Book review: J. Andrew Deman – The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X-Men - a review by Christopher Roman

 
reviewed by Christopher Roman, Kent State University

J. Andew Deman, The Claremont Run: Subverting Gender in the X-Men. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023. ISBN: 9781477325452. https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477325452/

For those of us who followed J. Andrew Deman’s “@ClaremontRun” account on Twitter/X, this academic work treads familiar ground. On his Twitter/X account, Deman would practice public facing scholarship in order to discuss the importance of Chris Claremont’s writing run on the X-Men, often discussing gender, race, and disability issues, using a multiple post thread to lay out an argument in a short amount of space. In my estimation, it was an excellent use of tweets to reach a wider audience. The book under review here can be said to be a translation of the use of that social media platform into an academic book. The Claremont Run looks at key characters in the X-Men and the ways they subvert gender. Each chapter deals with two or three characters (as I will discuss below). Deman’s book is successful on many levels, but what I find admirable is the way Deman uses the intersection of the digital humanities and traditional close-reading to examine gender roles in Claremont’s run. By basing his readings on statistical analysis which may show, for example, that Wolverine has more interior thought bubbles than other male X-Men, Deman is able to then show how that statistic is important in understanding how Claremont is subverting gender roles during a period of time in comic book history that rests on gender stereotypes for male and female characters.

            The introduction lays out the framework for the book explaining the critical family that Deman draws from including works by Carolyn Cocca, Joseph Darowski, and Ramzi Fawaz. As well Deman explains the support of his university which allowed him and his team to create data sets of Claremont’s run for the purpose of present and future analysis. Deman explains that for the book, he is focusing on gender as it provides a foundation for other intersectional concerns. Gender is a through-line to thinking about its subversion as, according to Deman, 82% of Claremont’s run on the X-Men passes the Bechdel test. While Deman explains that this is not the only rubric he uses to understand gender in the X-Men comics, this statistic also suggests how important gender subversion is to Claremont’s characterization of the X-men,

            The first half of Deman’s book focuses on female characters, and he begins, in Chapter One, with a discussion of Jean Grey and Moira McTaggart. For Deman, Moira MacTaggart, who originally poses as Charles Xavier’s housekeeper but soon reveals she co-created the team (and the housekeeping role was a ruse), is a powerful scientist who embodies both a scientific mind and a nurturer. By opening his analysis with Moira, Deman can show how Claremont undermines gendered stereotypes of the cold female scientist or the mother-figure as they are knit together in one character. Jean Grey inhabits the rest of this first chapter, and while Jean has a body of analysis behind her, Deman is able to show how Jean undermines Cyclops’ alpha male dominance through Claremont’s representation of Jean as enacting her own sexual agency.

            Chapter Two focuses on Storm who Deman argues “achieves greater significance and complexity by entangling gender performance with social categories of religion, race, and sexuality” (35). In this chapter, Deman utilizes data sets to show how important Storm is to Claremont’s run. She has the most (nearly double) thought bubbles and interior monologues; she appears in the most panels of the Claremont run; she appears on the most covers; and she achieves a number of milestones including being the first female and first black lead of a Marvel superhero team. However, as Deman shows in the rest of the chapter, it is not merely numbers and firsts that make Storm such an important female X-Men character; rather her representation is complex as Claremont’s characterization of her touches on issues of religion, her African heritage, her leadership style, and her sexuality.

            Chapter Three examines two other woman X-Men characters Psylocke and Dazzler. Psyclocke is a mutant with psionic powers, while Dazzler can create light from sound. Each of these characters subvert female gender stereotypes. For Psylocke, her feminine appearance belies her fighting prowess and, as Deman, writes, “reflect[s] on the artificiality of female gender roles” (63). Placing Psylocke with Dazzler in this chapter allows Deman to show the range of female representation, as much as Psyclocke becomes a warrior, Dazzler tends to be discussed in terms of hyper-femininity—she was an aerobics instructor, movie star, model, and disco star. However, Deman shows how Claremont uses Dazzler to plumb a deep interior life, as well as use her character to comment on toxic masculinity. Rather than a damsel-in-distress role, Claremont characterizes Dazzler as commenting on the performance of femininity. By placing Dazzler in this role, it shows how powerful she actually is and further reveals the value of the feminine in the male-dominated comics world.

            The second half of the book turns to the men. Chapter Four focuses on Cyclops and his struggles with masculinity. As Deman argues, the characterization of the men relies on their interaction with their female teammates. Cyclops’ masculinity is critiqued both through Jean’s sexual agency, as well as Storm’s powerful leadership. As someone who was hand-picked to lead the X-Men, Cyclops’ ouster of his role as leader by Storm shows how toxic masculinity has no place in the X-Men. With the conclusion of the Dark Phoenix Saga, for example, Scott leaves the X-Men realizing how toxic his relationship is with the team, and turning to the domestic sphere to find true happiness.

            Chapter Five focuses on Wolverine. Much like the Storm chapter, this chapter is strong in its analysis of the importance of Wolverine for his subversive potential. Despite characterizations of Wolverine as a killer and as a berserker, Deman shows how Claremont approaches Wolverine with much more nuance in terms of masculine stereotypes. Wolverine is a nurturer expressing a reluctance to fight more than any other member of the X-Men. His characterization is complex in that it portrays the harm of hegemonic masculinity as he most desires to be loved.

            Chapter Six examines another range of masculinity examining the characters of Nightcrawler and Havok. Each of these characters critique masculinity in unique ways. Nightcrawler expresses sexual agency and acceptance of his mutant state despite not being able to pass as human like the rest of the X-Men. His blue fur and pointy tale labels him quite explicitly as different. Yet, it is often Nightcrawler who expresses an alternate masculinity through his difference. Havok’s representation undermines traditional toxic masculinity in that each time he attempts to mimic his brother’s leadership style or Wolverine’s violence, it conflicts with who he is. By reveling in the performance of masculinity, Claremont is able to show how toxic masculine traits hurt the community of mutants.

            Deman’s book offers us extended meditations on gender in the X-Men. It is a masterful work on the ways Claremont’s run is not only iconic, but achieves a level of gender subversion at a time when comics stood by traditional masculine and feminine roles. If I had a critique, I wish that some of the chapters were longer. For example, the Moira MacTaggart discussion was a great way to start the book, but it felt too short as it gave way to analysis of Jean Grey. As well, Deman uses the data sets in some chapters (for example Storm, Wolverine), but mentions them only lightly in others. All in all, however, this is an excellent work of scholarship showing the ways public and academic scholarship can meet to open up new perspectives on works of popular culture. 

 Editor's note: We'll be running two reviews of this book on the blog, as one of the editors (ok it was me) assigned it twice. However, I think there is enough room in the field for multiple reviews of the growing literature. 

Book review: Hero Me Not: The Containment of the Most Powerful Black, Female Superhero

Chesya Burke. Hero Me Not: The Containment of the Most Powerful Black, Female Superhero. Rutgers University Press, 2023. 172 pps. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/hero-me-not/9781978821057

Reviewed by Stephanie Burt

When I teach X-Men comics I teach the Dark Phoenix saga, Uncanny X-Men 129-137 (1979-1980), one of the story arcs that established Marvel’s mutants as A-list heroes. And when I teach these comics, to high school and college students, I have learned the hard way that they absolutely require a warning: not about the destruction of an entire species of sentient humanoids; not about suicidality, gaslighting, or mind control, though I warn about them too. At the cost of whole two hour class sessions, I have learned that I must warn students about the two panels in Uncanny X-Men 133 where Jean Grey, manipulated by the evil Mastermind into believing herself an eighteenth century lady, hallucinates that her teammate Storm is enslaved. Chris Claremont and John Byrne, the white men who fashioned this story, likely never expected that two frames of Ororo Monroe in a headscarf and choker would dominate modern students’ take on their work. And yet it can, and will: it’s a sign—as casual as such things often are—that white supremacy is everywhere, that you can’t dig very far into any story without finding some trace of the horrors and crimes on which the West was built.

Storm-- Ororo Munroe—is surely the most famous Black female superhero, and has been since the early 1980s. With her literally planet-shaping (see Planet-Sized X-Men [2021]) [https://www.polygon.com/comics/22537362/x-men-planet-size-marvel-comics-universe] weather control, her status as an Omega Level mutant, and her history as a local goddess and a Wakandan queen, she’s also been the most powerful Black woman in the Marvel  comics universe, both in political and in physical terms. Other characters admire and trust her, as a mother-figure, a best friend, or a romantic and sexual ideal. She is, as one podcast has it, “better than you and always will be.” [https://www.xplainthexmen.com/tag/this-might-be-jays-favorite-cold-open-to-date/] She also lives, most of the time, in mostly white spaces, and works with a mostly white team, written, when she’s in a starring role, mostly by white creators (Eric Jerome Dickey, Marjorie Liu and Greg Pak are the exceptions). Is she a role model? Can she be? Is that page from Uncanny X-Men 133 an outlier? Or does it illustrate her consistent failure to do what Black women need and demand?

Chesya Burke says she’s largely a failure. Her new study of Storm, in the comics and in the X-Men films, argues with consistency and clarity that Ororo Munroe has been, almost always, confined to stereotypes that keep Black people (real and fictional) subordinate: stories about Storm display her “containment.” Much of the book—the first fifty pages—does not cover Storm directly. Instead, citing such titans of African American studies as Hazel Carby and bell hooks, Burke introduces major concepts from the study of race and racism, showing how “those with power often use it to create harmful stereotypes against those without power.’ [34] Black women characters fit invidious tropes: the nurturing, asexual, older mammy; the sexually threatening jezebel; the magical Negro, there to inspire white characters; the strong Black woman, “taking care of the community” [24] without complaining. Citing Anna Saini, Burke lists three more “dominant stereotypes that Black women inhabit within comic books” (that is, company-owned superhero comics): “the quiet queen,” close to nature; “the dominant diva,” impulsive, perhaps revolutionary; and “the scandalous soujourner,” “often the center of a cautionary tale.” [47]

It’s easy to find, in the comics, panels or plots that match most of these roles.  Often Storm shows up as a strong, “magical” or maternal supporting character, what Burke calls “the spiritual Negro woman.” [28] Burke’s take on Storm supports the much broader critique provided by Allan Austin and Patrick Hamilton’s All New All Different? Race in American Superhero Comics (2019), which argues that company-owned cape comics, generally, have not done as they should.  Burke’s argument might also feed the persuasive take on Storm advanced by andre carrington in Speculative Blackness (2016). For carrington, “it becomes useful to interpret the story of Storm as a negation of the negations involved in constructing Black womanhood as a figment of the normative imagination.” [carrington 91] Certain moments and plots in comic books about Storm, written and drawn largely or wholly by white people, cannot present Black women’s lived experience, but those moments and plots (so carrington argues) can negate, complicate, or overwrite the harmful stereotypes that the comics also display.

Storm is, at first, in Len Wein and Dave Cockrum’s Giant Size X-Men 1 (1975), an “African” “magical Negro,” in touch with the land and governing “primitive” tribes: as Burke rightly says, this earliest appearance makes Storm “the ‘good’ Black woman who is wild and needs to be.. brought down from her own high ideas of herself,” by Charles Xavier, a white dude. [65] In 1980s stories written by Chris Claremont, however, Ororo “is auditioning for various performances of race, gender and power.” [carrington 107]   Within these comics Storm finds affinities with (and in fact flirts with) the Japanese anti-hero Yukio. She battles, and then befriends, a leader of underground outcast mutants, Calisto. She proves her courage, in the famous “Lifedeath” (Uncanny X-Men 186), after she loses her weather powers (which she would later regain). And in Uncanny X-Men 180 she tells the teenage white mutant Kitty Pryde, who’s shocked by Storm’s new punk rock appearance, “I am not—must not be—your mother… I must keep learning, striving to find my true self… I must live my life as I see fit.” As carrington says, Claremont’s Storm is not “a coherent vision of Black womanhood,” and cannot be—but she can grow and change. [110] Burke mentions neither Austin and Hamilton, nor carrington: of her five case studies—Giant-Size; Storm (1996); Ororo: Before the Storm (2005); Astonishing X-Men: Storm (2006); and Storm (2014)— none come from the seventeen-year Claremont run. (Burke promises to discuss “Lifedeath,” but never does). [60]

It is obviously not for me—a white woman-- to say that a Black woman should feel empowered when she does not, or see empowerment where she does not. As Burke says, Marvel should hire Black women to write Storm: it’s a shame and a scandal that the company has not done so already. Burke’s caustic take on the Fox X-Men-films includes delightful, and accurate, quips: “Jean Grey is the ultimate Karen.” [104] “Xavier is the villain.” [118] (Hero Me Not spells her name as Gray, and Mystique as “Mystic,” over and over: [103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 111] all authors make errors—this one’s on the editors.) I see no way and no reason to defend the treatment of Storm in these films, where she’s “simply irrelevant,” [90] comparatively “silent and seemingly less powerful” (to quote Burke) than in X-comics. [52]

That said, after re-reading carrington, and re-reading a stack of Storm-centric X-comics, I found myself wondering what Burke would make of comics she does not discuss.  For example, Burke opines: “Black woman superheroes, such as Storm, are not offered the sexual freedom that their white female counterparts are given.” [51] In X-Men comics, at least, I’m not sure that’s true: consider Storm’s thrilling courtship in all but name with Yukio; her troubled, soap-operatic romance with Forge; and her much-remarked tension with Callsto, recapitulated in a much later story by Claremont and Igor Kordy, X-Treme X-Men: Storm; The Arena, which ends with Ororo, Yukio and Calisto in a hot tub. She’s also been the sexual ideal, the unattainable perfect woman, for charismatic villains as diverse as Dr. Doom, Loki and Dracula, all of whom try, and fail, to make her their queen.

When Storm has a sex or romance problem in X-comics, it’s one also faced—alas-- by highly successful women in real life: few potential partners are her intellectual, social or physical equal. T’Challa, the Black Panther, is one of the few: Burke discusses their courtship (in Astonishing X-Men: Storm, written by Eric Jerome Dickey) but not their divorce. I also wonder how Burke’s view of Storm as a figure subordinated to mutant causes would hold up in “Lifedeath,” where Ororo has lost her powers, breaks up with Forge, calls him (in essence) a tool of Western industrial patriarchy, and walks away from the superhero life: “my feet may never leave the ground,” she resolves, “but someday I will fly again.”   If Storm does conform to a consistent stereotype about Black women, all the way through Claremont’s seventeen-year run, it’s the one where non-black fans expect Black omnicompetence: compare the real-life reverence, among non-black listeners, for another queen, Beyoncé.

Is it OK for a queen to be wrong? That’s the question writer Greg Pak and penciller Victor Ibañez ask in Storm (2014) no. 1, which Burke does discuss: here a mutant teen named Marisol wants to quit the X-Men’s school and go home to her family in Mexico. Storm tries to argue her out of it, fails, and creates an indoor rainstorm out of frustration. Burke finds that in encouraging loyalty to a science fictional group (mutants) over a real one, Ororo is “conforming to whiteness and invoking white supremacist ideas.” [83] But Ororo draws the same conclusion: Storm brings the girl back to Mexico and to her mother, and leaves without trying to get her to return.  Storm was wrong to recruit other people, especially people of color, into a project they may not share: that’s Pak’s point, and Ororo’s realization that she blew it drives the story.

Burke asks not only for figures of survival, for story arcs involving pathos and pain, but for figures of Black women’s power as such. Dickey’s Astonishing X-Men: Storm fails because “many images of Black women other than Storm in this series are negative.” [76] Pak and Ibañez’s Storm (2014) reveals “several positive aspects of the character”; she displays sexual agency and cares for children without becoming either a jezebel or a mammy. [84] Still, she chooses to care for mutants, and for the Earth, rather than attending to “her people.” [64] “Because Storm is Black, working with the X-Men is repressive because she is supporting the very status quo that is oppressing her as a Black woman.” [88] She should, she must, overthrow that status quo instead: anything less is containment, or complicity.

Here Burke makes not so much an argument against particular portrayals of Storm but an argument that Black characters, perhaps any nonwhite characters, or disabled characters, or even trans characters, should not be superheroes at all: protection against external, criminal, and science fictional threats (what superheroes normally provide) is at worst betrayal, at best inadequate. Storm “is not a threat to white America,” and she should be. [130] Fictional heroes with exceptional powers who belong to subaltern groups should either overthrow that status quo themselves, or work directly for its overthrow, or else work primarily within their group.  X-comics have heroes, and anti-heroes, and villains, who try to do so: Sunfire quits the X-Men (more than once) to protect Japan; Magneto wants to protect all, and only, mutants. But Storm wants to protect, where she can, her friends, her students, and then the whole world, including mutants and humans, Kenya and Mexico and Quebec and Detroit.  On the one hand, Burke writes,  “Storm is not ‘free’ and she likely never will be until she is re-envisioned by Black female creators,” as she should be. [127] On the other hand, “in the comics, Storm is given the space to find love, fight for her Black community, and make decisions… in a way that is almost unimaginable for the film version.” [114] That’s Burke’s verdict, too: maybe that has to be enough.

Stephanie Burt is a Professor of English at Harvard University