It is in this context that Claremont also started looking – or perhaps glancing is the better word choice – towards the US South. In the years before he took over writing X-Men and while he was shaping it into the juggernaut it fast became, the South was also making itself known in new ways on the US arena. In a process that has been described as a “reddening” of America, playing on the term “redneck,” the image of the South started to change and the South became a more frequent nonpejorative presence on the national scene. By 1981, this “reddening” would make itself known in Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men and, all in all, Claremont would introduce three Southern mutants before leaving Marvel.
The “Reddening” of the X-Men: Mutantcy, Whiteness and the Erasure of Southern History in Chris Claremont’s Mutant Stories
Martin Lund 