Marauders #20: Windriders

[superboyprime]

Comments

[silverhammerman]

No, see, that's exactly what I mean. It's not that the characters are colonialists, its that the narrative they are in is a colonialist one.

The Marauders aren't wrong for taking down crime lords and slavers, but it's kinda fucked up that they're in a series where the only glimpses we see of non-Krakoan places (ie that exist outside of what has been, creatively, a largely white, American vision of utopia) are either beleaguered people in need of help from the enlightened mutants, or cruel and backwards villains who need to be put in their place.

It's a creative problem, not an issue with the characters themselves.

[tinygaylaura]

I mean the whole reason for the Marauders existing is rescuing mutants from countries where they're treated badly so naturally the countries they visit are going to be ones where the mutants are not being treated well. Because lots of countries exist that do have horrific track records when it comes to human rights. Including my own which has nothing to be proud of

And honestly most of the people shown as being racist and awful to Krakoa and mutantkind have been white Europeans and Americans. Homines Verendi, Xeno, the Russian government, the Coven Akkaba in England...they're all made up either mostly or entirely of racist white people

And the fact is that this is true to real life. Countries like Russia aren't portrayed as bigoted, hateful and oppressive in these comics out of some anti-Russia agenda. They're portrayed that way because that's exactly what Russia is like in real life. It's a country ruled by a fascist psychopath and his sycophants who is clinging onto power through illegal means and which oppresses and persecutes its own citizens in horrific and evil ways. It would be downright insulting for the comics to try and claim that a country where people are regularly beaten, tortured and murdered for being LGBT is somehow some happy cheerful lovely place with no problems and a super wonderful government

If it was ONLY people who aren't white who were portrayed as needing mutantkinds aid or as villains then yes I would take your meaning but the fact is most of the non-white characters we've seen in these stories have been heroes/supporting cast and good people in general while the villains have mainly been racist white douchebags.

I'm all for calling out racism in comics but I really don't see it here especially when Storm herself is a black woman.

I just don't see anything negative about a story about heroes helping people and saving lives from slavers and bigotry

[silverhammerman]

Some of it is certainly inspired by real life, and it's attempting to grapple with real issues through the lens of mutant stories. That doesn't always work, and I think we're seeing some of the limits of the ""mutant metaphor" these days. And while having many of the larger villains be white means this series isn't just about the mutants going around teaching non-white people the error of their ways, it doesn't make these quick snippets any better because they're still not portraying these places with any depth.

Also, Storm might be a black woman, but Gerry Duggan is a white man. These stories are overwhelmingly being written by white people. Representation on the page is not equivalent to behind the scenes, if a white dude writes a black woman saying something, that doesn't mean that's an authentic representation of a black female voice.

[mastermahan]

Along these line, there's this week's issue of X-Force and the fictional South American country of Terra Verde. The entire population has been infested by mind controlling plants, so X-Force took over the plants and now run a mind controlled country. Emma Frost expressly calls this out as colonial rule, and Emma's never been particularly concerned with ethics.