X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor (7 page)

A couple issues later, with Gary Friedrich taking over as writer for this chapter, the imagery of the story takes an unmistakable turn toward the lynch mobs that took many African American lives. The townspeople attack the sheriff to prevent him from protecting Iceman and Cyclops and prepare to hang them both. Unlike some artifacts of American entertainment, such as the silent film
Birth of a Nation
, the lynch mob that takes justice into its own hands is clearly the villain of this piece.

X-Men #65
(Feb. 1970) tells the final chapter of an attempted alien invasion of Earth. Written by Dennis O’Neal with art by Neal Adams, the story takes a new and important angle in the themes of diversity and understanding. Up to this point, the X-Men comic books have largely dealt with the evils of hatred. The focus has been on condemning those who have prejudicial attitudes. This issue takes the important step of featuring racial minorities in positive roles. In all previous sixty-four issues of X-Men comic books to this point there had been only two panels that showed a black character. The Black Panther appeared in the final panel of
The X-Men #45
(June 1968), and one African American policeman shows up in
X-Men #57
(June 1969).
6

In the storyline, Professor X uses his incredible telepathy to search the Earth, “probing, searching, questioning, demanding—seeking kindred spirits—men and women of good will!—Human beings who have in good measure the single trait he desperately needs—compassion! For it is the only thing that will best the enemy!” Professor Xavier intends to use compassion and love to repel the alien Z’Nox. As Xavier finds the souls of humanity who are good enough, a montage of images accompanies the narration. Included in the montage are, based on appearances and dress, an American child, an African woman, a Middle Eastern man, an American Indian man, another American child, an American couple, a Russian man and woman, and an African man. This shift from considering the evil that prejudiced men and women can do to the good that everyone can add to the world would be continued when Marvel began to print new stories in 1975.

Throughout all sixty-six issues of this run, the entire team is composed of white mutants. Despite the at times obvious metaphor of mutants being feared and hated in a manner similar to racial minorities in the United States, almost all of the minorities who appear are villains, often with stereotypes representing their ethnicities. The only new members of the team are white mutants, whereas all the minority mutants are the villains. This is one of the disconnects between the larger theme readers are told about and the actual content of the stories.

In this initial run of
The X-Men
, female characters are in the minority. By far the most prominent female is Jean Grey, who uses the code name
Marvel Girl. Another mutant, Lorna Dane, who is code named Polaris, will guest star in a few issues and act as a member of the team in the final storyline of this period. Eventually, the Beast, Iceman, and Angel begin dating women who appear semiregularly in the strip, but only as romantic interests for the men, not as fully fleshed-out characters. In this period, the team only faces one female villain, the Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff, who is a reluctant member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Jean Grey—Marvel Girl—is the only female team member for most of the first sixty-six-issue run of
The X-Men.
Marvel Girl’s contributions as a superhero are frequently minimized. While many of these moments can be dismissed, the cumulative effect of seeing Jean Grey treated as simply an object of affection, captured by the villains and in need of rescue, and being the sole member of the team to be assigned domestic duties diminishes her significance on the team. In her essay “Oppression,” Margaret Frye compares the moments of everyday life in which women, even unintentionally, are treated in some manner as subordinate to men to the wires of a birdcage. Each instance can be dismissed as insignificant, and if a fuss is made the objector may be labeled as overly sensitive to gender issues. But the frequency of these events has the same effect as the wires of a birdcage, which, when considered individually seem insignificant, but taken together create an impenetrable barrier. Women are trapped, or at least inhibited, by seemingly trivial attitudes and actions that come together to create a system of containment (177). Similarly, many of the moments in which Marvel Girl is submissive or the sole domestic presence in the series can be dismissed, and readers could instead point to the instances in which her powers help save the day. But the accumulation of these moments make Marvel Girl one of the weakest members of a team dominated by patriarchal and fraternal attitudes.

Initially, she is treated as an object of love for the male members of the team and has many domestic traits associated with the housewife ideal of the post–World War II America—the conception of the American female that would be criticized in Betty Friedan’s landmark work
The Feminine Mystique
. Despite being objectified by many of the men in her life, Marvel Girl dresses quite conservatively with a costume that almost completely covers her body, at least in the beginning. A costume change that involves an extremely mini green miniskirt in the latter portion of the run is much more revealing. Most of her inner thoughts, revealed through the comic book convention of thought balloons, concern a potential relationship with Cyclops. Despite her costume change to reflect the Cosmo-Girl ideal of beauty espoused in
Cosmopolitan
magazine, her personality largely remains that of a domestic girl hoping to find meaning in a romantic relationship with Cyclops.

Among the domestic duties Marvel Girl undertakes in this period are cook, seamstress, and nurse. None of the male members of the team are shown undertaking these kinds of roles. Despite instances where she is a very strong and independent woman, there are frequent moments that place her in a more subservient role than that of the male members of the team. This most likely unintended pattern of subordination undermines many of the positive attributes Marvel Girl displays, containing her in a subordinate position in comparison with the male members of a patriarchal team.

In the initial roster of X-Men, the code names generally are related to a specific aspect of the mutant power each member has. Cyclops wears a visor that makes him appear to have one eye, Angel has feathered wings, Iceman turns to ice, and the Beast has inhumanly large hands and feet. Marvel Girl’s code name is much more generic and could be applied to any character with superpowers. Indeed, Marvel comics also feature the adventures of Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, and Marvel Boy. It should also be noted that Marvel Girl’s code name does not identify her as woman, but uses the younger, adolescent gender marker
girl
. This is contrasted by Iceman, who is not Iceboy. Making the inconsistency even more pronounced is the fact that in the first issue Iceman is identified as “a couple years younger” than the rest of the team. Marvel Girl’s code name marks her as the youngest, most innocent, and perhaps weakest of the group, even though she is not in fact the youngest and her powers make her quite formidable (depending on the writer). In several of the adventures the X-Men have, though, she is shown to be the frailest member and to need the most care and protection.

Marvel Girl’s powers, at this point, consist of telekinesis, the ability to move objects with her mind. The strength of her powers seems to vary from issue to issue. In the first issue, Marvel Girl lifts the Beast in the air and later a large group of soldiers with apparent ease. But in later issues, she is warned not to use her powers to lift objects heavier than what she could lift using her muscles. She also develops a tendency to become lightheaded and at times faint when straining with her powers.

In the first issue of the series, Marvel Girl is introduced as a new student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. While having a new character enter into an established setting is a classic narrative device to allow readers to be introduced to the world, Marvel Girl does not end up as the eyes into this new world of mutants. Rather, Marvel Girl is quickly objectified by the four male members of the team. The reader, to a certain degree, is directed to gaze at Marvel Girl, rather than look with shared wonder at the new world she is discovering.

As Marvel Girl is approaching the school in
The X-Men #1
(Sept. 1963), Professor Xavier calmly notes that she is a “most attractive young lady” (15) while preparing the other students to meet her. The men on the team, with the exception of Iceman, crowd around a window to fawn over Marvel Girl as she approaches the school. Iceman insists the other men are acting like “wolves” by rubbernecking at a girl, though very quickly he develops a similar keen interest in girls.

Although the boys are clearly objectifying Jean Grey, she does not stand idly by acting as a piece of art for them to gaze upon. When Cyclops offers her a chair, explaining that he would “bring her the whole room of furniture if she asked,” Jean surprises Cyclops by using her telekinesis to pull the chair from his hands across the room, deliberately making the Beast, who had been fawning over her, leap out of the way of the chair (17). Additionally, when the Beast is very forward and leans in for a kiss, Jean lifts him in the air in retaliation, saying, “I’m not exactly helpless, as you can see” (18). She goes on to spin him until he’s dizzy before dropping him to the floor. This display does not stop the team from ogling Jean, however. After Angel wonders “Where did the new doll go?” they peak around a corner to see her just changed into her uniform. Iceman, who earlier protested his lack of interest in women, says, “Wowee! Looks like she was poured into that uniform!” (24).

This treatment from the other members of the team doesn’t stop with the first issue. In the second issue, Marvel Girl is called “fair damsel” (35), “gorgeous” (38), and “little lady” (44). The third issue has a particularly troubling panel in which Professor Xavier professes his own love for Marvel Girl in a thought balloon, thus alerting readers to his affections but not the other characters. Although his age has not been revealed at this point, it is clear that he is at the very least middle-aged, though his bald head might indicate an even older gentleman. All of the students at his school are teenagers, and though no official age is given for the characters, she cannot be older than eighteen at the time she first entered Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. After graduating from Xavier’s school, she enters college, so the school is the equivalent of a high school. Even though the revelation of Professor X’s love for Jean Grey was included in the third issue, it seems likely that Lee and Kirby decided that the idea of Professor Xavier pursuing Marvel Girl was too problematic, as it was not brought up again during their run and has hardly ever been addressed by other writers.

A full catalogue of all the ways in which Marvel Girl is objectified is not necessary, but a few examples from future issues will help illustrate the point that this continues during much of this run. In
The X-Men #4
(Mar. 1964), in the heat of battle, Marvel Girl is called “little friend” (99) and “gorgeous” (100). In
The X-Men #8
(Nov. 1964), Cyclops wishes he “could tell her the words I really want to say! How gorgeous her lips are . . . how silken her hair is . . . how I love her! But I dare not” (182). Within a few issues, Marvel Girl is as smitten with Cyclops as all the men are with her, though she never admits it to him directly in this period. Instead the reader is treated to many lovelorn thought balloons as each secretly pines for the other unrequitedly for the initial sixty-six-issue run of
The X-Men
. Even though most of the men on the team profess at least attraction to, if not outright love for, Marvel Girl, none mentions any aspect of her that they find attractive other than her looks. Not even her superpowers are a source of interest for them.

This may be because the manner in which her powers are employed is not terribly impressive early on. The X-Men have a training facility, called the Danger Room, where they hone their powers and practice fighting. While the rest of the team is often shown fighting one another or escaping death traps, Marvel Girl is more likely to spend her training time passing a wooden block through a series of hoops that resemble a children’s toy, as seen in
The X-Men #3
(Jan. 1964), or opening a box and lifting out a cake as she does in
The X-Men #4
(Mar. 1964), or threading yarn through a punch board, as shown in
The X-Men #8
(Nov. 1964).

She repeatedly calls for help because she is too weak to continue on with the task at hand. In
The X-Men #2
(Nov. 1963), Angel must carry her back to the mansion because she “feels faint” after using her powers (35). And during a training session, Marvel Girl is tasked with lifting a gigantic ball above her head, but quickly she begins to call out, “Growing tired . . . can’t hold the weight much longer . . . too large to hurl away . . . Wh—what can I do?” (44). Cyclops not only uses his optic blasts to send the ball to the other side of the room, but he also picks her up as he does so, marking the second time in the issue a man has carried her after she has exhausted herself using her powers. In the same issue, Marvel Girl is “tricked” by the Vanisher and is the only member of the team to be incapacitated in battle, when she is hit by sleeping gas and needs to be rescued by Iceman, and then supported by both Cyclops and the Beast.
The X-Men #3
(Jan. 1964) has Marvel Girl crying out, “Cyclops!! Do something! It’s too big for me to handle!” as an elephant charges the team (72).

In the same issue, the entire team is captured, tied up, and blindfolded. Professor Xavier, who is at a remote location but through his psychic powers is aware of the X-Men’s predicament, must guide Marvel Girl in using her powers to free the team. Professor Xavier psychically communicates with Jean, telling her, “Marvel Girl, I am sending my thoughts to you! You are not as helpless as you think! Do exactly as I say” (76). Professor Xavier then must guide Marvel Girl through the most basic use of her powers to perform rather obvious tasks. He tells her, “You have the telekinetic power to mentally move an object. Use that power to remove your blindfold!” (77). Professor X then further guides her, explaining, “Look around you quickly! [. . .] I can ‘see’ what you see by probing your mind! Ahh! That is what we need!” Jean has seen a knife-thrower’s wagon, and Professor Xavier guides her in opening a window and summoning a knife; only then does he say, “Now the rest is up to you!” (77). All along, Marvel Girl had the power to free the team, but the implication is that she is not clever or intelligent enough to use her powers appropriately. The male patriarchal figure had to walk her step by step, and only when the knife is actually in her possession and all she must do is cut the ropes binding her is she trusted to be able to complete the task and then free the team.