The "Legacies" in X-Men Legacy
I was having a conversation about the meta in X-Men Legacy on Mike Carey's forum. Unfortunately that forum seems to be crippleware now, so I'm posting a synopsis here if anyone's interested.
Mike Carey writes the formerly adjective-less X-Men, now X-Men Legacy. What's he doing with the title? The answer seems to have changed along with the title change. Mike Carey begins writing the then-titled X-Men with 188 as an enjoyable but fairly standard super-hero team book. It takes two years and a post-Messiah Complex name change to X-Men Legacy for the critically acclaimed Vertigo writer to start flexing his muscles in the more literary/philosophical directions one would expect from the creator of The Unwritten. The book has been accused of meandering since then, but in reality it's been focusing on the psychological consequences of what's happened to the mutants.
But what is a legacy? The dictionary definition is;
1. (Law) a gift by will, esp of money or personal property
2. (Law) something handed down or received from an ancestor or predecessor
3. (Electronics & Computer Science / Computer Science) (modifier) surviving computer systems, hardware, or software
We're not talking about the physical legacies of money, property or people in this title: that is The Uncanny X-Men's territory. Instead we're talking about the intangible legacies. Who are the mutant's predecessors? What have they handed down to them? What have each of them chosen to receive? And what has survived in the post M-Day world?
The world of the mutants has previously been defined by two poles: mutants vs. anti-mutants (aka "Hated and Feared"), and responses to anti-mutant prejudice which fall along the lines of Xavier's solution vs. Magneto's solution. While both these conflicts have lead to some wonderful stories, they had gone stale over the years. The only way most writers saw past that being to kill Magneto off. Since Magneto is the most fascinating character Marvel has, that always prompted an outcry. But how do you get Magneto and Xavier out of that trap?
M-Day changed the game. Mutants are no longer feared. They're still hated by those who hate them, but the rest of the world either pities them or admires them in the way people admire any vanishing species that isn't going to be around for much longer. Mutants have become the tigers of the Marvel Universe -- extremely powerful and dangerous up close, but inevitably (as far as the public is concerned) headed for extinction. It's "safe" to romanticize mutants instead of fearing them, because it doesn't look like they'll be any left in another generation.
Xavier's and Magneto's solutions are premised on anti-mutant fear. Without that fear, those solutions become irrelevant. Great. But that asks the question, who is Xavier when he's no longer one of the philosophical leaders of Mutantkind? And who is Magneto? What are their identities without their roles? And what sort of legacies do the mutants have?
X-Men Legacy is an Early 21st Century comic book, but the questions it asks are straight out of Early 20th Century Modern Literature:
1) Who are we underneath the masks we wear and the roles we play?; and it's companion:
2) Is it possible to reinvent ourselves without getting sucked into the undertow of our pasts?
The reason the early 20th Century was obsessed with those questions is because it was reeling from the aftermath of World War I. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century had solved most of the mechanical problems that had bedeviled mankind since the dawn of time, giving the Western World a false sense that they could solve everything. World War I ended that illusion as the world people thought they were living in came crashing down around their heads in a violent conflagration.
M-Day and Messiah Complex were just as seismic as World War I for Marvel's mutants. The world changed instantly, and everything they thought they understood was now inapplicable. It's appropriate that they go though the same type of soul-searching as people displayed after World War I.
Fortunately for them, this isn't the early 20th Century. It's the early 21st Century, and we have a few more tools in our cultural toolkits to help us understand what's going on. One of those tools is modern psychology.
The early 20th Century response to the cataclysmic upheaval of World War I was to question the American Dream. The American Dream is the story of the complete transformation. The foreigner comes to America, or the country hick comes to the Big City, and is completely transformed into a new person whose past is behind him. The Great American Novel (circa post-WWI) is the story of the incomplete transformation. The pioneer enters the Brave New World and attempts to completely transform himself or herself, but their past catches up with them, unanswered questions arise, they fall back on their old habits, and they fail. (Insert The Great Gatsby, The Snopes Trilogy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, et cetera ad nauseum.)
Magneto is Marvel's King of the Incomplete Transformation. Transforming himself is what he does best. He's gone from slave to construction worker to nurse to bounty hunter to spy to terrorist to teacher back to terrorist to conqueror to king and back again. He's been adored as a Messiah and vilified as the Devil Incarnate. He seems to enjoy transforming himself; I have to wonder how much of the euphoria he's shown on Utopia comes from finding himself in that position yet again.
But his transformations are always incomplete. Long before his reputation got in his way, he was never able to completely leave his old habits behind. That's understandable, seeing as how those same old habits once saved his life. But now they cripple him.
But why do they cripple him? Why did so many characters who tried this earlier fail as well? For two reasons. The first reason is because other people won't let go of the past, i.e. the old "The World Would Not Let Them Be" reason. The second, more insidious reason, is because of a psychological blind spot on the part of the protagonist.
Modern psychology often works with problems of self-perception under the Socratic dictum that "the unexamined life is not worth living". These problems of self-perception often stem from "tapes", the internalized voices of other people with information that is all too often dated; and "scripts", habitual patterns of perception and behavior that are also all too often dated.
Mike Carey's X-Men Legacy has revolved around four people, each of whom reflect a different contemporary stance on the psychology of "tapes" and "scripts". The first is Magneto, who tries to transform himself without going through the rigorous process of self-examination required for true change and subsequently fails. In this manner Magneto is our Everyman, an irony he would be the first to appreciate.
The second person is Charles Xavier. Thanks to brain damage, Xavier still has his memories but has lost his "scripts", his old patterns of viewing the world. He uses the opportunity to discharge a handful of lingering obligations, then devotes himself to tending the mentally ill son he neglected in favor of his students. His students don't need him anymore, and David does. We will see if this new pattern continues when it comes under stress.
The third person is Rogue. Thanks to her mutant power, Rogue has had to deal with an extreme manifestation of a problem many people (especially women) face -- tapes of other people's voices crowding out her own inside her own head. (It's no coincidence that the voice she spent Salvage fighting the hardest to get out of her head belonged to her mother, the same process many people in psychological therapy must go through.) Having reclaimed her head, she is understandably wary of sharing it with any other "scripts" or "tapes" telling her what to do.
The fourth person is David. For someone with Dissociative Personality Disorder (aka multiple personalities) the question of which voices belong inside a person's head and which do not is acute, as they have learned to form a new persona for every circumstance. (His mutant power to absorb other people into his mind only adds an extra layer of complications.) Which voices legitimately belong, and which are "tapes" that don't belong?
And how do they all get along? Psychology once hoped to merge the personas back into some sort of whole, but that has proven impossible. The best that they've been able to do is to give high-functioning DPD cases what amounts to a permanent committee meeting going on inside their head. In David's case that would be pretty raucous. I have to wonder if the next team of Rogue, Magneto, Gambit, Xavier, Frenzy, and Legion with all it's intense and complicated past relationships (romantic and otherwise) of Rogue/Magneto, Rogue/Gambit, Magneto/Gambit, Magneto/Xavier, Magneto/Frenzy, Gambit/Frenzy, Xavier/Legion, and Legion/reality is meant to be some sort of physical reflection of what's going on in David's head.
That's enough about "tapes" for now, what about "scripts"? Judging from the "Schism" ads, we're going to see an attempt made to pull them back into the old patterns. I hope Marvel has the sense to do what it does best and mimic real life. What's been going on for a while is that the young people refuse to be drawn into the ideological conflicts of their elders. The upheaval in the Middle East is only the far end of it, but in places where there is less repression it's been happening for a while.
Here's a small example, let's look at the little town (pop. 3000) I live in. It's in the American South, and for years the political spectrum was dominated by Black vs. White. A few years ago a young Black man ran for mayor against an older White man. The older White man's friends persuaded an older Black man to enter the mayoral race. They expected the two Black candidates would split the Black vote and all the Whites would vote for the White candidate, resulting in a landslide. What resulted was a landslide win for the young Black candidate. All the young people, Black and White voted for the young candidate while the two older candidates split the old vote between them along racial lines. The older generation was left scratching their heads over why we weren't willing to play their old games. It's been happening around the world, including in Obama's election, but that mayoral race was small enough for that aspect to stand out apart from the other issues. That's what I'd like to see happen with the X-Men. The talk about Magneto's "triggers" in the Marvel psych piece and Gillon's Point One story have made me somewhat hopeful that we could see some work along that line.
So what do y'all think?