Great piece. This comparison always annoyed me bc it reflected how white liberals viewed MLK/Malcolm X. Malcolm was not a terrorist who promoted active violence against white people — just self defense (he arguably sounded more peaceful regarding race relations than the Israeli government does regarding Gaza). MLK didn’t have a Danger Room. He was overtly non-violent!
I feel like different authors have tried to make the Malcolm comparison more valid by making Magneto's position less genocidal/more like self defense, at least sometimes? but yeah, he's often been a caricature of an evil radical...
I love this. Well done. As someone who was raised to default to respectability politics due to the dangers of being a black man in America, this article really speaks to me.
While part of me says "Oh, Hell, Yeah!" to overturning "respectability politics", Magneto's dream of violent assault on "normies" by mutants strikes me as unsustainable. Charles Xavier may bend over backwards too much (and it's led him down some ugly paths to maintain it), but Erik Lehnsherr's destructive intransigence is what gives Bolivar Trask license to create The Sentinels, who wipe out ALL mutants in most realities.
To pick a "current affairs" analogue—Xavier is Biden, Magneto is Hamas...and Trask is Netanyahu, who can point to the October 7th attack every time he's told he's gone too far and yell, "THEY STARTED IT!" That he's using the attacks as license to commit genocide on the Palestinian people is obvious by now, but that attack still gives him a figleaf of justifiability to hide his real agenda behind.
Worse, it's a figleaf most world leaders will accept, albeit reluctantly—and Zionists use eagerly!
well, there's another essay to write about how Magneto isn't Malcolm X. As Stephen says in comments, Malcolm X was about self defense. (and early Magneto especially was indistinguishable from every other super villain; he barely mentioned anti mutant prejudice as an excuse.)
I think that's because Magneto wasn't originally a Holocaust survivor, which gave his loathing of non-mutants context and an aura of tragedy. THB, for all Stan Lee and Jack Kirby accomplished as a comic book creators, their villains were usually just that—villains.
While you'd get antagonists who weren't villainous but thought the *hero* was a villain originally (this happened to Spider-Man a LOT!), Magneto and Dr. Doom were both straight-up megalomaniacs bent on world domination, The Kingpin was a physically-powerful Mob moss and a bully who loved throwing his weight around (literally as well as figuratively!), and most of the other baddies of the time were thieves of one kind or another. That's why Namor being an antihero who had good reasons to hate "airbreathers", and was in love with Susan Storm, was so innovative at the time.
It wasn't until writers like Chris Claremont, Neal Adams and Frank Miller, who came to Marvel because they were doing something "different" than DC was at the time, started to give the villains depth as well that you got Holocaust Survivor Magneto, Doom as a physically and emotionally-scarred royal heir (who was, surprisingly, a fairly benevolent despot in his homeland of Latveria!), and a Kingpin who truly believed his criminal actions were in furtherance of making New York City a safer, better place to live.
Claremont was somewhat responsible, but I think it’s really more recent writers who have gone further in having magneto be essentially a good guy, and maybe the good guy, depending on the storyline…
Great piece. This comparison always annoyed me bc it reflected how white liberals viewed MLK/Malcolm X. Malcolm was not a terrorist who promoted active violence against white people — just self defense (he arguably sounded more peaceful regarding race relations than the Israeli government does regarding Gaza). MLK didn’t have a Danger Room. He was overtly non-violent!
I feel like different authors have tried to make the Malcolm comparison more valid by making Magneto's position less genocidal/more like self defense, at least sometimes? but yeah, he's often been a caricature of an evil radical...
I love this. Well done. As someone who was raised to default to respectability politics due to the dangers of being a black man in America, this article really speaks to me.
I just started watching X-men in order of release.
the movies?! good grief...a lot of them are not very good!
So I understand …but when you’re compulsive it’s hard to limit yourself
While part of me says "Oh, Hell, Yeah!" to overturning "respectability politics", Magneto's dream of violent assault on "normies" by mutants strikes me as unsustainable. Charles Xavier may bend over backwards too much (and it's led him down some ugly paths to maintain it), but Erik Lehnsherr's destructive intransigence is what gives Bolivar Trask license to create The Sentinels, who wipe out ALL mutants in most realities.
To pick a "current affairs" analogue—Xavier is Biden, Magneto is Hamas...and Trask is Netanyahu, who can point to the October 7th attack every time he's told he's gone too far and yell, "THEY STARTED IT!" That he's using the attacks as license to commit genocide on the Palestinian people is obvious by now, but that attack still gives him a figleaf of justifiability to hide his real agenda behind.
Worse, it's a figleaf most world leaders will accept, albeit reluctantly—and Zionists use eagerly!
well, there's another essay to write about how Magneto isn't Malcolm X. As Stephen says in comments, Malcolm X was about self defense. (and early Magneto especially was indistinguishable from every other super villain; he barely mentioned anti mutant prejudice as an excuse.)
I think that's because Magneto wasn't originally a Holocaust survivor, which gave his loathing of non-mutants context and an aura of tragedy. THB, for all Stan Lee and Jack Kirby accomplished as a comic book creators, their villains were usually just that—villains.
While you'd get antagonists who weren't villainous but thought the *hero* was a villain originally (this happened to Spider-Man a LOT!), Magneto and Dr. Doom were both straight-up megalomaniacs bent on world domination, The Kingpin was a physically-powerful Mob moss and a bully who loved throwing his weight around (literally as well as figuratively!), and most of the other baddies of the time were thieves of one kind or another. That's why Namor being an antihero who had good reasons to hate "airbreathers", and was in love with Susan Storm, was so innovative at the time.
It wasn't until writers like Chris Claremont, Neal Adams and Frank Miller, who came to Marvel because they were doing something "different" than DC was at the time, started to give the villains depth as well that you got Holocaust Survivor Magneto, Doom as a physically and emotionally-scarred royal heir (who was, surprisingly, a fairly benevolent despot in his homeland of Latveria!), and a Kingpin who truly believed his criminal actions were in furtherance of making New York City a safer, better place to live.
Claremont was somewhat responsible, but I think it’s really more recent writers who have gone further in having magneto be essentially a good guy, and maybe the good guy, depending on the storyline…
Amazingpiece!
It’s like you have x-ray vision and can parse an entire genre accurately and on first try.
Come clean Noah!