ANOLE [Victor Borkowski]
BLING! [Roxanne ‘Roxy’ Washington]
CULLEN BLOODSTONE
DAKEN AKIHIRO
HULKLING [Theodore ‘Teddy’ Altman]
KARMA [Xi’an Coy Mahn]
KAROLINA DEAN
LOKI LAUFEYSON, God of Mischief
MOONDRAGON [Heather Douglas]
MYSTIQUE [Raven Darkholme]
NORTHSTAR [Jean-Paul Beaubier]
PRODIGY [David Alleyne]
RICTOR [Julio Esteban Ricter]
SHATTERSTAR [Gaveedra-7]
WICCAN [William ‘Billy’ Kaplan], the Demiurge
I love how Vecchio separated the characters on his introduction. Some of the older canonical queer characters first, some specific milestones (Wickling's debut, Ricstar's first kiss, Kyle/JP's wedding), panels for specific groups (X-characters, Young Avengers, genderqueer characters) and then some other couples at the end. You can clearly tell he has a lot of love for Marvel's queer history, and I think that's really wholesome.
They even mention the inclusion of Loki in the article, which makes me wonder if this was supposed to be a surprise thing and it backfired on them because people thought they were actively trying to erase Loki? Looking at the introduction page, Loki is clearly there with other genderqueer characters, so they had to know and approve of their presence in this story beforehand. Banning them from the cover doesn't make a lot of sense. I guess that's why Luciano shared the Loki art on his IG. I think he was teasing what was to come, and people interpreted it wrong. lol
First panel, going left to right:
Hector of the Pantheon
Victoria Montesi? The dark haired woman next to Hector. She's the only one I'm not positive about, but she fits the time period of the other characters in this panel
Attractive Lad
Nocturne
Karma
Bloke
Phat
Vivisector
Moondragon
Skein
Freedom Ring
Living Lightning
Flatman
Karolina Dean
Northstar
2nd panel:
Hulking & Wiccan
3rd panel:
Shatterstar & Rictor
4th panel:
Cloud
Xavin
Loki
Sera
Angela
Koi Boi
Trace (Jake)
Dr. Charlene McGowan
5th panel:
Kyle & Northstar at their wedding
6th panel:
America Chavez
Prodigy
Speed
Hulkling
Wiccan
Marvel Boy
Loki
7th panel:
Anole
Greymalkin
Morph
Hindsight
Mercury
Bling!
Iceman
Teen Iceman
Madin
Christian Frost
Daken
8th panel:
Victoria Hand, with her ex-girlfriend Isabelle leaving in the background
Tong
Cullen Bloodstone
Striker with Julie Power
Giant-Man & Issac Ikeda
Fuse
Rikki Barnes & Julie Power
Ren Kimura and Dr. Annabelle Riggs
Aaron Fisher (Captain America)
Enigma/Pod & Dr Toni Ho (Iron Patriot)
Teen Iceman and Romeo
(top right of this panel) - Panacea & Captain Swain
the Midnight Angels - Ayo & Aneka
Viv Vision
D-Man
And lastly Prodigy, who is the one narrating the page.
Not sure if I believe everything was coordinated like that. It was just recently that they decided to change the show to stream on Wednesdays, so I don't think the dates were intentional. I don't even think the MCU had anything to do with this, and people are looking too much into it.
Why would they make a surprise over the inclusion of a small Loki on the corner of a variant cover? The big reveal over the cover was Somnus' debut. They revealed the blank variant without him (and Loki). And then they revealed the complete one with Somnus in the middle (without Loki) as the final cover on his character reveal. They literally only included Loki after people found a post of Vecchio where he shared a WIP showing Loki next to America and started complaining.
Of course they're not gonna say "Yeah sorry we didn't want to have Loki on our Pride cover" so they're acting like it was on purpose, but what happened is pretty clear.
That still doesn't explain why would they ban Loki from the cover when the character is on the first page of the interiors. The idea that Marvel didn't want Loki associated with LGBTQ content completely falls apart if the first thing you see when you open the book is Lady Loki standing right there with other queer characters. Again, scripts are turned in in advance. They knew about it. It doesn't add up. I agree it would be weird to try and make a surprise out of a small cameo on a cover like that, but at least it explains why they would actively choose to leave out the character when he was in the book anyway.
I also don't know why Luciano would share the Loki art if he was forbidden to include the character. It doesn't seem like something he would do. Back when the New Warriors backlash happened, he didn't even say anything about it and still hasn't brought up the book's cancellation at all. Seems weird that he would go all rebel now and post something on social media that made Marvel look bad.
I can think of a few reasons. For one, the interiors are gonna be seen by less people than the cover, since that was attached to revealing Somnus. Besides that, Lady Loki's existence and her being acknowledged when mentioning gods and aliens showing different gender expressions has a less overt implication than putting the known male Loki next to all the gay/bisexual characters.
Don't know about Vecchio. I thought it was an old post. If it was recent maybe it was more like editorial hadn't previously approved Loki on it, so he left out a space in case they changed their mind and after they approved it he posted it as he drew it? Idk. But they don't even have variant covers of him for the issue like Billy, Teddy, America etc are all getting so I don't know how in the hell "they really wanted to promote and make a big deal out of Loki being LGBT with this late addition in the corner of a variant cover with as much queer characters included as possible" makes sense.
Last edited by Wiccan; 05-15-2021 at 08:34 AM.