This April, X-Men films didn’t adapt. X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills is an illustrated masterpiece from writer Chris Claremont and artist Brent Anderson that pits the Children of the Atom against Reverend William Stryker’s evangelical crusade in a volatile tale that examines human-mutant relations through the lens of religious extremism. X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills Extended Cut features a new framing sequence from the creators and presents the seminal graphic novel in its original splendor.
In 1982, Marvel comics introduced a new line of graphic novels, an innovation in comic book publishing that furthered the medium as a serous literary and artistic creation — and paved the way for such visionary works as Maüs and Persepolis. Marvel’s banner year saw the release of five graphic novels, The Death of Captain Marvel and Dreadstar, both by Jim Starlin, Elric: The Dreaming City, with Roy Thomas and P. Craig Russell on a Michael Moorcock creation, Charles Xavier and the fugitive X-Men must defend a vulnerable mutant community from the zealotry of the Stryker Crusade and from his mercenary army of Purifiers, in a violent clash of ideology and extremism.
The opening sequence of mutant population. Considering genetic mutation to be an affront to divinity and human dignity, Stryker’s sermons casts mutants as less than human. When the delusional Stryker captures psion Charles Xavier and manipulates the mutant’s unrivaled abilities with mind-altering drugs and sensory deprivation, he creates a living weapon capable of wreaking terrible havoc. With the world’s most powerful psychic’s abilities harnessed to an apparatus patterned after the X-Men’s own Cerebro, Stryker intends to amplify Xavier’s psionic sensitivity to detect mutants, even those with latent potential. Through Professor X, the maniacal Stryker hopes to bring a swift end to the mutant menace, commanding the telepath to destroy the minds of those mutants Cerebro reveals.
Fans familiar with 20th Century Fox’s X-Men film franchise may find the mind-control of Xavier and use of Cerebro, a device construct to help the X-Men find new mutants, as a weapon a recognizable plot element. Director Bryan Singer’s X2: X-Men United appears to draw inspiration from X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills with an enthralled Charles Xavier’s psychic powers broadcast through Cerebro to deadly effect. Indeed, Singer’s dogmatic antagonist in X2 is even named William Stryker, and the Stryker character has since been retconned into X-Men film series. Where X2 director misses an opportunity, by merely appropriating from Claremont and Anderson’s X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, is in the film’s failure to explore the graphic novel’s relevant themes of persecution and dehumanization.
The allegorical nature of the X-Men’s struggle against fanaticism and anti-mutant sentiment is an archetypal theme easily adapted to the silver screen and, while exploited to varying degrees in the film franchise, efforts to humanize the trauma of the mutants’ dilemma are often lost in translation. The visionary tales that made the X-Men the phenomenon they are today serve as a testament to the universality of the mutants’ enduring message of brotherhood.
X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills Extended Cut #1 hits comic shops April 1, 2020.
- X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills Extended Cut (2020) #1 (of 2)
- Writer: Chris Claremont
- Artist: Brent Anderson
- Cover Art: Salvador Larroca
- The Uncanny X-Men. Magneto, master of magnetism. The bitterest of enemies for years. But now they must forces against a new adversary who threatens not only mutantkind, but all of humanity beside it…in the name of God. The of the Stryker Crusade are poised to cleanse the earth, no matter how much blood stains their hands. Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson’s influential X-Men story is re-presented with all-new pages from the legendary creators themselves!
Source: Marvel
