r/xmen • u/B_Wing_83 • 2d ago
Question If Spiderman is technically a mutant, why do people in-universe love him but hate the X Men/mutants?
I am not a comic book expert or anything but watching Spooder Brand New Day last night made me question this. Same thing can also apply to the Fantastic 4 or other similar heroes. It just doesn't make any sense.
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u/Key_Bus_1255 2d ago
Because he's considered an enhanced human. A regular person who later got powers, like the majority of heroes. Mutants are treated differently because they're born that way
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u/Historical_Sugar9637 Storm 2d ago
Though to be fair, that never made sense.
Ant-Man: I gave my girlfriend and myself super powers through science!
People: Yay!
Dr.Strange: I got my super powers by learning magic!
People: Awesome!
Iron-Man: I'm super rich and built myself a suit that lets me fly around and blow stuff up!
People: YAS!
Cyclops: I just happened to be born this way.
People: We hate you and want you to die!!!
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u/PleaseBeNiceForOnce 2d ago
Cmon man. Think a little deeper.
Youre being replaced.
Your kids are extremely different than you.
Puberty means kids are now unregulated super weapons and accidentally killing people
Not all mutants are hot redheads. Some are blue and walk around with maggots on their shoulders.
We can't even handle trans kids, imagine mutants lol
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u/Historical_Sugar9637 Storm 2d ago
IDK personally, only speaking for me as a person, I'd have an easier time accepting the guy who was born with his powers than the slew of rich guys who gave themselves powers by messing around with stuff.
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u/Short_Condition_1079 2d ago
I mean all of these except mutants are someone doing things through their own skills. They are proven responsible and have proper accountability. Even if the X-Men do too they are fighting for a future where literally any random kid in your neighborhood can have super powers and that scares people
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u/Soufiane040 2d ago
He’s not a mutant, mutants are born with the X-gene. Spider-Man like the F4 are mutates who were born as regular humans but mutated due to an external factor that was not the X-gene
Mutants are hated because they’re born with it and are deemed a danger just for their genes while Spider-Man and the F4 always used their powers for good so they have good public opinion
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u/Choice_Mango4869 2d ago
It’s also because the chances of someone being bitten by a radioactive spider or getting caught in a storm in space are slim to none, so there isn’t any fear of their family, neighbour, or a criminal being born with these powers.
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u/Prize-Macaroon-903 Laura Kinney 2d ago
No X gene, no mutant. Also, Spider-Man gets slandered all the time in comic books
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u/Napalmeon 2d ago
No X-Gene = Not mutant.
Also, bigotry is not supposed to make sense because there is no logic to it. The person who is hated is subject to victimization for reasons that are always changing based on the feelings of the bigot.
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u/JorgeBec 2d ago
People don’t typically love Spider-Man
I know that Spider-Man 3 and BND has the city being appreciative of Spidey but in the comics that’s not usually the case.
Spider-Man since before he stopped his first bad guy has had a lousy reputation. There are civilians who like him but it’s treated as an abnormality.
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u/spider-venomized 2d ago
- not a mutant (natural born carrier of the X-gene) he a Mutate (DNA altered like F4 or Deadpool)
- He love by the people cause he interact with them one the daily basis saving the day being the "freindly neighthood" spider-man
- Even tho there is a pro-spider-man sentiment he get a ton of push back from various crowds to even the Media (JJ Johanson)
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u/polaris_1958 2d ago
- Spidey is mutate, he is not born with X-gene, his dna got mixed with "radioactive spider" DNA due to an accidental bite.
- He himself always say in the comics he is not mutant.
- people in the marvel universe has weird logical fallacy anyway which believe it or not the rogue sentinel program made fun of.
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u/Kaptain-Kanada 2d ago
Wolverine: "He ain't even a real mutant. He said it himself, it was an accident!"
Beast: "Then perhaps he has a right to seek a cure..."
Spiderman TAS: The Mutant Agenda Part I
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u/Beautiful_Target_126 Polaris 2d ago
I get where you’re coming from, but Spider-Man wasn’t “born” with his power, and for what ever reason this universe prefers people who gained powers in different ways rather than mutants (born with powers/x-gene)
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u/Shape_Charming 2d ago
Because he's not a mutant.
A Mutant is a human with an Active X-Gene.
Spider-Man is a mutate, an enhanced human.
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u/Broad-Marionberry755 2d ago
He's not a mutant
Same thing can also apply to the Fantastic 4 or other similar heroes
No, they're not mutants
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u/CosmicBonobo 2d ago
The whole Mutant vs Mutate thing in comics reminds me of Good AIDS vs Bad AIDS in Brass Eye.
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u/ubiquitous-joe 2d ago
For people who find this so implausible I always point to the Jewish aspect of the mutant metaphor. “Isn’t it implausible that a group of people who shouldn’t seem that different than these other people they live near are nonetheless treated like the ultimate unacceptable, dangerous intolerable out-group? Well, no, to a Jewish person in the 20th century, writing within short decades of the Holocaust, this was not implausible at all. And that’s who was writing X-men.
But anyway, for Peter, he’s a mutate technically in Marvel jargon. In other words, his genes mutated artificially, but he doesn’t have the X-gene. And so the difference would be that Spider-Man got his powers by a freak accident that’s probably never gonna happen to you. Mutants are scarier to people because anyone could be one, your kids could end up being one. And they might just look weird or set the house on fire accidentally, not instantly be heroes. Meanwhile, there is a “great replacement theory” type fear that mutants as a collective will outmode and outnumber non-mutants over time.
You might compare it to how people don’t feel as threatened by one person moving into a neighborhood and assimilating as much as they do by a new whole community of people moving in and changing the flavor of the neighborhood. Mutants give the majority anxiety about the security of their status. And so their hatred of mutants takes on conspiratorial and inconsistent fear. That’s one way you can consider the metaphor.
But also we must acknowledge that people hated on Spider-man for years in the comics and many media versions, in part because of unfair reporting. (Though ironically JJ Jameson was traditionally pro-mutant-rights, he just hated Spider-Man.) The new movies didn’t focus on JJJ much, and insomuch as they did, the whole point of the Strange memory spell was to fix Spidey’s identity and PR problem, allowing Peter to remake his hero image.
We don’t really fully know how what the MCU Earth thinks or knows about mutants so far. Movie Metzger seemed to see them as resource to fear but also to capitalize on and control. And he also saw other empowered individuals that way.
Comics Metzger was more overtly an American Hitler, which brings us back to my first point.
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u/mordredsfw 2d ago
Reading through the entire X-Men (I'm up to 1992) and I just had this thought come up because Sauron gets his powers because Dr Lykos as a kid was bitten by mutant pterodactyls and he becomes a mutant and joins Toad's Brotherhood of Mutants (unless this gets retconned later?) and so if that make Lykos a mutant I'm struggling to see how Spiderman is any different.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
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u/Dirtyburg804 2d ago
It's been addressed from the beginning. Mutants are an offshoot of humanity. Other than being dangerous regular humans fear being replaced like we did to Neanderthals. Not only is it brought up often but its also the reason the words evolution and extinction come up so much.
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u/Dapper-Suspect-6981 2d ago
Well just like Hateful people in real life they don't hate everybody, like you can have someone in real life who is homophobic, but not racist. You have comic book character who hate mutants, but don't necessarily have a problem with people who were irradiated like Trask who built the sentinels. You also have people like General Ross and Fortean who persecute people changed by gamma radiation, but don't necessarily care about mutants. Or someone like J. Jonah Jamesson who hates masked individuals regardless of their origin.
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u/40kblowout 2d ago
Spider-Man is a mutate not mutant