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Dec. 2nd, 2004 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynRandom thought, inspired by... I dunno, the memory of a subject I studied in college or summat.
Those of us who've read X-men comic books and their many spawn know that Marvel periodically makes a nod in the general direction of reality. Sometimes the attempts to tie real-world institutions to the comic world (or vice versa) work; sometimes they don't. (I have some trouble, whatever J. Michael Straczynski said in the black-cover issue of Spiderman, believing that Herr Baron Doktor Victor von Doom would be particularly touched by the destruction of the Twin Towers.) I'm wondering about something that I don't know if they've ever touched on.
In the Marvel universe, specifically the X-branch with its mutants, what is the March of Dimes like? The fight to reduce birth defects and infant mortality rates can't possibly be anything like the same in a world where a kid can be born looking like- say- Blink, or Nightcrawler. Not all mutants hit their powers at puberty, so... has the March of Dimes been co-opted by the anti-mutant forces and turned into a pre-birth genocide advocacy organization, or do they stick to cleft palates and phocomelia*, or what? There's no possible way they can stay quiet on the mutant issue. NO ONE is allowed to stay quiet on the damned mutant issue in that world, except possibly the Red Cross, although I don't remember them being mentioned anywhere either. Do they consider mutancy in the same category as Down's syndrome, or do they consider it a broader spectrum of possibile outcomes that may not qualify as defects, or what?
Brought to you by the part of my brain responsible for crossovers.
*Lit. 'seal-limb', this is the deformity typically associated with Kevadon (brand name for thalidomide).
Those of us who've read X-men comic books and their many spawn know that Marvel periodically makes a nod in the general direction of reality. Sometimes the attempts to tie real-world institutions to the comic world (or vice versa) work; sometimes they don't. (I have some trouble, whatever J. Michael Straczynski said in the black-cover issue of Spiderman, believing that Herr Baron Doktor Victor von Doom would be particularly touched by the destruction of the Twin Towers.) I'm wondering about something that I don't know if they've ever touched on.
In the Marvel universe, specifically the X-branch with its mutants, what is the March of Dimes like? The fight to reduce birth defects and infant mortality rates can't possibly be anything like the same in a world where a kid can be born looking like- say- Blink, or Nightcrawler. Not all mutants hit their powers at puberty, so... has the March of Dimes been co-opted by the anti-mutant forces and turned into a pre-birth genocide advocacy organization, or do they stick to cleft palates and phocomelia*, or what? There's no possible way they can stay quiet on the mutant issue. NO ONE is allowed to stay quiet on the damned mutant issue in that world, except possibly the Red Cross, although I don't remember them being mentioned anywhere either. Do they consider mutancy in the same category as Down's syndrome, or do they consider it a broader spectrum of possibile outcomes that may not qualify as defects, or what?
Brought to you by the part of my brain responsible for crossovers.
*Lit. 'seal-limb', this is the deformity typically associated with Kevadon (brand name for thalidomide).
