No, Stan Lee and Chris Claremont Didn't Always Intend The X-Men To Be Woke
by Jon Del Arroz
With the news about X-Men ’97 turning Morph into a non-binary propaganda piece, the internet’s been set ablaze with arguments over whether the X-Men were always intended to be woke. While Stan Lee’s intentions have been discussed quite a bit, not many people are discussing the iconic Chris Claremont era when analyzing the wokeness content and whether it’s “always been this way” as SJWs are trying to say. However, much like Stan Lee’s words, Chris Claremont never intended the X-Men as some kind of LGBTQ pride book.
The first rumor that was easily debunked is that Stan Lee had Professor X and Magneto as an allegory for Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and that the X-Men were meant to highlight the civil rights struggle in America in the 1960s. This was not true in the least, as the X-Men were simply created as another team book after the success of the Fantastic Four, using a familiar formula of a group of men with one beautiful woman for them to pine over in what was simply another boy’s action comic book in the superhero genre.
The civil rights allegory was never a part of the original script, but the civil rights allegory became talking points for Marvel during the 1980s and 1990s during Chris Claremont’s tenure on the book. Stan Lee did not create the characters like this, and Magneto to “not be a villain” even though he eventually said, “[I] did not think of Magneto as a bad guy. He was just trying to strike back at the people who were so bigoted and racist. He was trying to defend mutants, and because society was not treating them fairly, he decided to teach society a lesson. He was a danger of course, but I never thought of him as a villain.”
Stan Lee designed Magneto as the leader of a group that called themselves The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in the original run. Stan Lee’s later words are a retcon, trying to make some kind of public relations out of the X-Men once the book became wildly popular under Chris Claremont's tenure. Magneto had nothing to do with Malcolm X, but the character and Professor X were actually framed after Jewish leaders David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin.
Chris Claremont modeled the X-Men in a United Nations-style world where the characters came from all over the globe, working together from different backgrounds and cultures, as was a progressive dream in the 1980s. It closely modeled Star Trek, where characters would have their cultures and yet be able to do more together. This was evident in making a character a Russian like Colossus and a German priest like Nightcrawler, among many others. As usual, the idea that the X-Men were about black civil rights was very much overstated.
However, it wasn’t about exploring deviant sexualities for either Stan Lee or Chris Claremont. That, like everything else, came much later, and the wokeites rewrote the history to try to make it part of some LGBTQ movement when a book that was very much geared toward underage readers was never focused on such matters.
Chris Claremont himself confirmed this when he was speaking at an LGBTQ-themed convention in 2012 called Flame Con. Here, while trying to court and appeal to the rainbow flag audience, he told the attendees he didn't always intend for the X-Men to be a stand-in for the LGBTQ community, but, he said, "You know there’s a space between every panel. You can go wherever you want. And who am I to get in the way?”
This is clearly stating this whole deviant sexualized lifestyle was not ever considered part of the equation. Fans will go where they want with their thoughts, and he’s not going to judge them for it, but Chris Claremont did not intend for the X-Men to be woke.
As Morph gets rewritten as non-binary, this is a completely new phenomenon by the new cult in Hollywood trying to convert everyone—including kids—into these lifestyles. Wokeism is a religion, and they consider anyone who disagrees with heretics. This is why people like Stan Lee and Chris Claremont were so careful when around these groups to tiptoe around these subjects, but none of these characters were ever meant to be gay from the beginning, let alone even further down the path of mental illness.
What do you think of Chris Claremont and Stan Lee confirming the X-Men were not originally intended to be woke? Leave a comment and let us know.
NEXT: X-Men ’97 Morph Actor J.P. Karliak Is An LGTBQ Activist And Founder Of Queer Vox Voice Casting
I think we need to be careful not to always throw the baby out with the bath water with these things.