Marvel Comics hasn’t been doing the X-Men justice lately. The House of Ideas spent years marginalizing their mutants, trying to replace their bestselling team with the Inhumans, who they owned the film rights to. 2019 saw parent company Disney get the rights to the X-Men back, and comic arm of Marvel hired superstar writer Jonathan Hickman to redefine the team. This led to the Krakoa Era, five years of stories that pushed the boundaries of what mutant stories could be. It played with the political side of the group’s metaphor, and fans in marginalized communities loved the books. However, the “From the Ashes” reboot left almost all of that behind, trying to bring back a more homogenized version of the mutants that called back to the ’90s.
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Even diehard X-Men fans aren’t happy with things, but there has been a beacon of light for many X-fans: Uncanny X-Men. Uncanny X-Men sidestepped the “From the Ashes” curse, and has been giving readers solid, character-based X-stories that aren’t scared of their history with civil rights. Writer Gail Simone has made it the most diverse book on the line, embracing queer themes and introducing new mutants from a variety of backgrounds. She even played with the United States’ past with racism in “Dark Artery”, one of the best X-Men stories of the 2020s. This story fleshed out the history of Haven, the new X-Men base, and the St. Junior family. Uncanny X-Men Annual #1 expands on “Dark Artery”, and introduces the best mutant team of this era: the Regulators. It’s exactly what’s missing from the X-books, and I’m already hooked.
The Regulators Are Everything a Mutant Team Can Be
The history of Haven is one of the coolest things that Marvel has introduced to the 21st century X-Men. The house was owned by the St. Junior family, who had a previous friendship with Gambit, and its history plays into both the mutant hatred of the Marvel Universe and the United States’ history with anti-black racism. Haven was a place created by black mutants so that they could have a place to bury their own. They used symbols to communicate the path to Haven, which was a thing back in the racist days of Jim Crow, a language that only those who knew it could read and told travelers what places were safe for them.
In “Dark Artery”, it was revealed that Wolverine had a history with Haven and Uncanny X-Men Annual #1 fleshes that out by introducing the Regulators. The story kicks off with new character Slaughter Freedman, a black mutant former lawman, bringing his dead son to Haven. He is accosted by racists, who he kills, and discovers that they were burying Wolverine alive. He brings him to Haven, but his actions against the racists leads to two black children being blamed for it. Logan and Freedman team up with Mother Witchfire, Michael St. Junior, and Lady Henrietta (all introduced in “Dark Artery”) to fight the racists and save the children as the Regulators.
One of the best parts about the X-Men is the fact that they are more than just superheroes. Sure, they fight supervillains and save the universe, but the whole point of the team is anti-racism. Their best stories are able to incorporate a message of diversity and fighting for the marginalized, and that’s been almost completely missing from the X-books since Tom Brevoort took over editor of the X-office. The current version of the team is the most lib-coded, centrist view of them and their struggles, one that was common in the ’90s. A lot of fans hate this simplistic, somewhat ignorant view of the group and their allies.
That’s what makes the Regulators such a great concept. The group exists to fight against the racists who have made their lives so much worse, which is exactly what a mutant team should be. The entire idea of Haven takes real life history – the way that black Americans had to create their own support network against the racists who controlled everything – and brings it into the mutant corner of Marvel. The Regulators are a part of that. The idea of this group – a group of marginalized people fighting against the racist, oppressive powers around them – is wish fulfillment, but in a time when the oppressors are winning it’s exactly what we need.
The Regulators Show the Direction the X-Men Should Always Be Taken
The X-Men have lost their way. Tom Brevoort doesn’t seem to understand that the group is more than a common superhero team, and we’ve been getting books that mostly pay lip service to the ideas of the X-Men. It’s all so homogenized and boring, and it has shown in the various books and their sales failures, not to mention the bad event stories. The Regulators are a perfect example of what a mutant team could be, and I want more of them.
The Regulators take the ideas of the best X-Men stories, and puts them on display brilliantly. While I doubt that Brevoort is going to change his approach to the team and their allies to give us more groups like this (he’s notoriously pig-headed and combative with fans who don’t agree with his views), this type of team is what the X-Men line needs. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the group’s ideas and hopefully we can get more of them to brighten up this mediocre era of Marvel’s merry mutants.
Uncanny X-Men Annual #1 is on sale now.
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