Originally published in 1982 as Marvel Graphic Novel #5, God Loves, Man Kills is arguably the archetypal Chris Claremont X-Men story.  It's also been billed by Marvel as the inspiration for the X-Men 2 film.

Well, perhaps.  The truth is a little more complicated than that.

What makes it archetypal is that it's explicitly based on the three-way feud which is at the heart of Claremont's stories.  You've got the anti-human mutants, the anti-mutant humans, and the X-Men in the middle.  Everyone is sincere in their opinions, and altruistic from their own point of view.  And Magneto in particular gets all the decent arguments.  The X-Men get to plead that we should all be nicer to one another, but the facts give more support to Magneto's worldview.

This set-up is ideal for the second film.  The original film introduced the concept of good and evil mutants; this one brings in the third side of the triangle and gives Magneto a degree of moral ambivalence.  But while that's certainly a set-up taken from God Loves, Man Kills, it's also a theme that runs through all of Claremont's stories.  When you turn to the specifics of the story, it's pretty clear that the film is something else altogether.

As the title might suggest, God Loves, Man Kills is about religion and faith.  Stryker, in this incarnation, is a religious nut who bases his anti-mutant rhetoric on a literal interpretation of the Bible.  Broadly speaking, the reasoning is that if mankind is made in God's image, then mutants are some kind of horrible deviation from the plan.  And presumably, all this talk about evolution doesn't go down all that well with the hardcore faithful.

In his afterword, Claremont explains that the story was based on his perception that certain sects of Christianity in the early eighties had come to a point where they were really just paying lip service to tolerance.  It's trying to flag up the difficulties of incorporating such religious beliefs within society and questioning to what extent they should in fact be tolerated.  After all, if you accept faith as a justification for anything, then you're on a slippery slope to accepting that Stryker is arguably right.

To an extent Claremont has a moral dilemma here that I don't share.  He obviously wants to conclude that faith is a basically good thing.  He finds the idea of characters like Stryker using faith to justify their actions a troubling one.  "Faith lies at the most fundamental core of our being as sentient creatures," he writes, "this need to believe in something greater than ourselves, this almost inherent acknowledgment of the miracle of creation."  Squaring Stryker off within that worldview presents a problem.  I, on the other hand, am a lifelong atheist, which makes matters much more straightforward for me.  I get to take the easy solution, which is to conclude that faith is not an inherently good thing at all.  (A desire to understand the nature of reality does not necessary have to find expression through religion.  You could just read some philosophy books.)

Nonetheless, the story still raises issues that still have resonance to anyone today.  It's deservedly maintained a reputation as one of Claremont's strongest pieces of work.  By modern standards a story of this length - 62 pages - probably doesn't qualify as a graphic novel, but it's a very effective and concise summary of all Claremont's basic themes in a relatively short (but densely packed) story.  Artist Brent Anderson, now probably better known for Astro City, does a great job of keeping up the pace and the clear storytelling despite what must be an average of nine panels a page.

If you've seen the film, you'll realise that this story has little or nothing to do with the plot of the film.  There are points in common - an attempt to brainwash Xavier and an alliance of convenience between the X-Men and Magneto - but in substance the film has a different plot altogether.  Most importantly, the religion theme is entirely absent.  In the film, while Stryker's name is reused, he's effectively a new character.  He's something closer to a cross between Bastion and the Director of the Weapon X Project.

And from the film's point of view, this is all fine.  It's introducing the anti-mutant human forces as a major enemy for the first time and so it deliberately goes for a more general motivation than the specifically religious angle used in God Loves, Man Kills.  It also has other concerns to deal with, most notably furthering the movie franchise's subplot concerning the origin of Wolverine and setting up Jean Grey for, one assumes, a lead role in X-Men 3.  It's not like Stryker is the only character reinvented for the film - Pyro also gets a drastic overhaul so that they can keep the power and use him as a nascent supervillain.    And the movie version of Rogue has always been a drastically different character from the comics.

It's a good film, by the way.  It scores heavily on the visuals - the treatment of Nightcrawler in the opening scene is excellent.  It's got a decent story, and it's nice to see them making more use of Mystique, who was one of the highlights of the first film.  On the downside, it gets bogged down in trying to resolve too many plots in the final act.  And, as with the first film, it suffers from a couple of lead characters not really having anything to do - Rogue is relegated to a supporting role, and once again, Halle Berry is left to float around the edges as Storm, delivering exposition, acting as a sounding board for others, doing the occasional stunt with her powers, and generally doing anything other than having a character arc.

The comic is also subtler in the treatment of Magneto's alliance of convenience (ie, he doesn't turn on the X-Men).  But then, the comic had Magneto established as a villain for years and could get away without shoving it down our throats that he's a baddie.  The second X-Men film can't afford to move him out of that role so early.

Of course, we're dealing here with a 21-year-old superhero comic, and inevitably it's dated somewhat.  Time has been particularly cruel to the scene where Kitty is on the run from Stryker's men and stumbled upon some thugs in an alley.  For some reason, Anderson has lovingly drawn them as a multi-ethnic version of the Village People.  If this worked in 1982, it certainly doesn't now.  But while there are a few points like this that leap out, for the most part it holds up well.

God Loves, Man Kills is the distillation of the elements that made Claremont's X-Men work at its peak in the 1980s.  It's worth reading for that reason, if nothing else.

Rating: A-

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