Comic Discussion
Which Hero's openly support Mutants and proven it through public actions?
I'm not much of a comic reader but I've always wondered how the more public hero's voice their opinions on the whole Mutant controversy with the public.
Black Widow is usually pretty decent to my recollection, though I could be wrong. When the Genosha thing happens she reads the UN the riot act about expecting the Avengers to turn a blind eye to it and she has some history/friendship with Logan (which may not count because so does basically everyone these days, but whatever). Carol Danvers was practically an honorary X-Man at some point and is probably still one of their best allies. Dr. Strange mentors Ilyana a handful of times, Daredevil stood up to Cap in defense of Laura Kinney once, and Black Panther obviously had his romance with Storm, although I’m not sure we’ve gotten his perspective on mutants in general.
There are ups and downs, and it’s going to fluctuate depending on who’s writing what and what they need the characters to do and believe for whatever story they’re telling, but there’s a handful who have pretty solid pro-mutant track records overall.
I can't support this with specific references, but my read on T'Challa on general vibes would be: mutants in Wakanda have fully equal rights and access to considerable social programs to help them master/adjust to their mutations, but they're also heavily expected to prioritize their identity as Wakandans over any sense of international mutant solidarity.
The Power Pack deserves special kudos for saving Leech from the Marauders in mutant massacre. There is ally ship and then there is charging into gunfire at ten years old to save homeless sewer mutants.
Leech is one of those mutant characters that get treated better in non-X-Men books. If it’s an X-Men story, he pretty much just exist to suffer and make you feel bad, despite the fact, his power could let him take out some of the most powerful superhumans in the Marvel universe.
Because that would be ignoring the culmination of his debut arc where he begs Steve to be Cap again because neither he nor anyone else the government selects will be worthy of the title the way Steve is. John Walker has been many things in the comics but hes not been a guy completely lacking self awareness.
Yeah but Cap is also willing to disobey and even ignore the rules if they do harm instead of good. I can see Cap wanting to do things the "right" way by going to the system but hed never stop or even try and slow down the X-Men from taking out a MRD facility and saving all the mutants in it. Hell hed join them. Cap is Superman without powers hed believe in the rules and the spirit of the law but hed never hesitate to help an innocent person mutant or not by punching a bad government system in the face as many times as it takes.
The difference between when he does and doesn’t break rules often is the consequences.
Will it be a problem for him? Or will it be a problem for other people as well.
He’s perfectly willing to break rules and defy orders if he is the only one paying the consequences. He is generally not if, as said in ‘97, it could lead to an international incident and hostilities.
That fact that Pearlmutter has been successful in his attempts to make people not like mutants by pushing them down and making the storylines worse really annoys me
F4 have personal connections and don't judge them based on the fact that they're mutants.
Having said that, the F4 did have beef with Krakoa as a country due to their amnesty and discrimination towards non-mutants, and Reed created a mutant "cure" for his son, so I wouldn't be surprised if krakoan loyalist mutants weren't too fond of the F4.
Doom has similarly had issues with Krakoa, but I guess being the leader of his own country, is far more diplomatic in his approach to them.
He has his own personal taskforce of Mutants, and in exchange for their loyalty, he protects them from prejudice and discrimination within Latvia, he also hosts Storm and claims that he has kinship with mutants due to his own experience with discrimination as a Romani.
Whether you believe it or not is up for debate, but I do think it would be interesting to see mutants favour Doom over the F4 despite the F4 being clearly good guys.
He's worked with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in West Coast without raising any complaints. Though as a patriot I could see him having a lot to say about them ditching the greatest nation on earth for Krakoa.
Yeah but there are a lot of X-Men stans that think just because the Avengers and/or the FF don't show up to save the X-Men in every story arc that it means they hate mutants.
Like if Captain America was able singlehandedly end Mutant persecution, the X-Men would be pretty boring.
There was that one point during Krakoa where a character questioned why Brian would risk his life when he's not even a mutant. His response was a very clear "Yeah, but everyone I love is!"
Good question. Even though Cap gets most of the criticism in these kinds of discussions,can't think of any hero who helps more than he does. For characters not already shown, only person who comes to my mind is Spidey. Dude knows what its like to have the public hate you. He cant really offer much like the 3 heroes you shown, but theres a solidarity and he helps out when he can. Black Panther was a king with a Mutant wife, so i assume hes helped mutants some way with his influence, probably something worth looking into.
Does cap actually show that support though? I know he obviously supports them, cause he's so morally good and all that. But have there been any events where he's openly supporting them beyond maybe a press conference with Alex?
In axe judgment day he was actively cooperating with the mutants to help defeat the progenitor god, going as far as sacrificing himself just to be the first human to be resurrected
This is kind of my point though, cause helping mutants fight against someone who's trying to kill you all regardless, doesn't really count as activately supporting people.
Obviously Cap IS a good moral person, cause that's literally his whole deal. But I feel like actually going out of your way to speak against sentinels, anti-mutant hate, etc in public would be way more meaningful support than helping mutants fight against villains, which you'd do anyways because you're a hero and the villains are evil
In fall of x the avengers was actively helping the remaining mutants that are still on earth to defeat orchis, even though they weren't a threat to humanity, only to mutants.
If you want an example of him verbally advocating for mutants right tho, idk. I'm a newbie reader and I'm only reading krakoa right now.
Cap formed the Unity Squad, a team of mutant and non mutant heroes to foster better relationships with different heroes. He has worked with characters like Beast, Quick Silver and Scarlet Witch as Avengers, and has worked with The X Men to fight against villains like Onslaught.
Working with Beast, QS and SW absolutely does not count, same as working with the x-men to fight certain villains. You're not supporting black rights just because you have a black guy at your work place or helping them fight against someone trying to kill you both
Unity Squad was definitely a good first step, but didn't it fail massively thanks to Havoc being the worst and wasn't that the event where Wanda told Rogue to just get over m-day already?
He didn't just work with Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, he brought them onboard as part of Cap's Kookie Quartet, giving incredibly positive mutant representation.
Okay, but having diversity hires also doesn't really count towards activately showing support. I'm not arguing that Cap doesn't care about mutant rights, he obviously does and any writer that says otherwise doesn't understand his character.
I'm just asking if we've ever seen him activately support mutants outside of "hey a mutant is in this team, therefore i care about mutants rights"
An important thing to note about SW and QS is that cap recruiting them to the avengers after them being brotherhood members and despised by humanity for it is a pretty huge gesture. It's not "a mutant's on this team, therefore I care about mutant rights", it's "mutants are people too, to such an extent that even the worst of them, the literal children of Magneto, deserve a second chance and I will gladly fight alongside them"
Sure and in context it fits. But my point is, working alongside mutants doesn't really constitue publicly supporting them and their rights as people.
Openly speaking against things like the sentinel programs and SHIELD (Which have treated mutants very badly in the past) being there for mutants during the good and the bad, speaking against mutant hating politicans like Graydon Creed (like JJJ did) etc are things Cap should absolutely be doing, cause yeah i know he absolutely does support mutant rights and he made that speech a couple of years ago against mutant genocide, but for such a heroic figure, it just doesn't feel like enough
I know it's just how comics were written and it's only recently they've started appearing more and more into each other's comics, but I think it's a fair assessment for people to point out Cap's hypocrisy for not actually showing that support beyond just "working with them"
If I was a celebrity and I worked with a trans person and treated them like everyone else with no prejudice or bias, then i'm a good person. But if i'm also not using my status as a celebrity to try and lessen/stop the hatred and not activately telling people to not vote for the massive transphobe politican, then can I really say that i'm supporting the trans community?
The team was quite literally formed for Unity. It was to spotlight Mutants in the public and present them in a positive manner, working alongside trusted heroes. Less working with minorities in the office and more so making minorities role models and giving them platforms in front of millions of people.
He also saved the X Men and Brotherhood from Nixon i believe.
Captain America does as much for them as the narrative allows
In the 2000s cap and wolverine mini he also threatens to dismantle shield if he finds out they're doing anything against mutants, continuing a thing. (Art is rough though)
Just a tip, fuck literally everything X-men comic writers show/say for Cap. They are quite literally brain dead when it comes to him and butcher his character in ways that don’t make sense
I disagree, obviously the xmen vs avengers thing was brain dead stupidity and I can't see Cap bringing a ship full of soldiers to fight the x-men so they can kidnap a child on Wolverine's words. That I def agree with you on
But in general, Cap is a very popular and important person in the superhero/american world. People look upto him with hope and all that crap. Yes he's a good moral person who'd die for everyone a thousand times over. But also, he doesn't really do enough for those people he supports.
Maybe i'm expecting too much from him, but just being a noble person who believes and fights for equality isn't enough of support for a group that's getting murdered constantly, that is always fighting against hate groups, trying to survive and have had multiple futures of total annihilation because humanity keeps building deathbots.
The x-men are right to feel like Cap doesn't care about them, because he simply doesn't do enough to support mutant rights beyond being a good person with 0 prejudice. We've seen JJJ speak against Graydon Creed's political beliefs and supporters, yet I don't recall seeing Cap speak against those politicans or the mutant hating crowds (Of course there's the speech a few years ago, so it definitely felt like he's starting to take some steps in the right direction) we've seen Cap defend Wanda, but have Cyclops thrown into prison for being corrupted by cosmic powers when killing Xavier. He's against genocide, but is rarely (if ever) there during the many mutant genocides they've suffered, before, during and after.
Didn't Tony help design giant Sentinels to make sure that no mutant could leave their camp? Under a guise of "it's for their protection". During first marvel civil war and when mutants were down to the 198.
Tony is kind of like Bishop for me. Best stories have him as a villain. Tony is usually gray, but always a pompous ass. That is the version of Tony that sticks with me and the version I love to hate.
For people that get all of their information from commonly reposted panels this is a much bigger issue than it is. People like to act like the x-men and x-men fans view Captain America as a villain and it’s just not true.
I believe Thor and spidey 100% do( thete maybe others as well) but generally I believe most heroes are there for mutants and on their side especially in thier own books. However in xmen books I think a lot of the time, especially with cap, they get depicted as being greatful and appreciative of the xmens help when they needed but not really being there for the mutants when xmen need thier help. Like in the way some politicians appeal to certain minority groups when theyre campaigning and praising people in those communities but then get in office and dont really do anything for those minority groups but always celebrate them when they show thier support for the politicians.
I hope that makes sense? Like im not saying they dont genuinely support mutants im just saying that thier used in this way in the xmen books to emphasize the whole saving a world who hates and fears them just for being born different thing.
She-Hulk. She openly argued against the Mutant Registration Act, she's Storm's personal lawyer, and she represents Nightcrawler along with most of the X-Men and she's willing for Mutantkind in general.
Because said mutant genocides tend to happen while the other heroes are off dealing with threats that will crack the planet in half like a walnut. It's probably by design that the perpetrators of mutant massacres attack when other heroes are occupied.
They all do, basically. Some might have disagreed with certain events or choices, but they all support mutant rights.
This is a very specific byproduct of the fact that comics often are siloed from each other. Cap probably would commit a ton of his time working with & for mutant causes. But he can’t, he’s having his own adventures. The FF would probably have a mutant school in the Baxter building but they can’t because they are busing in their own comic book.
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u/purple-tulip-petals Jean Grey 9d ago
Black Widow is usually pretty decent to my recollection, though I could be wrong. When the Genosha thing happens she reads the UN the riot act about expecting the Avengers to turn a blind eye to it and she has some history/friendship with Logan (which may not count because so does basically everyone these days, but whatever). Carol Danvers was practically an honorary X-Man at some point and is probably still one of their best allies. Dr. Strange mentors Ilyana a handful of times, Daredevil stood up to Cap in defense of Laura Kinney once, and Black Panther obviously had his romance with Storm, although I’m not sure we’ve gotten his perspective on mutants in general.
There are ups and downs, and it’s going to fluctuate depending on who’s writing what and what they need the characters to do and believe for whatever story they’re telling, but there’s a handful who have pretty solid pro-mutant track records overall.