Today is the opening night of X2, the X-Men movie sequel. The X-Men were my introduction to fantasy in the form of an old, worn stack of 60's comics from my older cousin. I thumbed through them endlessly as I followed the adventures of Cyclops, Jean Grey, The Beast, Iceman, and Angel, all under the watchful eye of Professor X. In the great Marvel tradition, Stan Lee had taken his "everyman" concept which he had developed for Spiderman and applied it to a "team" of young heroes. He used them as a metaphor for the race relation problems of the sixties. (Lee himself compared Professor X to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Magneto, the evil mutant, to Malcolm X.)

I caught up to the team again in the early 80's when I tired of reading the "old" adventures and sought out the contemporary version. Cyclops and Professor X were still around, but Jean Grey had become Phoenix and there were some cool new guys and gals called Nightcrawler, Storm and Colossus...oh, and this other guy, Wolverine, the meanest sumbitch I'd ever seen in a comic. The theme of benevolent outcasts continued, even including the entire team "dying" at one point so that they could more effectively protect mankind without all of the political problems and notoriety. Ocassionally, Beast or Angel or Iceman would turn up, and new characters were coming in and out all of the time, Rogue among them. By then, well... I was starting to grow up.

I stopped reading them shortly after they had all "died", mostly due to interest in other things, more "respectable" literature (like LOTR, for instance), sports, girls; but also because it started to get too confusing as the spin-off titles exploded into Uncanny X-Men, Adventures of the X-Men, X-Factor, ad naseum. My simple comic had become an industry. And it was getting expensive to spend $ on all of those comics and to try to entertaind the ladies!

Now we have these movies and the X-Men have been brought back to me. The essential theme is still there. The "universe" may have changed a bit, different eras have been mixed together, but the soul of the X-Men remains. The X-Men comic served to remind me that the ignorance of others was not an excuse to lash out at them or to be ignorant yourself. That to do the right thing for it's own sake without expecting any recognition was the right path. Sacrifice for those who misunderstand you was the ultimate act of nobility. The X-Men save mankind a million times and got nothing but grief and misunderstanding in return. To me, in a way, they could be a metaphor for our Armed Forces, who willingly put it on the line for all of us, even for those who may disagree with their mission.

The X-Men were, and are, great characters who are easy vessels of self projection for people young and old. They could be me and you, but they have something a little different that sets them apart. A little something strange that scares people who fear the unknown. Yet, most of the time they are normal like us. They simply want to be accepted for who they are. It may be a dream, but isn't that what we all want?