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I just can't even begin to understand why Laurence is being so thick about this
It's very simple. This is a comic book, with bright colors and shiny spandex and Zip! Bam! Pow! flashy super powers. In the larger context of this Doug is no different than you or I (and in fact a huge part of his characterisation hinged on this, that he was basically just a human, that he had no business engaging in conflicts, that he was an outsider who didn't identify with the X-Men or even mutants).
Now, even before Grant Morrison wrote the X-Men, the premise was still about a school for mutants - the superhero thing was secondary.
Now who's being thick? Even The New Mutants was about superhero action, no matter how hard Claremont tried to shoehorn it into being primarily about "a school for mutants." And let's not even discuss what happened to the two titles after Claremont left. What issues of UXM would you point to as evidence that a "school for mutants" was the core premise of the series, rather than superheroes or soap opera?
You could never get Doug Ramsey's power from lots of studying, because he could understand EVERYTHING. Without having to think about it.
Returning to geek mode, Doug did have to think about it, and sometimes he could only grasp pieces of meaning. It takes him a little while to be able to communicate with Warlock, for example. But again, we're discussing a 'power' that is not far removed from human ability (I'd put Forge in this camp as well). Let's not forget that Doug didn't even know he was a mutant for a while - he just thought he had an aptitude for language. To stress the mutant thing in his case - an obvious gateway character made as human as possible on purpose - seems to me as silly as claiming Maddy doesn't count as human pre-Inferno, or Storm is still a mutant between UXM 185 and 227. True, but Missing The Point thematically.
a guy like Cypher could decode the human genome in three minutes.
No, he couldn't.
No one would have praised UXM 201 for anything, cos it's mediocre no matter which way you look at it. It's backwards too - the comic has long since ditched the notion of a 'team' leader.
If it had Grant's name on it and was called NXM 131 we'd all be lauding it for its bold theme of human/mutant equity or some similar rubbish. And has the comic really ditched the leadership notion? It wouldn't appear so. When would you say this change occurred?
I think the present debate about humans connected with the X-Men is kinda missing the point. Regardless of the standing on whether or not they're human or mutant, they cannot be used as examples of intelligent human characters who just-so-happen to identify with the mutants' struggle, because they're intrinsically linked to the X-Men.
But often they are linked because they are precisely the "good" human characters you wish the books would depict. I'm thinking of people like Lee Forrester, Gaby Haller, Stevie again. The thing I found interesting about the first Claremont run wasn't just the relative rarity of mutants (now they're everywhere), but the fact that he took pains to show the good humans along with the bad. There's a great scene in UXM200 IIRC where Kitty bitches out some protesters, only to be told that they were pro-mutant demonstrators (she couldn't read their placards without glasses). You've got the full support staff at the mansion (ie: any other teacher role after Charles), you've got mutants made human, you've got human lovers for many characters, we run into people like the cop in UXM206 who's happy to give the X-Men a chance in San Francisco, the working class guys who stick up for mutants in the Nimrod storyline and UXM210, the crux of the X-Men/Alpha Flight mini. At some point that aspect of the books disappeared, as more mutants crept into the storylines and writers like Scott Lobdell chose the easy route of angst. So yeah, I can see why pro-mutant human characters independent of the X-Men would be a refreshing change these days, let alone a human team member.
But it's been done before. That's all I'm saying.
In some ways the level of anti-mutant feeling in the books nowadays just seems very out of place, as though a large backwards slide has occurred since the late UXM 270s. Even Claremont seems afraid of human characters, pointlessly revealing the latest X-Men in EXM to be mutants after all.. |
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