This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Even superpowers cannot save Western individualism

X-Men take up failed Liberal integrationist strategy

X-Men
"The Legend of Wolverine"
Marvel Comics
79 minutes
1992, 2003

See also our review of X2

This is a series of animation episodes featuring the character "Wolverine" who is a mutant humyn with adamantium claws.

On the womyn question, "X-Men" is pretty good. There are wimmin mutants with superpowers. One womyn left behind in a romantic episode eventually obtains superpowers through her own efforts and sets off to kill her former suitor who she believes killed her father. The suitor turns out to be Wolverine. (This raises the only problem, that of something close to the "womyn spurned" role played by "Death Strike," an evil mutant.)

One episode celebrates Christian monks and another Buddhism in Japan. In the dialogues, a Christian with superpowers turned monk says that most people in the world believe in a God who loves them, "can so many be wrong?" Wolverine says "God gave up on us," the mutants, but in a later episode we see him praying in church after changing his mind.

Obviously the whole idea of X-Men appeals to the idea of people seeking special powers. Each character has a special power, often lasers of some kind, the ability to fly and admantium claws in the case of Wolverine. Each mutant character has a unique "special" power--in line with Western individualism. We can only say that if people lived in a communist society after perfecting the science and art of cooperation, they would not need to look like a Wolverine with metal claws to feel "powerful" and nor would they stand in front of burning candles in churches to feel "connected" Nor would humyns face the constant fighting that Wolverine deplored in the Buddhist episode. Because workers do not control the means of production in day-to-day life, they feel a lack of power and pine for the X-Men and similar artistic works to make up for their alienation from power.

On the plus side, the farming and fishing toilers in Japan in the Buddhist episode do liberate themselves from their humyn oppressors extorting "tribute" taxes. They only need Wolverine to fight a similar superhero character on the other side.

At the end, in the bonus episode with "Magneto," a superior species of plastic robots called the "Sentinels" arises only to be slandered by the X-Men and humyns both. The "Sentinels" were carrying out a plot to kidnap all the world's political leaders and replace their brains with computers for the benefit of peace. Without explanation, instead of literally opening their minds for progress and thanking the Sentinels for potentially bringing world peace, the mutant X-Men and humyns react in horror and muttering things like "everything good" about "democracy."

We are at a loss to see how the Sentinel plot failed, as there were 1000 Sentinel robots and only half a dozen opponents. We know that the Sentinels were a U.S. Government plot to control the mutants that went awry. In fact, a U.S. government agent had to be threatened with Wolverine's claws to get the location of the Sentinel base. In the end, a professor had to fly a plane 911-style into the leading Sentinel, but the professor ejected to safety just before impact.

In the Christian episode and throughout, there is an underlying mob distrust of mutants including the X-Men. The main political theme of X-Men is the question of tolerance and getting along. In the Christian episode, X-Men have to beat up some intolerant Amerikkkans before these Amerikkkans realize they are wrong about mutants. Instead of changing their ideas completely, the mob realizes it has "sinned." Still it took a gang of mutants with superpowers to get the Amerikkkans to make peace with their neighbors.

Later, the X-Men have to save a U.S. Senator who was campaigning for president on a platform hostile to mutants. In fact, earlier in the show, the X-Men saved millions of mutant-hating humyns from death when a spirit-sucking alien landed on earth and broke its way through the sewer system. "Death Strike" asks why they should save "those who mock you" and call you "animal, mistake of nature, mutant." Nonetheless, the X-Men save the day again and again: they win over the Senator who says mutants who use their powers for good have to be protected. The humyns even release one mutant from prison at the end in a hushed up moment in the episodes.

So the X-Men suffer imprisonment because of ordinary Amerikkkans' prejudice. The X-Men's reaction is to serve the U.S. Government so well that they gain recognition and release of their comrades. The supposedly evil "Magneto," the rebel mutant was instead working on war against the humyns, but Marvel Comics propagandists do not show us the imprisoned mutant that justifies Magneto until after Magneto has come and gone. In contrast, we believe the X-Men should have worked to overthrow the U.S. Government, if possible by making a deal with the Sentinels to replace some humyn brains with computers and by war as Magneto urged, if necessary.

Note:
On what adamantium is http://www.classicmarvel.com/base/adamantium.htm
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