LGBT+ Marvel Characters Discussion

[Dermie]

The Week In Gay:

Marvel's Voices: Pride - huge one-shot special featuring several LGBT characters by LGBT creative teams

Gamma Flight #1 of 5 - Dr. Charlene McGowan is part of the team in this IMMORTAL HULK spin-off mini, and trans writer Crystal Frasier is co-writing.

Guardians Of The Galaxy #15 - Star-Lord, Hercules and Avril all appear in this issue

Reptil #2 of 4 - Reptil's cousin Julian is gay and is a participant in his adventures here

S.W.O.R.D. #6 - Star-Lord and Marvel Boy both make appearances (although Noh-Varr doesn't have any dialogue) and Hulkling has a behind-the-scenes appearance in a note to his ambassador, Paibok. Wiz Kid's Hellfire Gala look is very gender non-conforming...not sure if that is meant to imply anything about his sexuality or gender identity, or if he's just enjoying the chance to dress up.

Way Of X #3 - We've got a same-sex hook-up between Loa and Mercury....which leaves me wondering what happened to Mercury's relationship with Bling!? Stacy X also appears and has a decent role. Also of note, Fabian Cortez tried to hook up with an unidentified mutant (may have been Knockout)...and wanted her to wear Magneto's helmet.

Wolverine #13 - Deadpool guest stars, and Christian Frost appears in a subplot scene.

X-Men Legends #4 - Iceman appears in this story, which is set back in his closeted days in the Simonson X-FACTOR run.

We also had some welcome developments in this week's episode of LOKI. And the September solicits give us another WICCAN & HULKLING one-shot coming up!

[Will Evans]

I disagree. I really enjoyed that intro story and the effort to acknowledge as much of Marvel's LGBT history as possible and to give cameos to as many of the characters as possible. How can it be unearned if they are literally recapping the characters who have appeared, and some of the major moments that occurred along the way? It also acknowledges that the LGBT representation has been a gradual improvement over time, with the relatively-recent introductions of Wiccan and Hulkling starting a "fresh wave of visibility" and acknowledging that Rictor and Shatterstar's first on-panel kiss was considered a historic moment because they had only been allowed to be coded before that.

I don't think its self-congratulatory--I think its meant as a celebration of all the LGBT characters who have come along, and also a bit of a history lesson for people reading this one-shot who may have never heard of some of these characters before, or didn't know they were gay, etc.



Daken was a bit of an awkward fit there, I agree, but since it was only meant as a platonic dance its not too bad.



I like stories where we get to see Northstar from Kyle's POV, since Jean-Paul can be such a prickly character with basically everyone else, these stories let us get to see a different side of him. The story was so brief though it didn't get a chance to say much--but the joke with his underwear did make me smile.



Looking at Karma's romantic history--or lack of same--that actually may be appropriate for her, unfortunately. Hopefully this story is a first step in correcting that.



I noticed that--and I wondered if that was a hint that maybe someone will be getting outed in that book. Sunfire is in the cast and his sexual orientation is still up for grabs....

Laura being acknowledged as bi?????

[maxhilary]

I really enjoyed the Pride issue, it made me really happy as a Marvel fan. My favorite story was definitely the Bobby one (naturally), but I also really liked the Thinkfast and Irene/Raven ones. Anole story was cute too! And finally some romance for Karma, underrated queen. I also really really liked the intro with all the moments in Marvel queer history. It felt completely earned to me, especially since it acknowledged the slow progress and alluded to some of the difficulties of creating the content.

[Will Evans]

The Voices: Pride book was fine, not great, not terrible, just fine.

The Good: Oliveira's Iceman story was great, I really liked Gillen's Prodigy story, and Howard's Mystique and Destiny story was surprisingly very good.

The Not So Good: The framing story was entirely too self congratulatory, and quite frankly unearned. Marvel's self promotion throughout was tacky. The Anole story was clunky, and using Daken was not a great choice. The Northstar story felt perfunctory, like they felt they had to include him because of his history but the story was so bland it could have been about anyone, it also had the worst art of the book, off putting. The Karma story was odd, she felt too timid and inexperienced. The Alpha Flight reprint was a waste of space that could have been used to flesh out some of these stories instead. Marvel promoted X-Factor for the book's queer content, but they cancelled the book, shitty. They also promoted X-Men #1 but there are no canonically queer characters on that book. Tasteless.

The rest was just kind of fine.

Laura possible being bisexual?

[Dante Milton]

I disagree. I really enjoyed that intro story and the effort to acknowledge as much of Marvel's LGBT history as possible and to give cameos to as many of the characters as possible. How can it be unearned if they are literally recapping the characters who have appeared, and some of the major moments that occurred along the way? It also acknowledges that the LGBT representation has been a gradual improvement over time, with the relatively-recent introductions of Wiccan and Hulkling starting a "fresh wave of visibility" and acknowledging that Rictor and Shatterstar's first on-panel kiss was considered a historic moment because they had only been allowed to be coded before that.

I don't think its self-congratulatory--I think its meant as a celebration of all the LGBT characters who have come along, and also a bit of a history lesson for people reading this one-shot who may have never heard of some of these characters before, or didn't know they were gay, etc.

I feel that it is unearned because the strides in queer representation are because of creators who undoubtedly had to fight for it against Marvel. The company itself, throughout its history, has often prevented writers from creating or confirming queer content, and this is something they continue to do today. The queer characters they do have are not supported nearly as much as the straight ones, are often minor characters left in obscurity. And when they are put in a book, that book doesn't get as many chances to succeed as traditional titles and usually gets less promotion. It didn't feel celebratory to me, it felt like Marvel wanting to be applauded for begrudgingly allowing the bare minimum of queer representation. YMMV.

[Krakoa]

Way Of X #3 - We've got a same-sex hook-up between Loa and Mercury....which leaves me wondering what happened to Mercury's relationship with Bling!? Stacy X also appears and has a decent role. Also of note, Fabian Cortez tried to hook up with an unidentified mutant (may have been Knockout)...and wanted her to wear Magneto's helmet.

Have we ever had it confirmed on panel that Bling! and Mercury are in a relationship? We've seen then hook up but that's not really the same thing. That plot line has always been p underdeveloped.

[zinderel]

So...did the Thinkfast segment further subtext Kate Pryde as bi without explicitly stating it, or was that just a 'we both have a thing for dark-haired, brooding Russian musclemen, which helped me accept it' thing and that's all...?

[Wiccan]

So...did the Thinkfast segment further subtext Kate Pryde as bi without explicitly stating it, or was that just a 'we both have a thing for dark-haired, brooding Russian musclemen, which helped me accept it' thing and that's all...?

I think it's more the latter. What I understood was that, by seeing her feelings (for Piotr), he realized how his own weren't different, and therefore not less real.

[Dermie]

Have we ever had it confirmed on panel that Bling! and Mercury are in a relationship? We've seen then hook up but that's not really the same thing. That plot line has always been p underdeveloped.

Its true that the relationship has been underdeveloped on-panel, but given how many years (real time) we've seen the relationship touched on--with Bling! asking her out in the all-female X-MEN series; and the two of them shown walking together, holding hands in GENERATION X; and the two of them making out in X-FACTOR, etc--I think we're meant to understand that they are in a relationship. Either that or a very stable friends-with-benefits arrangement where neither of them have been shown with anyone else...until now.

[Drops Of Venus]

The Alpha Flight reprint was a waste of space that could have been used to flesh out some of these stories instead.

Word. I was very disappointed that they made a big deal about Jim Cheung and Allan Heinberg returning for the Wiccan/Hulkling story only to give us one damn page. A lovely page, yes, but still....

But someone found it ironic that in Voices when talking about big gay moments, they talked about America #7(2017) -"America Chavez's origin story - including cosmic lesbians!"

I hate the new retcon, hope Marvel ignores, even more than in the movie, her role as heroine traveling the multiverse is probably going to be important, right?

Yeah, that was... a weird decision. This MAC retcon is really just weird overall. It feels like the kind of thing everyone will just ignore after her mini is done. I mean, it's being ignored right now!

It might just be me but the way Sylvie talks about herself in relation to the male Loki feels like a transwoman talking about her old gender identity to the point where "Loki" is her deadname. I'm not sure how deliberate that is.

I just brought this up on the Loki thread, but yeah, I'm getting more of a trans vibe than genderfluid from Sylvie, specially after the last featurette Marvel posted where we see she chooses to present as female ever since childhood. If she really is a variant, then at some point she had to change from the original Loki. That change could've been the gender transition..... but would Marvel really go there? Acknowledging Loki as bi already feels like such a big step for them. LOL

[Dante Milton]

So...did the Thinkfast segment further subtext Kate Pryde as bi without explicitly stating it, or was that just a 'we both have a thing for dark-haired, brooding Russian musclemen, which helped me accept it' thing and that's all...?

I think it's the former. Gillen used Kitty specifically because of the heavy bisexual subtext with the character. It doesn't really make sense to me that it would just specifically be about being attracted to Colossus, because he could get that perspective from any straight girl crushing on any guy, and that wouldn't really help with his feeling of being attracted to more than one gender.

[Cataphract]

The Jennifer Harris as Sensational She-Hulk comic was actually pretty cute. It even had call backs to her original run with breaking the 4th wall and huzzah Titania.

[Dermie]

The Jennifer Harris as Sensational She-Hulk comic was actually pretty cute. It even had call backs to her original run with breaking the 4th wall and huzzah Titania.

Yeah, I liked that one as well. I thought that was a clever way of doing that. Seeing Titania being so positive and understanding was a bit of a surprise, but it shows how much she has grown over the years and reflects more of where she's at now with her attempts to reform in IMMORTAL HULK and GAMMA FLIGHT.

[Drops Of Venus]

The Jennifer Harris as Sensational She-Hulk comic was actually pretty cute. It even had call backs to her original run with breaking the 4th wall and huzzah Titania.

I liked it too, and I certainly understand now why the writer chose this story and why it was important to her. It just pains me because... what are the odds we're ever seeing Jennifer Harris ever again? I really wish they had used this special to introduce a new trans hero that they plan on using on more stories just like they did with Somnus.

[Wiccan]

Al Ewing just came out!
https://twitter.com/Al_Ewing/status/1410172195083636736