The mighty Khan's response to my essay X-Men:  All-New or Same-Old? in Indian Comics Irregular #51:

She's "actual" in the sense that she's an American citizen who spent half her childhood as an orphan thief in Egypt before migrating south to black Africa. Somehow, I don't think that makes her the typical black African.

>> actual continental Africans usually resent being referred to as Uncle Toms or Oreos or African Booty Scratchers by Black Americans who see them as being white because they're not African American. <<

Whether they resent it or not doesn't tell us whether the charge is accurate or not. Storm didn't spend the second half of her childhood being raised in a colonial English culture like South Africa's. From the few glimpses we've seen of her upbringing, she grew up in an indigenous African village having little or no contact with whites. (The fact that she considered herself a goddess would tend to argue for no contact.)

Therefore, she shouldn't have the "colonial" mentality that probably earns Africans the "Uncle Tom" label. With her Egyptian/African meld, her worldview should be exotic to Westerners. In fact, her recent appearances in BLACK PANTHER hinted at how "foreign" her views should be. Those appearances are noteworthy because they're the exception to 25 years of characterization.

>> As for being two-dimensional, while it's true that most comics characters (can't think of an exception right now, but I'm sure there's one out there somewhere) are two-dimensional <<

Bingo. But I'd say a few characters—Batman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Wolverine—have reached three-dimensionality when they're characterized consistently.

Storm...a well-developed character?
>> she nonetheless has had a lot more development over her lifespan than many other Marvel characters, primarily because Chris Claremont has always liked her so much. <<

That and because it's hard to avoid developing a character over 25 years. She's developed less than Nightcrawler, Colossus, or Kitty Pryde and much less than Wolverine, all of whom debuted at roughly the same time.

>> But I agree, Halle Berry's portrayal of her captured none of that, but that isn't a big surprise -- she's in the film because they needed a pretty Black girl to play Storm, and Berry is universally hailed as the "prettiest" Black girl. <<

Right.

>> If that's all you're looking for, it stands to reason you're not really going to get any character depth to go with it. <<

If that's the best you can do in a major motion picture, it stands to reason I'm gonna criticize you. <g>

>> The meta-message is what I've been arguing to you since day one: the X-Men are the intellectual property of Marvel Comics Inc, and are "kewl" becuz they have all these nifty powers and codenames and witty lines and oh yeah, they deal with minority issues and stuff because they're, like, outsiders, like teenagers in America feel they are, even tho the entire advertising industry revolves around them. <<

I think that's a different meta-message. I haven't said the powers and codenames are irrelevant to the X-Men's success. Obviously they are relevant since it's a superhero comic. The new X-Men looked "cool" just as Cockrum's redesigned Legion looked cool.

What I have said is that Wolverine's violence was a small part of X-MEN's success—much smaller than the comic's dealing with minority persecution and teen angst. Other "teen" books like Superboy and the Legion managed to avoid either of these themes. These themes are examples of X-MEN's superior approach...its depth compared to the competition...its artistic merit. Which is what I've argued to you since Day One.

Does X-MEN have soul?
>> The X-Men film is as soulless as the characters themselves are, and I have argued, always have been /except/ when people who really cared about them wrote them. <<

Claremont cared about them and he guided them from nothing to success. So you're saying the X-Men have been "soulless" except for the two decades when he made them the world's greatest superhero team? Not exactly a crushing argument there.

>> In other words, the surface elements are what the X-Men are really about; the deeper stuff is what their writers are / were about. <<

Claremont was the writer for almost 20 years. He was responsible for the whole series, so you can't distinguish the surface traits from the deeper traits and credit him with one or the other. In concert with Byrne and other artists, he made them both happen.

And the fans responded to the deeper stuff, as you'd know if you'd read the comics and listened to fans at the time. That is, if you'd been out of diapers at the time. That's such a truism I'm not going to waste time proving it. If you have more than your silly opinion to back your views, please provide it.

Here are some facts you obviously don't grasp: Other books from the same era had teen heroes in cool costumes, from FOREVER PEOPLE to INFINITY INC. to DNAGENTS. None of these books lasted. X-MEN lasted and flourished because it had depth, not because it had the same surface elements as other teen titles. It had the literary-style characterization absent from most superhero comics.

Quality and depth sell
A dollop of supporting evidence is more than enough to make my case. Consider the history of the Legion of Super-Heroes and the Teen Titans. When they first debuted in the '60s, they were big and bright—all surfaces and no depth. Both books were second-stringers and never caught on. (That was true also of the original X-Men, of course.)

Only when Bates/Levitz/Cockrum/Grell/Giffen and Wolfman/Perez took the surface elements and deepened them did the two books achieve creative and financial success. Let me reiterate that so you can understand it: Surfaces didn't sell; depth did. End of story.

>> Since those people didn't write (and couldn't write) the film, which was designed to sell surface elements anyway, the movie is the same way. (And yes, politically correct concerns are as much a surface element as "yellow spandex.") <<

I don't know what you mean by "politically correct concerns," but I doubt I agree. Politics, racism, and the Holocaust are all deep subjects and they separate X-MEN from the herd. Always have and (we can hope) always will.

>> And, as I've argued to you millions of times before, subjectivity is reality, articularly for that individual, too. <<

That may explain why you keep losing our arguments. Why you've basically given up. My objective evidence trumps your subjective unreality.

No, reality is a mix of objective facts and subjective impressions. One reality is that 30% of America is minority according to the 2000 Census. Comic books don't come close to reflecting that reality, as I've noted many times.

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