Monday, November 21, 2011

"From Her Ashes Risen"

While she's been part of the X-Men books from the beginning, she rarely gets stories or treatment in general to match her teammates. She doesn't make an easy metaphor for male adolescent aggression, or struggles with relinquishing a sense of control. In fact, for most of her history she's been relegated to facilitating those metaphors. There's really only one big story she's known for, granted it's one of the two or three most important storylines in the history of the series. Still, Jean Grey, or Marvel Girl, or Phoenix is mostly known for being the rope in a romantic tug of war. Like most Marvel heroines of the Silver Age she was subjected to unfortunate moments like this:

Note that Professor X has his hands in the pimpin' formation. 

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Magneto, and How He Works.

So we talked about Professor X. I outlined the various reasons I, and others, find the comparisons between  Professor Xavier and Magneto, and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X problematic. This isn't to say that it is entirely a mistake to evoke historical figures in the construction of the two characters. I linked Professor X to the likes St. Francis Xavier, and people like Carl Sagen who preached a "gospel" of secular humanism and scientific progress. Likewise, I do think there are a number of  historical figures that can be drawn upon to inform Magneto's character.