Why Utopia Was the Best Political Form Mutantkind Ever Knew
This short piece is for those who still believe comics can raise the kind of questions reality itself refuses to answer.
First, I must admit the difficulty of discussing Utopia. Back in 2011, Jason Aaron said that Scott was “charting his own course” beyond Xavier and Magneto. This course was never made explicit.
It’s certainly not the mutant revolution, which was built on the premise that Utopia had failed. The revolution honestly feels like “hush money” for what Utopia once was—and what Marvel itself was suspicious of and afraid of. All I can do is try to piece it together.
Utopia was not merely a mutant island. By declaring to the world that he and the X-Men would be responsible for all mutantkind, Scott effectively constituted a polis—in Hannah Arendt’s sense, a public sphere in which politics becomes visible.
Before its existence, Scott was known to a small group as the “leader of an entire people.”
After Utopia, he became publicly known as “Scott Summers of Utopia”—but the meaning remained the same.
Scott’s responsibility for mutantkind was constitutive, whereas whether to save humans remained a matter of heroism and friendship.
Sadie, who represents a modern city—a geographical and administrative population—is different.
Scott was not “radical” in threatening her. Sadie could never truly decide to accept mutantkind, because that is a matter of state. She had to be pushed.
Only within a polis can people achieve recognition, even posthumously, through their actions. In the classical sense, arete (virtue) does not mean morality, but excellence realized through free will and honour.
Right before Utopia, Emma’s praise of Scott echoes what the personification of Arete says to Heracles:
For of all things good and fair, the gods give nothing to man without toil and effort... if you covet honour from a city, you must aid that city; if you are fain to win the admiration of all Hellas for virtue, you must strive to do good to Hellas... for through me they are dear to the gods, lovely to friends, precious to their native land. And when comes the appointed end, they lie not forgotten and dishonoured, but live on, sung and remembered for all time.
Xenophon, Memorabilia, II. i. 28-33
They both acknowledge that arete was not achievable at that moment—hence the emergence of the polis becomes inevitable. (It is ironic that the personification of virtue appears closer to vice in Emma’s case.)
That is why, after Utopia’s fall, Emma no longer believed that history would bring her justice.
She was dissatisfied with how the museum of mutant history represented her, but that could still be attributed to individual curators. What followed was a deeper shift in collective memory—when there were no curators left to be held accountable.
This is what Albert Camus calls the absurd: actions still take place, yet the world refuses to answer for them.
She let go of the chance to come forward and wage war on the US—which might have made New Tian a second Utopia, rather than merely a remnant of its ruins—perhaps because she believes every story has an end.
Even though I have taken live broadcasts and declarations of war as possible conditions for the emergence of a polis, this is only possible in fiction.
The difficulty of applying an Arendtian framework lies precisely in the fact that modern publicity is often mediated to the point of unreliability. As The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991) suggests, events risk being replaced by their representations. (Isn't that the case with crossover events?)
Yet Utopia appears as a rare moment in which action is still irreversible and feels realistic. The name is almost too fitting: nowhere—too good to exist. In a world where “utopia” has come to mean dystopia, it remains true to its etymological sense.
p. s. I can’t help but think the closure of New Tian from Secret Empire: Omega (2017) were written so f**king well. Hank’s suspicion about the declaration of war echoes his posthumous question to Scott in IvX: “Was it worth it?”
And when he might now expect an alternative answer from Emma, her answer is not “it was not worth it,” but “it does not matter anymore.”
Hank believed New Tian was a founding myth, while Emma knew it was only the last echo of Utopia, which was collapsing in the background.
Sadie grinned up at the judge, pressing her palms down onto the manila folders as she stood, pushing her chair out with the loud, angry squeal of wood against tile. “Your honor,” she began, “as much as it pains me to miss the opportunity to continue to spar against the prosecution, we all have to admit that there just isn’t enough evidence for them to make their case against my client.”
The prosecution stood to match her, pointing across the aisle, his oversized, ill-fitting suit hanging off him, nothing more than a mess of navy pinstripes and white pocket squares. “What Ms. Sinclair seems to be forgetting is that the prosecution had plenty of evidence, the cornerstone of which was our eyewitness to her client’s crime of insurance fraud!” He sighed angrily, letting his arms flop back to his sides. “Your honor, I humbly request an audience in chambers to discuss the possibility that Ms. Sinclair engaged in witness tampering.”
Patrons got a sneak peek of a rough draft chapter for a brand new series! Think Better Call Saul, but with magical beings like shifter, witches, and more.
"I see where Mayor Sadie Sinclair of San Francisco is pushing Crooked hard. Look at the job she has done in San Francisco. She is a joke!" https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/762284533341417472
