Let me start by saying I like the X-Men. I really like the X-Men. Sometimes I even love the X-Men. The story of society's outcasts in a world full of superpowered, spandex-clad heroes. Coming together with others with the X-Gene, what gives them their powers and makes them the next step in evolution. Except:That's not how evolution works.

Evolution is a slow, gradual process leading to widespread genetic change through accumulating adaptations to survive in their environment. The traits that will become common are chosen in the process of natural selection. If a species lives in extreme cold temperatures, members of the species that have a heavy coat of fur will have a higher chance of surviving and reproducing over members with a thin coat of fur, slowly making a heavy coat of fur a trait of nearly all members of the species. The problem with the X-Gene being evolution is that their wasn't a specific need from the environment for people to have lasers shoot out of their eyes. It isn't a natural adaptation to the environment around us.

The X-Gene is a genetic mutation, not adaptation, making them exactly what they're called, mutants. Someone with an extra 21st chromosome has a genetic disorder, the side effect of this is Down's Syndrome. This doesn't make the person their own species or the next step in evolution, it makes them a human being with a genetic disorder. Someone with the X-Gene isn't a new species or the next step in evolution, they're a human being with a genetic mutation.

I really dislike the overused shtick of "you should accept us for who we are and protect us, because we're human beings after all, except we're our own species." It bothers me everytime I hear it or read it in an X-book or movie. I'd gotten used to it until Cyclops' X-Men would constantly repeat it. The same team sticking to the brilliant idea that the best thing for mutant-human relations is living in their own nation where anything could be happening as far as anyone knows. This would in no way give anti-mutant activists in the U.S. an advantage with propaganda or possibly lead the U.S. to take action against them for being a foreign nation very close, if not in, U.S. territory. Because Genosha turned out to be a great idea too right?

I'll stop before this becomes a rant on the Blue team, but would like to put one last thing in. The point of X-Men should be our differences can be our strengths and despite it all, blacks, whites, mutants, normal powerless people, are all human and have something special about them, not that a single gene makes someone superior to all other humans and will eventually become the dominant species.