MARC ALAN FISHMAN: X-Men – Built By The McMansion of Ideas
Wikipedia (truly the only place to learn stuff these days) defines McMansion as “a pejorative term for a large new house which is judged as pretentious, tasteless, or badly designed for its neighborhood.” When I read that term, one comic franchise comes to mind. Color me snarky this morning, kiddos, but I feel the need to rant about those kooky carnival clowns known as the X-Men. Let me go tape up my fists and put in my mouth guard. This one’s gonna get ooogly.
I’ve little doubt when Stan and Jack (I’ve no right to call them that, but screw it…) created the titular teens with wonky talents, it was done for a reason. More than DC, Marvel’s characters come pre-baked with personal turmoil. Peter Parker, the every-nerd… Bruce Banner, the mild-mannered man who can’t get mad… and who would not list Hank Pym, the small-then-big-then-small-then-big wife-beating man-of-science? The X-Men were no different. Here we had basically innocent kids being picked on and ostracized for being not normal. Make any parable of that you want. Black? Gay? Bi-sexual? Transgendered? Jewish? OK, probably not Jewish. More to the point though… in the beginning, the X-Men were a fantastic concept, anchored by amazing art. Of course they were a direct rip-off of the Doom Patrol, but let’s not get into that argument. Since their humble start in the funnies, the X-Men have since become a continuity-hampered, impossible to follow nightmare.