Right-Wing Trolls Have Worked Themselves Up Over a Nonbinary X-Men Character

Right-Wing Trolls Have Worked Themselves Up Over a Nonbinary X-Men Character
X-Men ’97 drops on Disney+ this March and bigots are big mad.

BY SAMANTHA RIEDEL
February 22, 2024

https://media.them.us/photos/65d78dbad97b7d5cfee74bc9/1:1/w_960,c_limit/morph.jpg

To me, my fake fans! X-Men ’97, Marvel’s forthcoming sequel to the classic 1990s superhero cartoon, has it all: a new trailer, a release date in March, and a pack of enraged right-wingers who insist that comics’ most famous civil rights allegory has “gone woke” by making one of its characters nonbinary.

After more than two years in development, X-Men ’97 is scheduled to drop on Disney+ on March 20, with a 10-episode first season picking up where the original X-Men cartoon left off, with the dramatic death of team founder Professor Charles Xavier. It’s not Xavier or any of the series’ more well-known mutant characters that gripped reactionaries in a panic, though, but rather Morph, a shapeshifter who died in the original series’ first episode (but later returned for complicated comic-book reasons).

According to a feature interview this month with showrunner Beau DeMayo in Empire, Morph, who was originally portrayed as a cisgender man, will instead be characterized as nonbinary. DeMayo later confirmed in a story post on Instagram that this version of Morph uses they/them pronouns. Voice actor JP Karliak, who is openly gay, plays Morph in the new series.

Technically, this is all old news. Morph’s new nonbinary identity was announced at a San Diego Comic-Con panel in 2022, during which DeMayo used they/them pronouns for the character and stated Morph would be “taking on a new persona” compared to their old characterization. The reveal didn’t make a huge splash at the time, possibly because shapeshifters have always been part of nonbinary culture. After the series’ first trailer dropped last week, however, a bevy of right-wing YouTubers and assorted influencers crawled out of the woodwork to complain that going “woke” would make the series “unwatchable.” As Forbes noted, much of the backlash focused on Morph’s updated background being “woke AF,” with ancillary disappointment at the designs for powerhouse hero Rogue — specifically, that her ass cheeks are no longer sufficiently thick. Stay classy, manosphere!
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More at link:

https://www.them.us/story/nonbinary-x-men-morph-right-wing-outrage

I wanted to post something other than downer news so I thought this would be fun! My favorite show as a kid coming back, enby rep, and pissing off RWers at the same time? Who could ask for more?