Interestingly, we knew very little about the parents of the X-Men we chose for X-MEN:TAS. Jubilee was introduced as a foster child. Scott was brought up in an orphanage (see below, from “No Mutant is an Island”). Logan? Beast? Jean? No information. The woman who “acted” as Rogue’s mother may have been the mutant Mystique. Other heroes lost their parents early. Superman’s parents had to give him up as an infant to save him. Batman’s parents that were taken from him by a criminal’s gun. Do parents simply get in the way of heroic storytelling? Luke Skywalker not only had lost his parents, but his aunt and uncle, his stand-in parents, were killed off to start the saga. Do heroes need to be let loose, made alone in the world before they can become heroic? I think X-Men has proved to be successful because Professor Xavier (whose own childhood was problematic) offered a unique twist with his “school.” While Superman and Batman remain basically alone, Xavier has created a loving family to accept lonely would-be heroes. The way we saw the X-Men, they could act as traditional loners — many left the X-Men for a short time, like Scott, below, when he believed that Jean had died — or they could act for each other, as a committed unbroken family. It was like we were able to allow them to become the heroes that they were destined to be, but then gave them supportive loved ones to come home to when they needed to.
