citizens to vote and something completely different to watch grainy footage of a man that shoots lasers from his eyes or a person who tried to switch the magnetic poles in order to create a situation where only the fittest survived. Excellently put.
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Post by Hit Girl on Nov 7, 2017 14:08:21 GMT -5
Iceman's Mom - "Have you tried....NOT being a mutant?"
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Post by Vice honcho room temperature on Nov 7, 2017 14:35:31 GMT -5
Okay so my knowledge of the lore has gaps missing but my point is do the superheros have their origin stories known cause if not again how can you tell?
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Nov 7, 2017 14:48:36 GMT -5
Okay so my knowledge of the lore has gaps missing but my point is do the superheros have their origin stories known cause if not again how can you tell? Many of them are.
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