My History With X-Men

This Editorial comes to us from Everett Christensen

I. Love. the X-Men. I have loved the X-Men since some of my earliest memories of being a small child in a one bedroom apartment in Stockton. I had a Cable poster. I assured my single mother working three jobs that the poster would help protect me from nightmares. I understood, at whatever age that was, that needing to be comforted was a drain on my mother. I braved those nightmares, Wolverine action figure clutched tightly in my hands. Single floppy issues bought out of grocery stores, out of order and out of context, were my greatest prize. I had a Spider-Man #16, you know, the one that was all sideways for no reason and  X-Force fights the Juggernaut? When I was 6 years old my mother made me a Mr. Sinister costume for Halloween, strips of cloak and huge collar all.

My mother, master’s degree in choreography, taught at UOP, local dance studios, and did odd jobs on the side. In order to keep a roof over our heads and food on our table she would teach, perform, write, compose music, and, of course, choreographed flags for the Hamilton High School marching band. I had to entertain myself for a lot of that time. The X-Men were my treasured companions, my frequent, fantastical, go-to for games of imagination. Because even back then I knew I was different. I couldn’t express what it was, I didn’t have the words. I didn’t work like anyone else. I got into fights. As Madrox died of the Legacy Virus my mother’s dance partner was dying of AIDS.  That year my Kindergarten teacher told my mother ‘black people have more electrons, and that’s why they commit more crimes’.

I watched as much of the X-Men cartoon as I could on the Saturday mornings my mother commuted into the bay area to pursue her relationship with my future step-father. He also liked the X-Men and encouraged my readership, Wolverine was his favorite and that made me respect him more as a person. My step-dad is a Scott, their friendship suddenly made sense to me. It was in that next year living in San Francisco that I fell in love with my first boy. When we moved to Hawaii the next year the Fox cartoon didn’t stop airing so after a few weeks interruption Saturday mornings were back again. It was there, on the Big Island, that I stood in line with my classmates to watch the midnight showing of the first X-Men movie.

Generation X was the first line I really got to sink my teeth into, and even that I only could get sporadically. I really imprinted onto that class though, which was a mistake it turns out. Half of them died and stayed that way. Unlike the New Mutants, whom are all alive at the moment. It’s not like I’m envious. It’s not like there was a black mutant named Everett, just like me, who had theoretically the most OP special snowflake power who died and stayed dead before he could get any characterization other than being nice, kind, and good. Not like the Mexican mutant from LA was literally crucified on the school’s front lawn. It did seem like Doug would never make it back too. I’m not salty. I swear. But I digress.

I really wanted to be a mutant as a kid. I knew that for someone like me it was a death sentence. I knew someone like me would be given a laughably useless power that I couldn’t control and it wouldn’t even matter because when you’re a background X-Person you’re just fodder waiting to be killed to get the next big bad over. I would have been fine with that. Better to be a mutant in the Academy surrounded by people like you, to die for the X, than to live isolated by your differences. Because, in my world, the things about me that people didn’t like, those got you killed just the same. I watched three cops empty their guns into my cousin’s back from the dashboard cameras, he was drunk driving, holding a cell phone.

I moved back to California and to a town with a local comic shop. Now, as an adult with disposable income, I was free to read all the new and exciting epics I knew were coming! It was 2005. I probably don’t have to explain but I started subscribing to the X-Men just in time for House of M and Decimation. That was the first big betrayal. Before said events, it looked like the whole situation for mutants was on the up. As the mutant population grew so too did the stories relevance, it became about this culture, this group of people who were different. They were writing about mutant fashion designers, mutant cops. Mutants could have been anyone at all. But there aren’t only 200 black people in America, there aren’t only 200 LGBT people.

My relationship with the X-Men is different than most. I am black, bisexual, and bipolar-II. I am the de-facto oppression Olympics winner in most rooms and the X-Men have stood as an allegory for everything that I am. They have fought against the bigotry and oppression that I have personally experienced and by taking arms against it have, on more than one occasion, saved me. I believe in the franchise, yes, but more than that I believe in the message. I believe that when you see someone being persecuted you stand up and be the X-Men you want to see in the world. I think they’d tell us that powers don’t solve hatred, that each individual battle is fleeting and temporal while the war for equality, for justice, rages eternal.

It is within that struggle that the Mutant Metaphor finds its purpose. We forgive the revolving door of death, we forgive the sometimes ham-fisted romance, we forgive cheesy one-liners and silly team-ups. We forgive it all to spend time in a world where the strongest among us stand up every day and work toward a better, brighter, more peaceful and more just world against impossible odds. It’s wish fulfillment, but it’s a useful wish. It’s the wish that one day even someone like me can be equal in the eyes of Man. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s textual. That’s The Dream. I demand that the franchise live up to that promise. Not just for me, but for every kid out there like me, going through life, wishing they were a mutant.

I’ve been reading X-Men for 25 years. In truth, I have railed against the franchise, frequently casting remarks that it isn’t worth being a fan. But that rage and vitriol comes from my love of the X-Men. It comes from feeling betrayed by the material time and time again, it comes from knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt ‘this could be more’ or ‘this could be better’. It comes from seeing countless creators stand up and say that it’s time for more diversity, it’s time for more stories to be told. It’s time to see things from perspectives other than that of the people who dominate the space. So I’m doing what I can do, I’m raising my voice and asking for change. Will you speak up too?

We live in a constantly changing world, our narrative has to change as well. We need to make sure the Strykers, the Kellys, and the Trasks of the world aren’t the ones holding the reigns of our stories. Because allowing the Mutant Metaphor to flounder, allowing for more false equivalence between the oppressed and the privileged, will doom our franchise. I love the X-Men. I hope you love the X-Men too. I hope you’ll speak up with me. Because together we can save the X-Men and, with any luck, maybe save a little of ourselves in the process.