Who cares about funky eyebrows anyway (Iconography of Pop Culture 2)

So, if Professor X has evil eyebrows and the morally ambiguous bald head of a mastermind, what difference does it make anyway?Well, Professor X is a comic book character - the use of visual imagery is as, or more, important than the dialogue bubbles slapped on top of the images. Lately, Marvel and other comics, have even been experimenting with completely text free issues and the various successes and failures of those show just how important the art is. Visual stereotypes matter and in a comic venue they matter a lot and there are a lot of interesting visual stereotypes (and violations of visual stereotypes) in the X-men.How conscious were the artists of their visual choices when they created the X-men and their world? I can't say at this point, never having seen an interview about the artists choices that analyzes the cultural assumptions in them. So I have to go with my own interpretation of what I see.But - it means something that the professor is bald, that he has pointy eyebrows and that he's in a wheelchair. Just like - in the much more recent Ultimate X-men, the first image of the professor shows him wearing a pink AIDS ribbon. It's a word free suggestion that he could be gay (combined with the cat, another classic symbol for evil homosexuals in movies and books).So, if the artists gave the professor ambiguous imagery, why did they?Ah, well.Though the X-men storyline has moved somewhat away from it's genesis (except for the new X-Factor, which I highly recommend), the original series of comics focused very heavily on prejudice. The 'world which hates and fears us' was very visible in the comics and not just as the next uber-villan event. There were episodes of daily discrimination, social movements (such as can be found in the comic version of 'God Loves, Man Kills' which was very different than the smash-bang movie version that there's no comparison), and a more detailed view of what moved the humans in the comics to fear mutants so. Some of the storylines focused on younger mutants like Bobby being rejected by their families or fleeing in fear when the manifest. Current 'manifestation' storylines seem to focus more on the personal angst of the mutant going through them - usually with a lot of accidental killing of loved ones.The mutants in the X-men comics aren't just spandex clad superhero's, they were also different and frightening to the majority of the people in that world. They acted funny and they looked funny. Professor Xavier has evil eyebrows because he - and all mutants - were supposed to be frightening. His visual affect is supposed to be in direct conflict with his actual moral stance. Professor X looks evil - has powers than can be easily used for evil - and he's anything but evil.Which will bring us to my ideas on Professor X's morality next ....