Not that Kitty is the only one of the X-Men to be a little...troubling when it comes to her views on other races. In fact this isn't so much a problem with the X-Men themselves which has since been backed away from, but a problem with the people who were creating the mutants back in the day. Nowadays the global face of the X-Men is awesome, and the diversity is one of the things to best recommend the characters. It wasn't always so. Take Giant Size X-Men, for example. Of the new characters introduced there is Sunfire, a fiery Japanese hero who leaves the team before they even leave on their first mission. Not so bad, right? But then there's Sean Cassidy, better known as the Banshee, who has both the power of a supersonic scream but also to always have his Irish accent written out phonetically, so any time he speaks it's like somebody doing a bad Father Ted impression. Then there's Thunderbird, the Native American who gets killed in action almost immediately and whose costume is...well. Not the most sensitive portrayal of a Native American in pop culture. Which is saying something. Most of these - and many other - stereotyped characters have either been killed off or in some way reimagined since their introductions, which is good. Both for readers, and for the X-Men themselves. How can they fight racism when they're not so squeaky clean themselves?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
