James, this insufferable need you have to be right all of the time really gets old.

You win.  Everyone who thinks differently than you is wrong and you are right.

Happy now?

QUOTE: Whenever I've been to Europe, most of the Europeans picked up that I was American before I even spoke a word. I'm trying to figure out if Asian-Americans stand differently or something.

Maybe, Though my wife was once mistaken for Irish by some Irish women viisiting her workplace. Had a friend of Korean and Japanese decent who was addressed in Japanese by a couple of tourists at Disneyland. She had no clue what they were saying though.

I have some friends who can tell the difference between different Asian nationalities.  Not perfectly, but within 80-90%.  A white guy is best at it, but the others are Asian.  When I lived briefly in Europe, I noticed it was lot easier to tell the Nordics, Latins, and Slavics from each other than I could in Chicago.

Anyway, back to the issue of anti-mutant hysteria - I remember a scene from Gruenwald/Dwyer's run where the new Captain America and Battlestar hunted down a porcupine power guy because of the Mutant Registration Act.  He claimed he got the powers in an accident.  I'm sure they might be other instances of the same.

I personally don't find anti-mutant hysteria to be weird.  It's one thing that random accidents give people super-powers.  It's another thing to be told by another group:  we are replacing you.  Random super power guys will remain random and keep to a low population.  A new breed of humanity however may someday outnumber you, or at minimum become a large enough minority that their super powers allow them to rule over non-powered humans, or "cheat" the system.  The Hellfire Club certainly did - using their various mutant powers to gain economic and political powers.  How many business rivals did Emma Frost destroy simply because she could read their minds?

No one wants to be reglected to an inferior status, and that is the fear humanity has.  One does not need to be a bigot to have that fear.  Fear, not hate, is what motivated the hysteria for most.

Something rarely mentioned in these discussions is that mutants are not just a metaphor of oppressed minorities.  They are also metaphors of danger.  They were the "Children of the Atom," remember?  What else do we associate with the Atom, especially in the 1960's - 1980's?  Mutants are also a metaphor for the possible extinction of humanity.  And Magneto and the Brotherhood, of course, are metaphors of bigotry and racial supremacy themselves, not of oppressed minorities.

Mutants are a variant on cuckoos. The difference is, the "cuckoo's eggs" come from birds that are not cuckoos.

Exactly. No accident that Stan and Jack had Magneto and his cronies use Nazi trappings in an early issue. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was not meant to be seen as "freedom fighters". That was the X-Men. The Brotherhood saw themselves as "evil", and had no problem with that characterization.

Well mutants have apparently been found to have a common gene that shows up and sometimes "activates". I think it has been dubbed the x-factor.

In the Marvel universe you might have been born a human with an "advanced" mutation trait that gives you super powers like "super reflexes" and the ability to see into the infa-red band but you'd still not be a mutant because you don't match up with one of the High Evolutionary's definitions. Or maybe they'd call you pseudo mutant or a "type two" mutant.

On the other hand you could be born a mutant with two too many teeth in your lower ja, lumps on the back of your head, and the power to turn four square inches of your left butt cheek "sort of blue" and the sentinals STILL want to shoot restraining goop on you and haul you off to some secret mutant prison because you have the x-factor.

I actually have an extra vertebra in my spine. I trust you guys to keep it  secret from the Mutant hunting Sentinals.   

Mike (aka Taller-than-he-would-be Man)