Oh Greymalkin Prison, how I loathe you.
I have been following along on Uncanny X-men's latest story arc because writer Gail Simone finally has gone back to actually touching on the one plotline in this book I actually care about and... every issue so far has been bringing up some thoughts. I really thought this time that I would be able to just read along without commenting on the whole affair, but like always, something is always brought up that makes me realize that I can't stay silent. And that something this time is one of the preview pages for the upcoming Uncanny issue:
Don't tell me you're trying to redeem or otherwise make the Nazi running the mutant concentration camp out of the X-men's home a sympathetic character! I had started to see signs of this sort of direction in the past two issues of this story arc, but all this is doing is putting such a rotten taste in my mouth. And highlights a very big problem with how the Warden character is being presented.
As you all know this is an Omega Red blog, and wouldn't you know it, this developing background for Warden Ellis is actually a similar sort of story beat I have seen before in Arkady's story when writer Greg Pak handled Omega Red about 10 years ago in the pages of the 2017 Weapon X series. So I'm going to use that as an example of how to portray a monster like the Warden right, and show what Gail Simone gets so very wrong about how to present such a character.
There are two main issues with how the story is being handled. Reason one is telling the story from the perspective of the perpetrator of the atrocities rather than the victims. Now, Marvel has had writers handle stories written from the perpetrator's perspective before -- some of them rather haunting stories like Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X -- and those are great stories that hammer home powerful messages. The issue is more of how the perpetrator's perspective is being handled and how the victims -- the prisoners at Greymalkin -- are given no voice, no page time focused on them at all. That causes any message that is trying to be presented to fall flat on its face, and even become riddled with controversy -- which is what Greymalkin Prison has become.
In the 2017 Weapon X series by Greg Pak, we are presented with a family dynamic not the most dissimilar to what Simone is writing in Uncanny right now. In it, Arkady is revealed to have a younger brother named Vasily (sometimes spelled Vassily, I know, the spelling errors get a little annoying) who spent his life rising through the ranks of politics to become the Director of SICKLE, Russia's dark version of SHIELD -- while Omega Red was made into a government weapon. He is a human, and in this story, he uses his brother as a tool to try to eliminate any pro-mutant leaders within the country's military -- controlling Arkady through nanites in his bloodstream to force Omega Red to do his bidding.
From the get-go, Vasily is not portrayed as sympathetic in any way. Which is important, his position is indefensible. What Vasily is doing is wrong, and you get that sense in his words and how he treats Arkady. Up to this point in Marvel Comics, readers had not been given much reason to care about Omega Red either -- we didn't have any real background about him -- and the story doesn't automatically make him a saint either or go out of its way to suddenly pin all the blame of the things Omega Red has done in the past on his brother. His crimes remain his own, but this fleshes him out and shows there are worse horrors out there.
Which is what is so important about perspective. We get to see Vasily, but we also get to see Omega Red. We get to see how awful this situation is for him, how he is trapped and left conflicted about the things he is being forced to do by his brother. We're not left wondering what his views are, or what he is doing like we face with Greymalkin Prison and the mutants trapped there. We barely get to see their day-to-day, let alone any of their commentary on what they face inside those walls. Greg Pak does in five issues what Gail Simone can't do in almost 30. We are shown both characters, and are given a very good idea of what they're both like -- whether they share panels or not.
It's a story that shines a light on darker characters without washing anything away. It's more of an "oh, I understand things better now" sort of revelation, not one that tries to beat a person over the head with trying to excuse crimes. Contrast that to Warden Ellis, who is being written in a way that tries to justify how she acts and treats mutantkind as a whole:
Now, the Warden is a lot like Vasily. She is in a position of power and causing great harm to mutants. She has run this prison for months and has tortured the inmates. She tries to indoctrinate them into hating themselves and uses them like tools to get what she wants, creating the Trustees. Vasily likewise holds power and is shown to use torture, being set on higher ambitions and using mutants as tools to get the things he wants in life.
But unlike with the Warden, Vasily isn't shown to be in the right just because he happens to have a brother with terrifying mutant powers. He isn't justified in years of atrocities committed on mutants because he shared a childhood with a mutant who had the power to kill. What Vasily is doing and has been doing is wrong -- him being the brother of Omega Red is a part of his background and might have some driving force on the direction his path in life took. But he is not solely defined by his brother, and just like Omega Red's crimes are his own, Vasily's crimes and decisions are his own.
That is ultimately where the Warden really fails as a character in her own right. Far too much page time is spent trying to humanize her in a way that attempts to gloss over or otherwise ignore her atrocities. We spend so much time with her and her decrepit boyfriend that her victims are silenced. Reduced to background when those characters should be the focal point. Their voices and perspectives should not be made silent. Instead, they should be given the same sort of treatment Greg Pak gives to Omega Red: his voice is allowed to be heard. He is allowed to stand up for himself and point out that how he was treated by his brother was wrong:
Which leads into the second point of where the writing in Uncanny X-men fails: none of the heroes actually condemn what the Warden is doing. Throughout the pages of Weapon X here, you see the heroes -- ie: the main cast of characters -- appalled and disgusted by what Vasily has created here. The moment they realize the truth, they (even if a few are reluctant) actually decide to go and storm the place even though they know it's a suicide mission. They don't sit there and let it continue to exist. They know it is wrong and don't stop and go home just because it looks to be an impossible job. The team buckles down and gets to work to eliminate a blight on the world. Which is something the X-men themselves should be doing with Greymalkin. But yet they never do.
What we see in Weapon X is the opposite of what you see from really any of the X-men in this new era. Which is something that is quite astounding, especially given how the characters in Weapon X are traditionally villains. They still manage to call out what Russia and Vasily are doing and don't compromise on what they know is right. At every moment where they get a chance to speak, you see them respond in a way that hammers home that what has happened is not something they will let stand and they fight tooth and nail to stop it. They won't tolerate these kinds of horrors to be allowed to exist.
But Uncanny never does that. The entire run is full of moments where the X-men do nothing. Say nothing. Even when they are within the very walls of Greymalkin Prison itself and see and know what atrocities are committed there. The X-men do nothing and have done nothing for ages -- just look at what they allowed to happen to Dazzler as a latest example. The below panels are the closest any of the main characters in Uncanny X-men actually come to condemning Greymalkin Prison, and even this is just a slap on the wrist.
The Rogue I know and love would never be so soft on such a place. This is her home that has been taken over -- she has been a victim in mutant prisons before -- and yet time and time again she is shown to not only tolerate the place, but even suggests sending more prisoners there even after she knows the horrors being committed there. This is really a huge problem, not only in-universe with the characters, but also in the audience who read these stories week to week.
Readers often fixate morality with how the people they see as heroes handle a problem. I hate to say that happens, but it does all the time. When a hero says something is wrong, the reader will often adopt a similar view through protagonist-based morality. But because we are being shown that the heroes do not care and never once actually comment, protest, or otherwise express their disgust on what is happening inside Greymalkin Prison, you begin to see those very same attitudes reflected within the readers. You see takes online from people saying "Oh, Greymalkin Prison is not that bad. They keep the worst mutants locked up there. That's a good thing."
No joke, I have seen very similar takes from people online. Because the heroes don't actually speak up against it, people begin to turn a blind eye. Begin to justify what is a horrible thing as something that can't really be as bad as it is. Or try to reason or logic their way to conclude that their heroes aren't failing to be heroes through other means (which, I know. It's the result of very bad writing why we are where we are now). Because the heroes are not shown to stand up for what is right, readers learn the wrong message.
The result is two-fold. On the one hand, it further whitewashes the Warden when she shouldn't be excused in any way for her crimes. The second is that it turns the X-men into mutant cops. They become the ones who decide which mutants actually get to see the light of day. They decide which ones become the sacrificial lambs to be tortured by the world governments while they get to play house wherever they decide to settle. And the readers either learn to accept this poor writing because they don't have a choice otherwise, or they accept it whole-heartedly and say "this is my X-men" unironically because they refuse to see the corpses on which the current era is built.
Greymalkin Prison is the greatest crime of this new era, and as I have said before, it puts the heroes in the worst possible light. It turns them into collaborators and individuals who further perpetuate crimes against their own mutant brothers and sisters, and proves the worst fears and expectations about the X-men true. Omega Red's words from 10 years ago hauntingly still applies to the modern era, as the X-men don't choose the path of being actual heroes who stand up for what is right even when it is difficult. Instead, they become the boots on the necks of their own people who don't actually fight for a better world for future generations.
I fear and dread how this story arc will come to an end, but I expect that sadly, the mutants who have lost the most because of Greymalkin Prison will never actually get their justice. They will be forever silenced as victims and perhaps even punished with a different prison for the crime of being wronged and left behind, while the Warden gets further sympathy points from the X-men for "doing what is right."
It's disgusting. I would say for Marvel to do better, but at this point, I highly doubt they will.
This won't end well, strongly, or positively.
I look forward to forgetting about this era.
