What X Men Taught Us About Prejudice and Why DC is Atrocious

So here’s the thing… I spoke to a big comic book fan named Mark about his experience. It was really insightful to speak to someone who has been enjoying this creative medium for years. We established a baseline of the first comic book he ever read which was The Fantastic Four.

I asked him who his favorite character was and he said, “It’s evolved over time. At first, it was Spider-Man, because at the time, it was easy to identify with a teen struggling with teenager things. But now I would say it’s Wolverine. He’s… He’s just lived too long, you know?” After sharing a laugh about this remark he continued to say that as time goes on and things change, you begin to understand different characters. That gave me pause, because as much as these characters are, in some cases, timeless through their immortalized depiction on a page, they do grow with their audiences. Or their representations start to mean something different to the audience reading them. It’s fascinating to think about how one’s personal experience influences how they experience a story over time. It really is a living art, huh?

I asked him how comic books have influenced and shaped who he is today and he said, “They made me more accepting of everyone. Comic books are all-inclusive. There’s a heavy feminist side, and heroes, and anti-heroes.” And as promising and wonderful as that is he did acknowledge: “They aren’t great at minorities… They’re written poorly, because they’re written by people who aren’t familiar with that minority.” Mark points out a very good flaw in the comic book world, here. We have to acknowledge that there’s a problem with how many minorities are written, so that the issue can be resolved. However, they don’t always miss the mark, as he says, “I mean, X Men is a good example, it taught people a lot about prejudice and minorities and at the time, people weren’t writing about those things. And now there are minority superheroes and females are being represented.” So, yes, comic book writers aren’t perfect, but they have made strides and in order for them to continue to, we have to keep talking about it. Nothing gets solved by not talking about it, right? Right. Let’s continue.

According to Mark, a major life lesson that comic books taught him is: “Don’t under estimate anyone. They could be capable of great or horrible things, you never know. That’s something you can see across all comics. Like, ‘What happens when you give power to that one guy who hasn’t had any.’” I think this is an extremely valuable life lesson that I’m glad Mark brought up. People are capable of doing so much and you never know if you’re stifling the next Spider-Man from coming to fruition or you’re fueling the snap of the next villain. A little extreme, but I’m going for a strong analogy here, okay? We have to be conscious of how we treat others, it’s just so important.

Something I was curious about was, in his experience, which comic was best translated to the screen? He said, “As slow as Watchmen was, they translated it well to screen. But you had to be deep into your nerdiness to appreciate it. It just spans such a long time… And now it’s going to be made into a series, which makes more sense and I really appreciate that.” Obviously I had to bring up the titans of Marvel and DC Comics and he said, “Marvel does a decent job, but they play to what’s going to be popular and kid-friendly — minus Venom and Logan and Deadpool, which weren’t meant to be kid-friendly to begin with. DC is atrocious. They have more bombs than anyone, aside from Batman: Dark Knight. What Marvel’s doing really well is they are venturing into their own canon and not apologizing for it.”

And finally, I had to know… Who is Mark’s favorite villain? Answer: “Joker is an amazing villain. He’s just a true sociopath without a care for humanity. And he’s not over powered in any way, except for in his conviction for not caring.”

I’d like to thank Mark for participating in this interview.