X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor: Race and Gender in the Comic Books Joseph J. Darowski. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor: Race and Gender in the Comic Books Joseph J. Darowski. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.Following on the heels of his four edited collections devoted to Superman, Wonder Woman, X-Men, and the Avengers (all McFarland, 2012-2014) in addition to numerous articles and book chapters within that same timespan, Joseph J. Darowski has been one of the more active scholars in recent years on the subject of superhero comics and American popular culture. But the X-Men have garnered the most attention in his work, as X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor: Race and Gender in the Comic Books is an expansion of his dissertation. The author selected the Uncanny X-Men series because of the "minority metaphor," as its writers used the flexible "mutant metaphor" to address issues important to them, adapting to whatever current pressing issue (feminism, racism, homophobia, disability) they wanted to address. For instance, whereas the hate speech towards mutants was used as a direct metaphor to that against African Americans in earlier issues, it would be adapted decades later for homophobia. X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor thus explicates the varying topics Uncanny X-Men has broached since its 1963 debut.Because of the wealth of ancillary material and spinoff series, Darowski chooses to focus on the flagship Uncanny X-Men title through issue #500. Each chapter follows a similar format, examining the creators (writers and artists), general storyline, and new characters introduced during the period, followed by a textual analysis of how race and gender were addressed.In the second chapter, covering the first decade of the all WASPish, middle- to upper-class X-Men, Darwoski's analysis centers primarily on the lone female member at the time, Marvel Girl (aka Jean Grey), who despite her superpowers, was still often subjected to the helpless dams el-in-dis tress role. Giant-Size X-Men #1 launched the next period (1975- 1983) with a much more international team but still initially with just one woman: the Kenyan Storm. Furthermore, Darowski notes undercurrents of cultural imperialism in Storm's origin story, as well as "yellow perilism" in the Japanese Sunfire. Under Chris Claremont's sixteen-year run on the series (the longest such run on a superhero title) that bridges both the second and third periods (1983-1991), the X-Men face greater prejudice than they had in their first decade, thus allowing Claremont to exploit the "mutant metaphor" to greater effect. Still, these two periods were not without troubling aspects, such as the link between female sexuality and being a supervillain, perhaps most memorably in "The Dark Phoenix Saga," when "Jean increases in power, but her sexual appetites are linked to her turn toward genocide" (83).The writers and artists emphasized the mutant metaphor during the fifth and final stage (2001-2008), partly by decreasing the number of mutants (the House of M series and event), but, in terms of gender equality, this period had its rocky start, with mutant prostitute Stacy X the solitary female member of the team. Comparing Stacy X's representation versus that of Marvel Girl in the 1960s, Darowski determines, "The difference between the stories in these fifty years is not as great as one would have expected or hoped to see" (133). …