I bought X-Men: The Manga Remastered the other day at Barnes & Noble. Narratively, it starts where the 90s animated series begins, on Jubilee as she runs from Sentinels that hunt an emergent mutant population. In order to end these discriminatory attacks, the X-Men make their way to a quasi-governmental facility that stores dossiers on mutants around the country. At first I thought, "Why would you have to go to a facility to do that? Can’t you just hack into their systems remotely?" Then it occurred to me: this story is set in the 90s. I’d almost forgotten what that world was like back then.
Paper documentation, especially at the government level, is a challenge I saw firsthand while working at a municipal court. My days were spent entering information, scanning, and filing it away for hours at a time. Need to issue a search warrant? Fax the judge. Need to collect payments? Send a certified letter. On the federal level, the government has tried to reduce paper processes: the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Paperwork Elimination Act, and several memoranda in recent decades (which points to the truism everyone knows by now: government is extremely slow to change). In the essay "The Filing Cabinet," Craig Robertson describes the archaic — and analog — filing process required for American federal workers to get paid, which can involve sifting through some 28,000 filing cabinets. Should everything be digitized nowadays? Can that be done? Who knows.
Here’s another weird example of inefficiency: SENTINELS. I didn’t think about how goofy these giant robot killing machines were growing up, but now I read X-Men and wonder, “How many are there? How much did the government pay these subcontractors to build them? What are the repair costs?”Considering there are no giant robots (we’re aware of) for commercial or military use, the only comparable product I’ve found is this $3,000,000 Tsubame Industries mech that resembles a really slow Armored Core. In a world where ICE raids are regularly conducted against illegal and migrant populations in the US, it’s obvious that a real government would spend big bucks to find perceived threats. Is this a good investment of our money? All I’ll say is the cost-benefit analysis of hunting mutants is clearly based in something other than a balanced budget.
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| X-Men: The Animated Series. 1992. Marvel Entertainment Group. |
Finally, the X-Jet is clearly an SR-71 Blackbird, an older stealth plane contracted by the government from Lockheed Martin. How this wound up in Charles Xavier’s hands depends on what version of the story we’re reading: he “obtained “ it from SHIELD, or Hank McCoy (aka Beast) built it, or it’s a modification of Xavier’s private jet. All scenarios imply massive security leaks pertaining to the design of a military stealth craft. As a telepath, Xavier could have easily wound up with the information needed to steal the plane or its schematics, but it also seems like a government fully aware enough to build giant robots for mutant hunting could also put more efforts into its security apparatus.
Which brings us full circle to the X-Men raiding that facility for mutant records. The universe our heroes occupy may be full of hateful xenophobia, but luckily, the government gestapo is incredibly good at wasting time and money.
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