LGBT+ Marvel Characters Discussion

[spirit2011]

Except Wonder Woman.

we still need to see her kissing another woman, she was created to be bi. It wasn't a outing at all

[skyvolt2000]

On westworld you see many women kissing eachother, bu I don't remember dudes kissing at all.

F/F couple can be easilysubverted to male gaze. It is worrying that Catwoman, harley, Ivy get all be bi, while being bad girl and being heavily sexualized. that tells a lot about what audience they want to reach. meanwhile the good girls are all straight (o course batwoman, but she was created to be lesbian)

Depends on who you are.

We have always had issues with male on male sexuality. Bigger the franchise the more the issue comes out.

Also it's easier to sell a bad girl who is bi versus a good one. Plus those 3 have such active roles in and outside of comics that you can get away with it. And all 3 are viewed as independent females and being bi can be viewed as independence.

TBF, Midnighter was at Wildstorm, an imprint. No DC on the cover or anything to indicate it was a DC book. Granted, your point does stand, but I think it should be clearly defined that DC's first mainstream LGBT title was a female title.

MAYBEEE if you don't include Milestone. LGBT in lead roles-Milestone's Heroes (made towards Milestone's end) had 2 LGBT female leads. Blood Syndicate had a gay male and maybe another LGBT person-I have to check. Shadow Cabinet had at least 2 (maybe 3) and Static had the guy who would be Richie in Static Shock. Heck I think Static had a transgender writer at one point-I have to check on that since she is deceased now.

Publishing wise they and Midnighter were tossed out under DC. DC ownership wise it was Batwoman.

Marvel is willing to toss out gay male lead books a little more than DC. However Mignighter actually did decent at comicxology with pulls of 400+ which is better than some notable guys at Marvel & DC.

[NexusTenebrare]

Dude, when we started to talk about the Batwoman series, we started to mention the policy that DC started to use regarding the relationship since new52, you are the one who is mentioning the grim-dark policy, which has been something that have existed in comic books in general since the 90s. And they used the cheap excuse of "dark gritty world and heroes can't have happy life" in an attempt to justify what they did with the Batwoman's marriage when they canceled it.

'Dude', I actually wasn't the one who began with the grim-dark. If you'd bothered to make even a cursory glance at the post where I mentioned it, you'd see I quoted someone else who brought it up.
Nice try though 'dude'.
And I know that it's been in comics since the 90's. That was rather my point.

Midnighter, a gay man, got an ongoing before any lesbian superhero got an ongoing at DC.

If it was about which was more acceptable to straight men, if that really was a major deciding factor, even so, we have to acknowledge that DC published gay male superhero ongoing titles before lesbian superhero ongoing titles.

DC also had gay male superheroes before it had even close to explicitly lesbian superheroes. Extrano may have been annoying af, but he was there. It was a thing.

Marvel, same thing. We had explicit and coded gay men first. And, first in solo titles.

Again, none of which I actually disputed. Yes, Midnighter had an ongoing first. Which BTW I seem to remember at the time got complaints for getting him away from Apollo and mostly ignoring his sexuality. Batwoman was the first LGBT solo at the big 2 that really had a proper focus on its star's lovelife as far as I can recall. But that's neither here nor there when the topic at hand is the fact that a female LGBT character can generally garner a larger audiance and thus better sales.

I'd really like to be done with this discussion at this point.

That's like saying that Star Wars counts as part of the Marvel Universe; and i did said that there was couple of exceptions.

There were far more than 'a couple'.
New52 haters are being willfully ignorant about the balance of dark and lighthearted comics both before and during the New52.
They got their wish with Rebirth though (after 5ish years of non-stop whining). Even if it is just an illusion of being any diferent then it ever was.

This is all getting woefully off-topic.

[spirit2011]

Depends on who you are.

We have always had issues with male on male sexuality. Bigger the franchise the more the issue comes out.

Also it's easier to sell a bad girl who is bi versus a good one. Plus those 3 have such active roles in and outside of comics that you can get away with it. And all 3 are viewed as independent females and being bi can be viewed as independence.

but why bi bad girls is easier sell than bi good girls ? I know the stereotype of Bi, is for deviant and not so very good people, so it fits very well the gotham city sirens. But I think seeling good girls bissexuality shouldn't be much harder and could be a change to this stereotype

[MasterOfMagnetism]

On westworld you see many women kissing eachother, but I don't remember dudes kissing at all.

I missed what this conversation is about so I don't know why this was brought up but I am a huge fan of Westworld and I can confirm that there hasn't been any male/male kissing on the show. The wildly unbalanced portrayal of sexuality is one of the very few complaints I have with the show.

[dragonmp93]

but why bi bad girls is easier sell than bi good girls ? I know the stereotype of Bi, is for deviant and not so very good people, so it fits very well the gotham city sirens. But I think seeling good girls bissexuality shouldn't be much harder and could be a change to this stereotype

I think that goes back to the Comics code era.

[Confuzzled]

Harper Row was recently revealed to be bi.

And this belief that men are much more accepting of LGBT women seems to be at odds with the actual DC LGBT Appreciation thread where people are fretting over "too many LGBT women at the expense of straight women representation".

In some cases, you can NEVER win them all.

[Confuzzled]

TBF, Midnighter was at Wildstorm, an imprint. No DC on the cover or anything to indicate it was a DC book. Granted, your point does stand, but I think it should be clearly defined that DC's first mainstream LGBT title was a female title.

It was technically Hellblazer. Granted, the title had erratic references to John Constantine's bisexuality during its DC/Vertigo/DC journey and had featured the lead engaging in just one explicit same-sex relationship on panel before the last run with Tynion, but still. It was a title that started off with the DC logo on its cover, had "DC" in some capacity on the cover during its run as a Vertigo title, and after its return to the DC mainstream universe, it dived unabashedly into its protagonist's attraction to folks with the same chromosome.

[Tiamatty]

You know, people were complaining about Generation X, and it's funny, that's the first Resurrxion book so far that's interested me. Blue and Gold pissed me right off with more of the Straight White Men Write About Pretty Straight White People Being So Oppressed. To hell with that crap. Iceman . . . I just don't care. I'm sorry, but I just don't care about Iceman. It's cool that he's gay, it's cool that he's got a gay writer, but I've never cared about him as a character, and I doubt I ever will.

But Generation X has a mixed-race woman writing, and it has a reasonably diverse cast. Jubilee, Nature Girl and the new kid are all Asian-American, Bling! is a black lesbian and Benjamin Deeds is gay. I will say the cast itself is of limited interest. Jubilee is awesome, obviously. I actually really like Bling!, and I always thought Deeds had potential. I hate Quire, and I find Eye-Boy incredibly lame. Nature Girl was always a non-character, but now, she'll actually get a personality. So, it could be better, but it could be worse. Though one thought that occurred to me: The last time Jubes and Roxy were in a book together, Roxy kissed her. I wonder if that's going to come up here. Probably not, but it might be fun if it did.


As for today's comics: Aikku is adorable and I love her, and I'm glad to see her and Toni officially become a couple. Wiccan and Hulkling got a sweet moment. Zoe's crush on Nakia remains cute. And I think I'm now shipping Storm and Illyana. And Flatman is still an endearing loser, even if he got little to do in GLA #2.

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[Anduinel]

But Generation X has a mixed-race woman writing, and it has a reasonably diverse cast. Jubilee, Nature Girl and the new kid are all Asian-American, Bling! is a black lesbian and Benjamin Deeds is gay. I will say the cast itself is of limited interest. Jubilee is awesome, obviously. I actually really like Bling!, and I always thought Deeds had potential. I hate Quire, and I find Eye-Boy incredibly lame. Nature Girl was always a non-character, but now, she'll actually get a personality. So, it could be better, but it could be worse. Though one thought that occurred to me: The last time Jubes and Roxy were in a book together, Roxy kissed her. I wonder if that's going to come up here. Probably not, but it might be fun if it did.

I'd be just fine with it being forgotten. The kiss was Roxy ambushing Jubilee to try and make Mercury, whom she'd already made uncomfortable by acting a creeper, jealous. It wasn't a good moment.

I don't dislike the concept of the new GenX per se, and I'm going to at least pick up the first issue because I want it to be better than it sounds. But these aren't the kids I wanted to read about and, given how Marvel tends to treat it's teen characters overall and especially it any X-Teens who aren't the 05, I'm not all that eager about being asked to invest time, money, and emotion into this round of blank slates.

[Tiamatty]

I'd be just fine with it being forgotten. The kiss was Roxy ambushing Jubilee to try and make Mercury, whom she'd already made uncomfortable by acting a creeper, jealous. It wasn't a good moment.

Sure. I know Roxy was just trying to make Mercury jealous. And Jubilee seemed more confused than anything else. So I wouldn't expect them to actually start a relationship. But I don't know, I think it might be fun if there was a call-back to it.

[Johnrevenge]

Tiamatty, one important thing is diversity (which the New X-men cast has) but it's also important the personality, and with the exception of Jubilee and Bling! (the only characters I like from this shitty cast), the rest lack of personality and interest.

If they wanted to go for diversity plus interest, there was a huge number of characters who could have been better choices than the others: Surge and Armor are Japanese, Anole is gay, Rockslide is Latino, Dust is muslim, Indra is Hindi, Pixie is half-fairy (so racially she also is part of the diversification), heck even Oya and Cipher could have fit better. But they have decided to pick characters that aren't interesting at all, and that is angering and frustrating. So when the book fails (which will probably), X-editors will say: "So another proof that New X-men characters don't sell, let's keep them forever in the background". And that is bullshit because the only true New X-men of the cast is Bling! The rest are one-dimensional craps created post AvX (with the exception of Quentin Quire, but he also doesn't count as a new X-men and he is an awful character).

But yeah, you are right, it could be worse, they could have put Glob Herman or Adam Xtreme into the cast, lol, but despite that, it's a terrible cast.

[Tiamatty]

Tiamatty, one important thing is diversity (which the New X-men cast has) but it's also important the personality, and with the exception of Jubilee and Bling! (the only characters I like from this shitty cast), the rest lack of personality and interest.

If they wanted to go for diversity plus interest, there was a huge number of characters who could have been better choices than the others: Surge and Armor are Japanese, Anole is gay, Rockslide is Latino, Dust is muslim, Indra is Hindi, Pixie is half-fairy (so racially she also is part of the diversification), heck even Oya and Cipher could have fit better. But they have decided to pick characters that aren't interesting at all, and that is angering and frustrating. So when the book fails (which will probably), X-editors will say: "So another proof that New X-men characters don't sell, let's keep them forever in the background". And that is bullshit because the only true New X-men of the cast is Bling! The rest are one-dimensional craps created post AvX (with the exception of Quentin Quire, but he also doesn't count as a new X-men and he is an awful character).

But yeah, you are right, it could be worse, they could have put Glob Herman or Adam Xtreme into the cast, lol, but despite that, it's a terrible cast.

Oh, I miss the New X-Men kids, too. I wish they'd get more use. Some of them should be in the main X-Men titles. It frustrates me that the kids have been shoved so hard into the background. Just the same, I do appreciate that Strain actually is using existing characters, and she apparently wanted to use the losers of the line, so in that sense, the cast she picked makes sense. I'd also note that giving these characters more personality is kinda the point of the book. Nature Girl, in particular, is a character who has a design rather than a personality, but she's going to be given a personality. And Benjamin Deeds will get more development.

If the book doesn't do well, I don't think they'll blame the New X-Men. They'll take it as proof that there's limited interested in young X-Men, but even then, they'll do another young X-Men series. There will always be books about young mutants.

(Also, I actually do kinda want Adam-X the X-Treme to be used more. He's a terrible character. But I want him to get used. If I were writing an X-title, I would have Adam-X the X-Treme as a recurring character, and people would always call him by that full name. Every time.)

[Confuzzled]

Bling!, Ben Deeds and a promise to do something with Nature Girl are the only reasons I'm willing to give Gen X a chance. That and Strain being a writer on The Magicians, which depending on who you ask, is either SUPREME EXCELLENCE! or FLAMING TRAINWRECK!

I hate having to suffer through Quire and Eye Boy though. If those two get disproportionately more panel time than the others, then shit's getting dropped fast.

[Johnrevenge]

If the book doesn't do well, I don't think they'll blame the New X-Men. They'll take it as proof that there's limited interested in young X-Men, but even then, they'll do another young X-Men series. There will always be books about young mutants.

I doubt they could give another chance to young X-men, unless it passed five or six years till we have new people in the X-office willing to give them a chance.