A People’s History of the Marvel Universe, Week 4: The X-Men Fight Stagflation

Face front, true believers!

As is no surprise to anyone who read Week 2’s issue, Claremont X-Men is a huge touchstone for me, one of the few comics runs I re-read annually. However, it took a while for Clarmont’s X-Men to feel like X-Men. Issues #94 and #95 focus on Count Nefaria, who’s really more an Avengers villain than a X-Men villain.[1] Issue #96 gives us the demonic N’Garai, and while I love the Cthulhu references, it feels a bit like Claremont borrowed them from a Doctor Strange spec script.

Where it really starts to feel like X-Men is issue #98 (April 1976), where the Sentinels return and ruin the X-Men’s Christmas in order to abduct them to Stephen Lang’s space base. To begin with, the Sentinels are one of the only explicitly and specifically anti-mutant threats that the original X-Men fought, so a lot of the mutant metaphor is grounded in those wonderful purple and pink Kirby robots. And Claremont sharpens the analysis by having these genocidal robots be built by a racist lunatic working within the U.S military (which is something that the U.S Army-aficionado Stan Lee wouldn’t have allowed back in the day), giving added emphasis to the “world that hates and fears them” part of the X-Men’s story that was largely lacking in the original 93 issues:

Second, the Sentinel attack sets up the disastrous space shuttle landing that turned Jean Grey into the Phoenix, the first example of Chris Claremont’s epic long-form storytelling that will define the X-Men for 18 years.

But the other reason that this issue stuck with me is that, far more than anything in the original X-Men’s run, this issue made the X-Men feel like a part of New York City. The issue opens with the X-Men at the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center on Christmas Eve, which is a little touristy, but before the sentinels attack on page X, we get to see the X-Men out on the town:

And critically, the town is there for more than window-dressing. A lot of ink has been spilled in the years since Fantastic Four #1 about how Marvel’s decision to have their comics be located in New York City made it a more realistic shared universe, how it reflected a generation of post-WWII second generation immigrant/“white ethnic” artists and writers, and so on.

In this panel, however, we can also see that it also created a keyhole through which real-world politics could enter. Claremont’s word balloons set the scene of New York as a place grappling with “default and layoffs and garbage and politicians who couldn’t care less” – referring to New York City’s fiscal crisis that brought the city to the brink of bankruptcy in 1975 and led to the layoffs of tens of thousands of city workers, an eleven-day garbage strike that took place in December of 1975 and led to “70,000 tons of trash, most of it lining mid-Manhattan curbs in piles as high as six feet,” and Mayor Abe Beame, the hapless and hated mayor whose one term included both the 1975 fiscal crisis and the 1977 blackout and who was the model for the hated mayor who can’t set foot outdoors without getting booed in The Taking of Pelham 123.

These are the worries that the X-Men are trying to put out of their minds with a night on the town, and by extension it implies that one of the real daily annoyances that New Yorkers had to deal with in the 1970s – along with the 1973-1975 recession, the oil crisis, and skyrocketing inflation – was Sentinel attacks in Midtown. In fact, we know that these were real problems for New Yorkers because Issue #98 shows us that Jack Kirby and Stan Lee exist within their own Marvel universe and have run into the X-Men[2]:

In turn, it also suggests that the same real-world problems facing the X-Men are also some of the problems facing Marvel Comics in the 1970s. And indeed, if you’ve read Sean Howe’s excellent Marvel Comics: The Inside Story, you know that one of the big 70s issues that affected Marvel was 70’s inflation. Comic books, after all, were bought primarily by young people without a lot of disposable income who might respond to 1975’s 9% inflation rate by cutting back on non-essentials. Hence, the cover of X-Men #98 prominently displayed that this issue would still cost only 25ȼ (or $1.05 in 2015 dollars, which is a steal, compared to $3.99 an issue today).

However, even Mighty Marvel couldn’t resist the forces of stagflation forever. By October of 1976, when Jean Grey emerged from the waters of Jamaica Bay as “now and forever – the Phoenix,” an issue of X-Men was up to 30ȼ an issue; and when Jean Grey was buried in October of 1980, the regular price went up to 50ȼ an issue, double what it had been four years ago. To try to hang onto their readers, Marvel enlisted the Incredible Hulk to sell subscriptions that came with discounts:

No wonder then, that Chris Claremont started coming up with some unusual solutions to New York City’s economic policy woes:

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Arya X, ACOK

SomethingLikeALawyer, any particular reason the great spring sickness has not led to pro-smallfolk reforms ala the black death?

warsofasoiaf:

racefortheironthrone:

warsofasoiaf:

Well, not every plague leads to pro-smallfolk reforms. Even Yersinia pestis is no guarantee to pro-peasantry reforms in our own world. Bubonic plague was devastating every time it struck, but the devastation of the outbreak of 541 didn’t lead to the same thing as the Black Death. There’s social factors, the evolution of philosophy, sheer population concerns, and so on.

I can’t tell for certain, but I’m thinking Bloodraven had a hand in it. Bloodraven passed edicts to stop people from leaving their land, but obviously, he lacked the ability to enforce it. He could more easily, however, stop nobles from raising wages to entice peasants to move to their land. Any smallfolk who tried to organize were likely executed as Blackfyre sympathizers (if Haegon ran on a pro-smallfolk platform, that would be an amazing wrinkle, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that won’t be happening).

It’s not all him though, the drought made the land itself less productive, which meant that the smallfolk labor didn’t have the same premium in the years following the Great Spring Sickness as the European peasants did in the Great Spring Sickness, and Dagon Greyjoy’s rebellion distracted the peasantry from wielding any power what with the danger of being abducted and murdered.
Once all that was taken care of, populations stabilized enough that the opportunity had sailed, and pro-smallfolk reforms would have to come from some other source.

Again, however, this is all speculative, and the answer might be something else entirely that we just don’t know. You might want to ask @racefortheironthrone for a second opinion.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Well keep in mind, the Black Death didn’t lead to pro-peasant reforms. In fact, it lead to the opposite – the nobility and the monarchy tried to crack down on uppity peasants and restore the status quo ante plaga, and then the peasants rebelled, and were bloodily put down.

But the thing about even failed rebellions is that they make people nervous and unwilling to press the issue. So while there weren’t any legislative breakthroughs, quietly the nobility and the monarchy let serfdom lapse and tried to woo agricultural labor with more rights and better terms on their tenancy agreements. Likewise, over the long term, the cash that burghers in the towns and cities were making eventually translated into bribes to get more and more generous charters that gave city-dwellers legal and political personhood.

So while nothing happened legislatively until Aegon V’s time, the fact that Bloodraven wasn’t able to enforce his edicts meant that a lot of peasants got off the land they were bound to and got to a city or town where they had more personal freedoms, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when the drought ended and the nobility needed more labor, there was a lot of quiet and not-so-quiet renegotiation of tenancy agreements.

Ah, thanks for the correction, I should have mentioned the peasantry revolts as the intermediate step. My mistake there.

Wouldn’t a great deal of peasants moving to cities and towns end up being a bad thing for them given that so many of the larger population centers are on the west coast, meaning there’s a large surplus of peasants for the Ironborn to abduct for thralldom and salt wifery? That, plus Haegon Blackfyre if it lasted that long, might have been a reason why tenancy agreements weren’t revised to such a degree as they were in the years following the Great Spring Sickness.

Or maybe the tenancy agreements were just even crappier in the eras before and we don’t have anything on them.

-SLAL

Well, the Ironborn didn’t hit the big cities – Oldtown, Lannisport, etc. – and they didn’t hit King’s Landing or Gulltown either. They hit Little Dosk and Fair Isle and places like that.

And I have a strong suspicion that there was a gradual process of revision after the Spring Sickness. We don’t have much good info about this – all we can say is that the smallfolk were a step above slaves and thralls, probably got a few steps up after the Spring Sickness, made it a bunch of steps up during Aegon V’s reign, and then lost that progress due to Jaehaerys II and Tywin.

SomethingLikeALawyer, any particular reason the great spring sickness has not led to pro-smallfolk reforms ala the black death?

warsofasoiaf:

Well, not every plague leads to pro-smallfolk reforms. Even Yersinia pestis is no guarantee to pro-peasantry reforms in our own world. Bubonic plague was devastating every time it struck, but the devastation of the outbreak of 541 didn’t lead to the same thing as the Black Death. There’s social factors, the evolution of philosophy, sheer population concerns, and so on.

I can’t tell for certain, but I’m thinking Bloodraven had a hand in it. Bloodraven passed edicts to stop people from leaving their land, but obviously, he lacked the ability to enforce it. He could more easily, however, stop nobles from raising wages to entice peasants to move to their land. Any smallfolk who tried to organize were likely executed as Blackfyre sympathizers (if Haegon ran on a pro-smallfolk platform, that would be an amazing wrinkle, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that won’t be happening).

It’s not all him though, the drought made the land itself less productive, which meant that the smallfolk labor didn’t have the same premium in the years following the Great Spring Sickness as the European peasants did in the Great Spring Sickness, and Dagon Greyjoy’s rebellion distracted the peasantry from wielding any power what with the danger of being abducted and murdered.
Once all that was taken care of, populations stabilized enough that the opportunity had sailed, and pro-smallfolk reforms would have to come from some other source.

Again, however, this is all speculative, and the answer might be something else entirely that we just don’t know. You might want to ask @racefortheironthrone for a second opinion.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Well keep in mind, the Black Death didn’t lead to pro-peasant reforms. In fact, it lead to the opposite – the nobility and the monarchy tried to crack down on uppity peasants and restore the status quo ante plaga, and then the peasants rebelled, and were bloodily put down.

But the thing about even failed rebellions is that they make people nervous and unwilling to press the issue. So while there weren’t any legislative breakthroughs, quietly the nobility and the monarchy let serfdom lapse and tried to woo agricultural labor with more rights and better terms on their tenancy agreements. Likewise, over the long term, the cash that burghers in the towns and cities were making eventually translated into bribes to get more and more generous charters that gave city-dwellers legal and political personhood.

So while nothing happened legislatively until Aegon V’s time, the fact that Bloodraven wasn’t able to enforce his edicts meant that a lot of peasants got off the land they were bound to and got to a city or town where they had more personal freedoms, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when the drought ended and the nobility needed more labor, there was a lot of quiet and not-so-quiet renegotiation of tenancy agreements.

I missed asking about this when the Dany V essay came out, but how extraordinary is it that Ser Barristan speaks High Valyrian fluently (or for that matter, that he is passable in Ghiscari)? How common was it in the Middle Ages for knights like Ser Barristan to speak a second language like Latin or a third language?

Well, historical parallels are tripping us up here because in the Middle Ages, you were only considered literate if you knew Latin. Being able to read and write in your native language didn’t count.

The extent to which the lesser nobility learned Latin is a matter of historical debate. Certainly, we know that it was considered unusual and notable that Henry I could read Latin instead of relying on his clerks (hence why his nickname was Henry Beauclerc, or Henry the Good Scholar), but from King John’s reign (1199-1216) onward, royals were routinely educated in Latin. And as Harvey Graff argues, “the example set by the kings inevitably gave the baronage and gentry a motivation to learn some Latin, both to avoid looking foolish at court…and to have sufficient understanding of the written demands” of their king.

How far down that penetrated is hard to say, because evidence is difficult to find. For example, how do we know that documents in Latin from various knights were written by the knights and not by clerks they employed? Best guess is that your average knight knew enough Latin to do their jobs.

As for Ser Barristan, it certainly is a mark of distinction that he can speak so many languages. On the other hand, Ser Barristan was not your average knight – he was born the heir of House Selmy, a principal House of the Stormlands, he served in the Disputed Lands where most of his enemies would have been speaking some form of Valyrian, and he served in the Kingsguard which means spending time in the royal court. So he’s more likely to know a second language than most.

But a lesser landed knight who didn’t rate having a maester in their household? There’s a good chance they’re not functionally literate in the Common Tongue, let alone in Valyrian.

This is kind of a follow up to the Aegon reforms question and I apologize if it is a bit long or boring. Do we have any information (or do you have any guesses) on how towns, cities and municipalities overall are originated and administered? Burghers were generally a separate class from manoral peasant IIRC and had unique privileges as well (though I may be wrong). Most municipalities seem to predate the Targs though so it seems a little unclear how is overseeing here. Additionally do you think

status hierarchy varies at all by region? I seem to recall from the Defiance of Duskendale section of WOIAF that Lord Darklyn was partially inspired by the fact that the Dornish lords retained their ability to autonomously administer cities (which is odd because they apparently don’t have any!). I completely understand if you want to correct me somewhere or if you think GRRM has not really developed this part of the worldbuilding.

One correction: Darklyn was primarily inspired by the Essosi paradigm (where you have full city-states), not the Dornish paradigm: “It was Lord Denys’s desire to win a charter for Duskendale that would give it more autonomy from the crown, much as had been done for Dorne many years before, that began the trouble. This did not seem to him such a vast demand; such charters were common across the narrow sea, as Lady Serala most certainly had told him.” (WOIAF, Aerys II)

The answer is we don’t know much. We know that city charters exist, we know they involve autonomy from the crown on some matters, notably “port fees and tariffs,” and that they require royal approval in the Crownlands and used to as well in the Riverlands when they were independent.

One thing we can say is that the most expansive form of rights, where cities were completely self-governing communes answerable to no one but the king, doesn’t exist in Westeros. White Harbor is ruled by the Manderlys, Oldtown by the Hightowers, Lannisport by the Lannisters, Gulltown by the Graftons.

From the little we know, city charters seem to be largely focused on taxation and other economic regulations – city charters allow cities to set their own port fees and tariff rates to some extent, allowing them to more effectively compete for trade. I say to some extent, because we know that Tywin and Aerys II fought over tariff rates and port fees at Oldtown, Lannisport, and King’s Landing, so it’s clearly not full autonomy.

Based on historical parallels and the fact that city charters are expected to lead to expansion, my guess is that the main things that Westerosi charters involve are:

the right to hold markets and fairs and regulate them.
the right to establish public warehouses where goods can be stored.
the staple right, which means foreign merchants have to unload their goods in your town and exhibit them for sale there for a given period before moving on.
some sort of autonomy or revenue-sharing on port fees, tariffs, and other taxes on commerce.

WarsofASOIAF Asks: A Successful Aegon V Reformation

Couple days back I was asked a question about how an Aegon V reformation would go down. Let’s say you’re the Hand of Aegon V. The Fortunate King has been able to successfully get all four of his marriages to go off without a hitch. I’m sure some form of your EDP’s will make their way into it, but what sort of acts would you do to reform and restructure the government for the sake of the smallfolk?

Cheers,

-SLAL

As I talked about a while back, it’s very hard to know what Aegon’s reforms consist of, because GRRM is very unspecific about them and because a lot depends on what precisely is the legal status of westerosi smallfolk.

But if I had to guess, I would say that there probably would be a lot of legal reforms – royal judges and sheriffs, eliminating the right of pit and gallows, the right to a jury, etc. – given the lawlessness of the period (especially in the Westerlands), Egg’s experience with local conflicts between nobles in the Reach, and so on.

Given that he gave food to the North during winter (which may also have been prompted to his trip to Winterfell), I think he was definitely focused on charity during natural disasters and the like.

But beyond that, I don’t know.

Given that royal imposters could successfully impersonate kings, (a la Perkin Warbeck) did any commoners ever try to impersonate a member of the nobility?

Yep, definitely happened. Pretending to be a down-on-their-luck nobleman was actually a pretty common confidence trick back in the day, whether one was looking to get handouts from other aristocrats touched by your hypothetical suffering, or trying to pass off fake “heirlooms” as genuine articles that have to be sold off in a moment of need, or trying to finagle your way to marrying the daughter of a wealthy and socially ambitious bourgeois.

When you get right down to it, nobility ultimately is just a set of mannerisms and cultural capital attached to a certain costume and appearance.

Is asoiaf’s depiction of minor lord’s living in poverty realistic? For instance, Godric Borrel can’t afford to repair or heat his castle, has his meals cooked and served by his own family, and even his liege lord can’t afford to equip his own sons as knights.

Absolutely, that’s one of the more realistic things about ASOIAF. Here’s the crucial factor to consider about the economics of the nobility – in feudalism, rents are generally fixed at traditional rates. Which means that the nobility are more exposed than most to economic shifts, especially shifts in prices.

One of the reasons why we see peasant revolts in the 14th century following the Black Death (which greatly decreased the labor supply and thus raised wages, at a time when noble incomes were declining because their rent-paying tenants were dying or running away) and then again after the Great Price Revolution (which raised the price of everything, and thus was a major real income cut for people on fixed incomes) is that these events hammered the economic position of the nobility, the nobility responded by trying to violently restore the balance of power (both by trying to freeze wages and worker mobility, which often meant attempts at enforcing or re-establishing serfdom), and the peasantry responded with violence in return.

Now, the greater nobles were better able to adapt to changing economic circumstances – they had more land and more liquid capital, so they could convert more easily to pasturage and thus get into the lucrative cloth trade, they could invest in new commercial and industrial ventures, etc.

But the lower nobles didn’t. Hence the figure of the impoverished nobleman, who becomes ubiquitous from Don Quixote to Jane Austen to the freaking Bluths.

How effective do you think the wildlings are as a fighting force? Much is made of their lack of disclipline, which I assume in the context to mean their lack of battlefield formations and advanced tactics. Are they truly ineffective, and if so, how far do their great numbers go towards compensating for that?

Keep in mind, only about a third of their entire force are fighters. And while Mance is clearly trying to teach them how to form shield walls and fight on horseback, they’re clearly not fully trained or well-equipped.

To me, the analogy here is Boudicca. Her Iceni and Trinovanti forces were capable of wiping out significant detachments of Romans (as at the Battle of Camulodunum) when those forces were isolated, outnumbered, poorly led, and caught off-guard. But give the Romans time to get into formation and let them choose the terrain, as at the Battle of Watling Street, and the Iceni/Trinovanti’s lack of ability to use their numbers in an effective fashion turned them into so much wheat for the reaper man.