Bethany W Pope, Comic Watch; IT’S ABOUT ETHICS IN COMIC BOOK JOURNALISM: THE POLITICS OF X-MEN: RED
"It’s extremely rare for a run of a mainstream comic to result in a story with as much philosophical complexity and clarity of vision as Tom Taylor’s (shamefully abbreviated) X-Men: Red. Because the author set out to tell ‘the best X-Men story’ he could, and because he managed (somehow) to gain something close to free-reign from editorial (as well as having the good luck of being paired with some truly remarkable artists; most notably Mahmud Asrar) the end result was not only the best continuous X-Man story of the decade, but something which will (in time) surpass Whedon’s revolutionary run on Astonishing in terms of fan-regard. In this article, I am going to pick (a little) at the weave of the story in an effort to isolate and reveal a few of the integral threads which form the weft of the narrative.
The central thesis of these eleven issues is that the act of compassion is a more powerful tool than the most brutally cinematic superpower. Empathy is the thing which slaughters fear. Looking at your enemy and seeing a person, woven through with hopes and loves, fears, the usual mixture of frailties, transforms disparate (possibly violent) mobs into a functional community by revealing that there is no ‘us versus them’. There’s only ‘us’. The X-Men are the perfect superhero group to make this point, because their entire existence is predicated on the phrase ‘protecting a world which fears and hates them’. The X-Men have always represented the struggle that othered groups (racial minorities, religious minorities, women, members of the LGBTQIA community) have faced when trying to live in function in a world that is slanted, dramatically, in favor of straight, white (American) men. Such a group is a necessary force in the current, fractured, geo-political climate."
Issues and developments related to ethics, information, and technologies, examined in the ethics and intellectual property graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. My Bloomsbury book "Ethics, Information, and Technology" will be published in Summer 2025. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Showing posts with label X-Men as metaphor for othered groups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label X-Men as metaphor for othered groups. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
IT’S ABOUT ETHICS IN COMIC BOOK JOURNALISM: THE POLITICS OF X-MEN: RED; Comic Watch, April 18, 2020
Bethany W Pope, Comic Watch; IT’S ABOUT ETHICS IN COMIC BOOK JOURNALISM: THE POLITICS OF X-MEN: RED
"X-Men: Red.
"X-Men: Red.
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