this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Magneto is the manifestation of the saying, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." You could probably reasonably say:
Professor X : Magneto :: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. : Malcom X
Professor X and the X-Men were all for mutant equality, but they always favored peaceful acceptance. Conversely, Magneto recognized that large portions of society would never accept mutants. It also bears mentioning that Magneto carried some "racist" (for lack of a better word) tendencies towards non-mutants. In his view, non-mutants are lesser beings.
It's kind of hard to argue that non-mutants aren't lesser beings when mutants literally have powers that no normal human could ever hope to have, powers that can even defy the basic laws of physics.
Well not all mutants. We always focus on the "cool" ones but there were a ton of mutants that were hopelessly disfigured and with powers that amount to anyone holding a bat
Or with powers that uh...
Aren't good for anyone near and including them.
While I see your point, and I'm not at all painting you with this brush, I think that reasoning could also be used to argue that, e.g., autistic people are lesser beings. I know it's a different universe, but look at Superman: Unquestionably a superior being, but like Professor X, he never put himself on that pedestal. Magneto's insistence that non-mutants are and maybe should be subservient pretty much requires conflict, and starts folks down a path towards subjugation, enslavement, and ultimately elimination. Note: not extinction. Elimination requires action, while extinction, allowing for mitigating circumstances, does not.
Add to all of this that it's pretty easy to understand, and even relate to the origins of how Magnet and Professor X see non-mutants, and X-Men is a pretty great story/universe. They're both similarly flawed, but in very different ways.
I guess the issue here is about how you are defining 'superior.' If the argument is that mutants are in some way morally or ethically superior to non-mutants, absolutely not. And that is the source of a lot of the conflict in the comics. But in terms of what they can actually achieve in life, when you can do something like Magento does, you've got an inherent superiority.
Now I admit that you can't make that claim for all mutants. Not even all X-Men. I would not say that Cyclops' mutant power makes him an inherently superior human in terms of power because it severely limits him in many other ways and, if he wasn't on a team that regularly needed his power, would find life pretty difficult.
So I guess you can't argue that all mutants are superior, but many of the ones we see could basically rule all of humanity if they were allowed to get away with it.
Even Cyclops is inherently superior, from looking at capability. So you really think any human, any police force even, can stand against him?
Yes. Take him by surprise and he's as easy to kill as anyone else, and he has no powers that make him more aware than an average human.
Under the same conditions, any regular human could kill Magneto, Storm, Mystique, even Professor X.
You’d have problems with someone indestructible like Colossus or with healing powers like Wolverine or Deadpool. I don’t know what mutants have special awareness, like Spiderman, but they’d be harder to sneak up on. While Professor X could, my understanding is he typically doesn’t pay attention to random people’s thoughts
Professor X would probably pick up on a person nearby who's intending to harm him, but I think you're right about the other three. Wolverine has healing powers AND special awareness, so he'd be especially hard to take out.
Link to content that has spoilers about Deadpool 3 so, not really a spoiler in the spoiler tag, but arguably yes (but very mild, seeing the title of the movie):
spoiler
"... so they're going to fight a bunch!" "Don't they both regenerate?" "They do, yeah, so it's gonna be a ton of stabbing with no stakes!" "Sick!"Deadpool 3 Pitch Meeting
I think and argument could be made that his powers would work the same way the "normal" senses would. You wouldn't necessarily wake up when there's normal stimuli, but if there was a loud noise or a bright flash, you might wake up. Similarly, a would-be-assassin might have thoughts which would be alarming to the Professor, even unconsciously, while sleeping.
The point is made at least in the "X-Men: Days of Future Past" movie, where the McAvoy portrayed young professor keeps suppressing his powers with Hank's drug in order to silence the voices in his head — and to be able to walk.
My point being that I think that much like with hearing, our brains learn to ignore stimuli, rather than not actually hear it. The brain filters. So his power is rather a completely new sense, instead of something he directs at people and then gets access to. It's sort of always there, like noise, you just have to focus on the right sound.
Magneto is a prime example of “might makes right”, which is why he’s a villain. Non-mutants are beneath him: he has no compassion for them, no regard for their ideas, their voice, their opinion.
I’m not well versed in his history in the comics or whether there even is a canonical backstory, but from the Marvel perspective ….. he’s a sympathetic villain, because he has a good point. While it’s not a single coherent backstory, we can see his development over time at the treatment he faced, and can have sympathy for humanity driving him to it.
I think it's not power which makes someone more or lesser than. Magneto is very powerful, but he's not really that good of a person. I know way better disabled people than him, so...
Do you consider people with learning disabilities lesser than human? I think that is the point they are trying to make. Just because they did not evolve does not mean they are better. Better athletes and performers are revered because they do things normal people cannot, but it doesn't make them more human.
In-universe, there are plenty of normal humans with those kinds of powers
really? but wouldn't the fact that they have those powers make them mutants by default? I'm not well versed in the x-men universe.
I'm not well versed either but mutants have the X gene while powered humans in general wouldn't. Remember it's marvel so there's Spiderman, ironman, Hawkeye for examples of heros stronger than your average human who don't have the X gene. Interestingly enough mutants are always seen as lesser while non mutant heros are usually celebrated (unless it's one of the grim dark comics).
ah okay, i didn't realize that marvel and x-men shared a universe, i thought marvel and x-men were mutually exclusive
Yea they all belong together and have plenty of comics where they interact, funnily enough it's real world BS that kept them separate for the longest. Iirc fox owned the right to use xmen in media while a couple other companies owned the rights of various other heroes and mutants and marvel stuff.
It's all sorta consolidated now with Disney and Sony has been playing niceish with Spiderman for a couple years now too.
Mutants are humans that are born that way, all the others are made in one way or another. Pretty much all Marvel superheroes that don't originate from X-Men are not mutants.
Mutants specifically have to carry the x-gene; some super powered humans have been born with powers but don't have the x-gene, so they aren't considered mutants.
Mutants, even the X-Men, can be a bit anal, and even racist, about that kind of thing.
mutants in the marvelverse involes those born into one due to the X gene. people who had gained powers through a mutation are seperately called mutates, which dont face discrimination like mutants do. mutate examples are spiderman, thr hulks, fantastic four.
basically mutants are being discriminated because of their x gene and not their powers ironically.
Which is surprisingly subtle on the part of the general public
There is no "X-Men universe" really, there's just the Marvel universe / multiverse.
The X-Men regularly interact with Spider Man, Thor, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Captain America, Luke Cage, etc. Those guys are humans who got their powers from a method other than mutation.
A method other than the X-gene. Spider-Man, Daredevil, Cap, and Luke Cage are all mutated humans. Possibly Thor, too, depending on whether you're going with the god or sufficiently advanced alien/precursor/whatever origin.
I don't think Captain Marvel has a genetic basis though.
What makes you think they're mutated? There's a hint of mutation in the Spider Man origin story, as it's a radioactive spider, and radiation is associated with mutation. But, the rest of them get their powers in non-mutation-related ways.
Among many other things, like the Clone Saga clones having his powers, a Sentinel straight up scans Peter Parker and mistakes him for a mutant because his DNA has literal spider genes in it now. That's just Spidey canon.
Same with Super-soldier Serum that gave Rogers his power, it was a genetic modification and, eventually, the same is true of Weapon VI aka Luke Cage (Weapons Plus being a descendant program, he received a modified version of the Serum)
In Marvel comics there's generally a distinction between "mutants" and "mutates." A mutant got their powers from birth, typically from the X-gene, a mutate had something happen to them, but that's not a real scientific distinction. They've all been mutated. It's just in-universe discrimination and is often specifically portrayed as such. Like all discrimination, the distinction is quite often arbitrary and unjustified.
It's worth noting that mutants are often the ones making distinctions, even the X-Men..
If you're born with powers but don't carry the x-gene they'll be the first ones to tell you you can't be in their club, even if you used to be in it when they thought you carried it (see Wanda and Pietro Maximoff or Franklin Richards for notorious examples).
They've been occasionally been referred to as “mutates”, as opposite to “natural” x-gene carrying mutants.
Also if their powers (or some form of power) can be inherited by their children (or clones), there's probably been some genetic change.
This is definitely the case for Spider-Man (so many clones! 😩) or the Hulk (though that could be radiation poisoning), and might be the case for the Fantastic Four (though it depends on the writer, and one of their children is a mutant, not a mutate, and radiation poisoning is also a possibility in their case).
Yeah, it starts getting especially blurry when you have people who might have both. There's a multiverse version of Spider-Man that was born a mutant and the spiderbite suppressed his X-gene characteristics.
Setting aside the Hulk-style "I got super strength instead of terminal cancer" heroes, a bunch are just Batman retreads. Super-Ninjas, Super-Geniuses, Super-Rich Guys. Marvel has a rich cast of people who are either amped up professional athletes or people with enough money to buy super-herodom.
The X-men type mutants had powers that seemed to defy the known laws of physics. But, they showed pretty often that most mutants had more drawbacks than benefits.
What made Magneto a villain was that he decided that mutants were the next evolutionary step, and that humans were therefore obsolete. It wasn't even like predicting that mutants were superior and that as a result eventually humans would fade away. It was that he decided that one "race" was superior and therefore was justified in ruling over the inferior race. Which, you know, is pretty dark for a holocaust survivor.
And yet extremely accurate to current Israeli policy
But mutants are humans, and by the "rules" of their universe, mutants are born from non-mutant parents as well.
I'm not sure that parentage matters. When you have powers that defy reality, you have an undeniable superiority. What you seem to be saying, and what I would agree with, is that you can't really argue that mutants are an ethnic group because they don't all share a genetic bloodline back to the first mutant.
But I think it's really hard to claim that someone with the ability to manipulate any and all metal in any way they want does not have an inherent superiority over all non-mutants.
Physical superiority sure but they can still be in the ethical gutter.
I mean they did have the Morlocks so it wasn't like every mutation was a cool superhero ability
I love MLK but if I had been around in the days of civil rights, I would definitely have been a Malcom x guy
Good news, you're still in the days of civil rights.