Iconic X-Men Writer Chris Claremont Weighs In On ‘Minority Metaphor’ Debate, Says Fans Should View Marvel’s Mutants “Not As Characters, Not As Objective Concepts, But As Ordinary Normal, Really Cool People”

In offering a particularly authoritative perspective on the ongoing discourse regarding the thematic implications of the fan-favorite super-team, legendary X-Men writer Chris Claremont has argued that rather than viewing Marvel’s Merry Band of Mutants as a hard, 1:1 analogy for the plights of real-world minorities, readers should instead be approaching the various members of homo superior as nothing more than “normal, really cool people”.

For those unfamiliar with the topic, there exists an ongoing debate among comic book fans regarding whether or not the plight of Marvel’s X-gene carrying population should be read as a not-so-subtle metaphor for the struggles of real-world minorities.
On one side, those who disagree with this read point to the fact that according to X-Men creator Stan Lee his original intent in exploring the concept of mutants was not to offer any such ‘social commentary’, but rather give himself an easy way of introducing new heroes without having to deal with the admittedly difficult task of having to constantly come up with new origin stories.
“I wanted to do another group, another group of superheroes, but I was getting tired now of figuring out how they get their superpowers,” recalled the Marvel icon during a 2004 interview given to the Archive of American Television’s Lisa Terrada for the group’s Living Television Collection archive series. “I couldn’t have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to a gamma ray explosion. And I took the cowardly way out. I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I just say they’re mutants. They were born that way.’ We all know there are mutants in real life. There’s a frog with five legs, things like that. So I won’t have to think of new excuses. I’ll get as many as I want and [just have to say] yeah, he’s a mutant, that’s all.'”
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For posterity, in recapping this same story to The Guardian’s Bob Strauss four-years earlier, Lee additionally recalled that “It occurred to me that instead of them just being heroes that everybody admired, what if I made other people fear and suspect and actually hate them because they were different? I loved that idea; it not only made them different, but it was a good metaphor for what was happening with the civil rights movement in the country at that time.”
While many point to this quote as definitive proof that Lee intended for the X-Men to serve as a ‘minority analogy’, it should be noted that not only is this only interview in which he offers this specific confirmation, but in a 2007 interview with Coast to Coast AM guest host Ian Punnett, he specifically admitted that while many readers read his original stories as such, any direct commentary on bigotry was completely unintended.
“I was just originally trying to get an interesting group of characters with interesting powers and I thought it would make it twice as interesting if the public really didn’t like them that much, and if they had a worry about their reception by the outside world,” said Lee. “Little by little, I began getting mail saying how great it is that I’m doing these stories about bigotry, and the evils of bigotry and so forth, and race hatred. And I guess I was doing that, but I was doing it subconsciously. That wasn’t the main purpose.”
And while his own approach to creating the characters did lean more into the theme of ‘learning to co-exist’, co-creator Jack Kirby’s ideas were more focused on this lesson as it applies to all of humanity rather than specific social groups.
“The X-Men, I did the natural thing there,” said the legendary artist during a 1987 interview with writer Leonard Pitts, Jr. “What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills. So I gave them a teacher, Professor X.”
“Of course, it was the natural thing to do, instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made the X-Men part of the human race, which they were,” he added.”Possibly, radiation, if it is beneficial, may create mutants that’ll save us instead of doing us harm. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they’ll help us– and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together.”)

Back to the debate at hand, on the other side of the discussion are those who believe that regardless of Lee’s intent, the mutant super team’s existence is inherently linked to the concept of ‘minority oppression’ due to how closely the X-Men’s narrative through line of ‘mutants are hated and feared because of an immutable trait whose manifestation was completely out of their control’ parallels the similar treatment some groups have faced or currently face in real life.
Further, some even argue that the ‘mutant coexistence’-oriented Professor X and the ‘mutant liberation via violence’-seeking Magneto should be viewed as direct stand-ins for respective American civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X, between whom there existed a similar philosophical divide.

And as the man who in his record-long 16-year stint on Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 played a large role in defining the team as we now know them, the aforementioned Claremont unsurprisingly has his own thoughts regarding their interpretation – and he disagrees with the entire premise of ‘the X-Men as minority stand-ins’.
As recently recapped and brought to public attention by Popverse‘s Joshua Lapin-Bertone, the iconic X-writer weighed in the topic while making a December 7th panel appearance at the Brazilian edition of the annual 2024 CCXP entertainment convention.
“The challenge is to see themselves at the school as minorities, That’s Charlie’s job,” said Claremont, “That’s Magneto’s job. From my perception what they are is a half-dozen, maybe a dozen kids, young people living together, but looking on themselves as ordinary people.”
“They have abilities, yeah,” he continued. “Leonard Bernstein had abilities. From their perspective, it’s not much different. He composed and played brilliant music. They save the world. You know, A and B. The key is to think of them as people, not as heroes. Not, ‘Yes, I am a minority.’ No, you’re a person who is trying to live a normal life. Other people may see you as a minority. You may react to them as a minority. You may look at yourself objectively as a minority, but as a person, you’re a person.”

Turning to raise a practical and relevant example of this mentality, Claremont then noted how “Nightcrawler is the most dynamic non-human physicality in the team. But his attitude is, ‘I am the person God made. Who am I to argue with God? I’m just going to live my life like a normal guy and see what happens next.’”
“Yes, he used to hide the way he looked, because he’s not stupid,” he recalled. “Blue skin, two fingers, two toes, and a tail definitely make you stand out from the crowd. It took Logan to challenge him to take off the mask and be a normal person and see if anybody else notices to get him to do it. But other than that, he just tried to live a normal cool life as someone who loves acting, who is a theater performer, and who is a stuntman.”
Wrapping up his thoughts, Claremont ultimately affirmed, “That is the way you should look at these characters. Not as characters, not as objective concepts, but as ordinary normal really cool people.”
“The rest of it falls into place, but you can look around this room at the people around this table,” he concluded. “Oh look, that’s an X-Person! How do you know? Well, it looks sort of like Colossus. How do you know? Well, doesn’t he? It may be Peter Rasputin, but who knows. You just see him as a person. Not as Colossus.”

Though no longer a regular member of the X-Men bullpen, Claremont still stops in from time to time to pen the odd mini-series or back-up story.
His next such project, a five-issue mini series aptly named Wolverine and Kitty Pryde and whose story will explore the time period between the end of Wolverine and Kitty Pryde’s Japan trip and their subsequent return to New York – the events of which were respectively depicted in his prior Kitty Pryde and Wolverine Vol. 1 miniseries and Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #192 issue, is currently due to hit shelves on April 230
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