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Right-wing haters freak out over Disney’s new ‘X-Men’ cartoon featuring a nonbinary hero

Meanwhile, fans are laughing their butts off over toxic trolls’ misunderstanding of the famously progressive comic book characters.
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X-Men '97
X-Men '97 Photo: Screenshot

X-Men ’97, Disney+’s highly anticipated revival of the X-Men animated series that aired on Fox in the mid-90s, will feature a nonbinary hero in its regular cast of super powered characters. Conservatives and toxic fans on social media are not happy about that.

In the latest issue of Empire magazine, showrunner Beau DeMayo revealed that Morph, a shapeshifting mutant introduced in the original series, would identify as nonbinary in X-Men ’97. The new show, DeMayo said, would feature a “lighter take on the character, who is nonbinary and has an interesting buddy relationship with Wolverine.”

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Notably, X-Men ’97, which will premiere on Disney+ on March 20, features most surviving members of the original voice cast reprising their roles. But Morph will be voiced by out actor and comedian J.P. Karliak, while Ron Rubin, who voiced the character in the ’90s series, returns in a new role.

As fan site Toonado notes, this will be the first time the character has been explicitly portrayed as nonbinary — though it makes sense that a character who can shapeshift into any form might have a more progressive gender identity.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. In the days after the Empire story published and Disney+ released the first trailer for the new series, toxic fans took to social media to whine about how X-Men ’97 has been “ruined by Disney wokeness.” (These same fans — most of them white dudes — are also outraged that DeMayo has insisted on casting voice actors who are the same race as their characters, and that the show’s female characters are not… hot enough.)

“This is clearly done because…Disney modern bulls**t,” one particularly eloquent commenter asserted in a YouTube video.

Another dubious fan site, FandomPulse.com, declared the new X-Men series “D.O.A.” and blasted the casting of Karliak, who is also the founder of Queer Vox, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ voice actors.

Meanwhile, many X-Men fans are laughing their butts off at the supposed controversy, pointing out that this particular superhero franchise has served as a metaphor for marginalized groups almost from its creation.

“If Morph being nonbinary makes you angry, you clearly don’t know what X-Men stand for,” X-Men fan account @XMenUpdate posted in response to negative comments.

“So the news that Morph…is going to be nonbinary when they come back and that has a lot of ‘fans’ screaming ‘when did the X-Men get woke?’” one X user wrote. “1963, kids. It was 1963.”

Speaking at a Louisville, Kentucky, fan event in 2013, X-Men co-creator Stan Lee said as much.

“I wanted them to be diverse,” he said. “The whole underlying principle of the X-Men was to try to be an anti-bigotry story to show there’s good in every person.”

“X-Men comics are for us conservatives look at all these panels proving it,” another snarky X user wrote alongside several images that make the franchise’s progressive politics clear.

One X user even dug up this clip from the original series, indicating maybe Morph really wasn’t as straight and cis as everyone seemed to think:

Karliak responded to the backlash in an Instagram post over the weekend.

“My deepest sympathies for the anti-woke mob who somehow missed the memo that X-Men is and has always been about representation,” he wrote. “I’m honored to voice Morph. Not for them. But for all the gender nonconforming kids like me who would have felt so much more welcome in and a part of this world if they saw themselves repped by a superhero. Not to mention one who is part of a team that accepts them.”

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