X-Men/Alpha Flight: The Gift #1 & 2 (Chris Claremont and Paul Smith, December 1985/January 1986)
The same month that saw Mantlo take the reins also marked the debut of Chris Claremont’s two-part X-Men/Alpha Flight mini-series. And since this is the last time for some time that several of these characters will be recognizable as the same ones we saw during Byrne’s tenure on the book, I’m going to bend my rules about publication order a bit so that we’ve got this story acting as the buffer between the Byrne and Mantlo runs.
X-Men/Alpha Flight: The Gift is generally agreed to take place sometime between
Alpha Flight #22 and #23, and likely between the panels of
Uncanny X-Men #192, before Xavier is assaulted. It doesn’t line up perfectly (Storm’s still in Africa in the LS, but home in Uncanny), but it’s about as good as we’re going to get. So Jean-Paul is coping with the murder of Raymonde and Aurora’s rejection (and still wants fuck all to do with Alpha Flight), Alpha Flight is still trying to adjust to Guardian’s death, and the X-Men are dealing with the spike of anti-mutant sentiment in the States. Fun times all around.
Our front-and-center hint regarding Northstar’s homosexuality comes from Heather Hudson, Guardian’s widow and not-quite-yet leader of Alpha Flight, in the panels above.
I touched on this one back in Alpha Flight #22, as Heather’s sentiment here is almost identical to Aurora’s: Apparently, being a gay man means you can’t stand to be around women.
As eye-rolling as that repeat of misogyny-fueled homophobia is, it’s still of interest due to what it implies about who knew what way back when. Meta wise, we’ve got Claremont dropping the same sort of hints seen in the pages of Byrne’s Alpha Flight, and it backs up Byrne’s assertions that he intended Northstar to be gay early on and wasn’t shy about letting others know. In-story, it again implies that Jean-Paul, while not publicly out, wasn’t keeping his sexual orientation completely secret, at least not among those whom he had any regular contact with. Heather’s remark barely even warrants a verbal shrug from Wolverine, who left the team very early on in the Alpha Flight’s formation. Northstar didn’t care much for most of Alpha Flight and certainly didn’t count them among his confidants, so it’s far more likely he just didn’t give a damn if those around him knew about his sexuality than he trusted them enough to tell them. (
Given his recruiting tactics, it is also possible that James Hudson was enough of a dick to out Northstar to his teammates. I tend not to go for that particular explanation, however, if only because while Jean-Paul seemed unhappy with Hudson’s intrusion into his life, he didn’t appear to hate the guy to the extent that would come with an unwilling outing.)
But since Wolvie brought Rogue into the conversation, let’s also talk about her relationship with Northstar in this series, because it’s considerably more interesting than Heather being gross.
During the inter-team misunderstanding obligatory to superhero cross-over stories, Rachel Summers triggered Aurora’s MPD, forcing the base Jeanne-Marie personality into dominance. Since the twins seem to share an inconsistent awareness of each other over distance, Jeanne-Marie’s horror at finding herself far from home and in the middle of a superhero fight is likely what brought Northstar speeding to her defense, despite their recent falling out. So Northstar came in ready to tear a strip off the first hostile he saw, but, unfortunately for him, his choice of targets was Rogue, who wasn’t around the last time the X-Men and Alpha Flight scrapped with each other, and
whose durability and powers made her ideally suited for taking down even a flight-capable speedster.
When next we see them interacting (immediately after Heather and Wolverine’s convo above), Northstar lets down his defenses in front of Rogue, even confiding some of his doubts to her. This is highly unusual behavior for Jean-Paul, but at the same time, not out of character. It mostly comes down to context. Prior to this, Jean-Paul has has multiple instances where he’s demonstrated loyalty, steadfastness, and protectiveness. With the exception of Aurora, though, he almost never displays these positive traits toward anyone on the Alpha Flight roster, likely because he doesn’t consider these people his friends, just the interfering Anglophone assholes he can never fully eject from his life.
Rogue is outside of all that. Despite the fact that Jean-Paul probably never would have opened up to a stranger willingly, thanks to Rogue’s powers, the two of them have a weird type of instant intimacy at a time when the people closest to Jean-Paul are either dead or not speaking to him. She makes it clear that she knows all about him, but passes no judgement on his homosexuality (which is more than can be said for Northstar’s own sister). In addition, Rogue has just made herself vulnerable to Jean-Paul as well by her admission: she’s all of eighteen years old, and since childhood she’s had to resign herself to the knowledge that she’s likely going to go the rest of her life without to ability to enjoy even the casual affection that other people take for granted, let alone anything like a normal relationship.
Yeeeah, no way the isolated gay guy was going to be able to empathize with that last bit, nope.
So maybe it shouldn’t be that much of a shock that, instead of telling her to fuck off, Jean-Paul lets down his guard,
then immediately shifts into over-protective brother mode. When Rogue has a chance to see if her most desperately longed-for wish has come true,
Jean-Paul offers himself up as a test subject solely for her benefit. Far from being an intolerable presence, Rogue turns out to be one of Jean-Paul’s few friendships we ever actually see developed on-page.
And then there’s the matter of how Rogue relates to Jean-Paul, particularly where the “first dance” scene is concerned.
Rogue is oddly insistent upon Jean-Paul being her partner for her first dance, despite the fact that any one of her male teammates would have been happy to oblige. (I mean, really, Nightcrawler turn down a waltz? Even if it was Magneto offering, he’d probably at least consider it.) And I suspect Jean-Paul’s sexuality plays a part there because Rogue knows he absolutely will not contemplate her as a romantic interest on any level.
As I mentioned before, Rogue is 18 at this time, barely an adult. Her one experiment playing at childish romance ended in tragedy, and she’s been without even casual touch since she was about fourteen. So she she’s had to put an enormous distance between herself and anything like typical human contact, let alone any hopes for future romance. She can flirt, use a kiss as a surprise attack, or admire a handsome man, but it’s all play-acting; it could never go anywhere and she knows it.
But suddenly, that’s all changed. Rogue has to rethink her entire way of interacting with the world, and that’s overwhelming enough without having to navigate male attention as well. And that last bit doesn’t go away just because she’s among friends: Brawler starts to pull a line on her as soon as she shows up in her new dress, Nightcrawler’s an incorrigible flirt, etc. But Jean-Paul won’t have that sort of interest in her, no matter what. She knows him intimately, he’s her first non-traumatic kiss, and there’s no chance of him introducing even a hint of complications she’s not ready to think on yet. He’s safe. She can just enjoy her dance as a dance and leave the rest of it to unravel later.
(That’s not to say that Nightcrawler or Colossus would deliberately do anything to make Rogue uncomfortable, but this scene from UXM #192 is a good illustration of why she might be wary. [
1,
2] Kurt stepped over Rogue’s boundaries twice in a matter of seconds, simply because the level of isolation she has to endure momentarily slipped his mind and all he saw was a pretty lady to flirt with. He obviously didn’t mean to and felt awful about it as soon as he realized what he’d done. But just because the hurt he inflicted wasn’t malicious didn’t make it any easier for Rogue in the moment.)
Claremont is known for being the king of subtext, so it’s not all that surprising that he found a way to make these two outsiders interact in emotionally significant ways, but it’s still a damn good piece of work, especially considering that Northstar wasn’t even part of his regular roster. Alas, aside from some momentary interactions during the 2007 X-Men annual and Rogue showing up at Northstar’s wedding, Rogue and Northstar’s friendship has been all but forgotten by subsequent writers. We can always hope someone will bring it back, though.