The Death of Thunderbird

As noted by scholar Jeremy M. Carnes, the debate over the ethics of killing off Thunderbird in Uncanny X-Men #95 began quite early, and may reflect a failure of imagination on the part of the character’s creators to acknowledge a modern Indigenous existence. #xmen 1/7

As Carnes notes “As early as The X-Men #97, Marvel printed a letter from Tom Runningmouth, a self-identified American Indian, who writes ‘I was proud to see one of my people, an American Indian – America’s First citizens – become a member…’” 2/7

“…’but to my dissatisfaction in X-Men #94, you started to oppress him. But the clincher was in X-Men #95. You killed him. Why was he chosen? Why Thunderbird?'” 3/7

Carnes also quotes the response by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, noting that John Proudstar “had nowhere to go. All he was, all he really ever could be, was a wise-cracking, insolent, younger, not-as-interesting copy of Hawkeye.” 4/7

Carnes takes issue with this explanation, calling it “mired in white settler colonial discourse” and suggesting that “Thunderbird had to die because Wein and Cockrum could not envision a Native character that exited in the present.” 5/7

Interestingly, I’ve made the case a few times that Chris Claremont would later be able to pull off such a feat of imagination (to a limited degree) with his writing of Forge, Moonstar, James (John’s brother), and even John himself in flashback scenes from Classic X-Men. 6/7

You can find Carnes’ essay in the volume “Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics” and if you’re interested in the broader subject of Indigenous representation in UXM, @ClaremontRun did a video essay on that a couple of years ago. 7/7