Marvel’s X-Men square off against allegorical Proposition 8

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http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/2009/09/22/marvels-x-men-square-off-against-allegorical-proposition-8/

Marvel Comics has always been known for its human touch – for its focus on continuity before capes. Spider-Man wasn’t born of Krypton, but Queens: your average boy next door. The Fantastic Four were fantastic, yes, but a family first. Before getting his act together, Tony Stark, Iron Man, drank more than my dad on a Monday. They’re human.

It’s that touch that has drawn readers (and conglomerates) to their pages for 70 years. Man before Super, Woman before Wonder.

In 1963, the X-Men blasted, flew, bounced and ice-slid into the comics world as character first – but also social commentary.

Before this, superheroes were always different – “special” – but with few exceptions, praised for it. Any minority could enjoy them next to the majority, perhaps identifying with their differences: but what about their acceptance? Could they identify with that?

Less than a year later, Uncanny X-Men writer Matt Fraction has found himself placing the now San Francisco-based X-Men against a villain adorned not in spandex or cape. Instead they’re battling a villain adorned with hate and prejudice, in suit and tie. They face Proposition X, a bill that’s been placed on the ballot to ban the reproduction of mutantkind. If passed in Marvel’s pages, mutants would be required to undergo “mandatory chemical birth control procedures” to “ensure everyone gets to survive.”

Fraction recognizes it as “a coincidental analogy,” but credits X-Men from its inception as “the perfect metaphorical book. If you’ve ever been discriminated against, picked on, ridiculed, or rejected because of who you were or what you did, you can maybe see a little of yourself here.