Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is the quintessential Marvel Comics superhero, because his greatest weakness is also his greatest strength.
I'm hardly the first to say this, but the single innovation that separates Stan Lee and Jack Kirby from everybody else is that they were the first to explore the pain of exceptionalism in comic books. Now it has become a trope and is verging on trite, but back in the 1960's it was revolutionary.
The X-Men are the most pure expression of this phenomenon. They are sworn to protect a world that fears and hates them, and this fear and hate is because of the very powers that make the X-Men capable of protecting the world. It is a sinister loop that has more in common with La Jetée than with the triumphal universalism of Superman. (Note: I have no idea what that sentence means).
Rudolph fits this model exactly. Indeed, in the bright and cheerful utopia of the North Pole, the brutality and racism the other reindeers (and even Santa!) exhibit toward Rudolph is even more jarring than the generalized condemnation felt by the X-Men. Sentinels are less out of place in New York than the exclusionary Reindeer Games are out of place in Santa's castle.
Next year, I will discuss why Hermey is actually a Skrull agent.
