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Homosexuality & Marvel Superheroes
Over at In One Ear... there are a few (very bitter) parodies of giving advice for writing minorities in comics. Here's a link to the one about writing gays. Needless to say, the advice lampoons the actual practices. The Marvel ones had me nodding and naming names at every point. I'm not as strong on the DC tropes, really, because Marvel was what I was reading a lot more of when I was young and optimistically looking for queer role models in my favourite forms of media. eta: Just to make this a little clearer: I'm only addressing the Marvel ones in the rest of this post. (Even though I actually have more variety of DC characters who are gay or bi represented in my icons! X3)
The interesting thing is that, while the handling of Northstar is the main target of these "suggestion"/criticisms on nearly every point, the first one applies not to him, but to Iceman. (I'm pretty sure it's never happened to Northstar, because what would mean admitting he'd gotten laid at some point in his life. *headwall*)
The poster boy for #4 is arguably Arnold Roth, boyhood-and-beyond friend of Steve Rogers. Yes, that's right, folks: Captain America went to art college and roomed with a gay man. The best part for me is that Cap is totally okay with this when he finds out. I'm also impressed that neither Arnie nor his long-time lover Michael die of AIDS. Instead, they suffer the type of traumas supporting characters in a superhero book often find themselves in, getting kidnapped a lot. Baron Zemo kills Michael, but Arnie dies of bone cancer -- and with him, Cap's last living tie to his past, alas. They aren't the only gay characters to show up in Captain America, either. For example, the WWII heroes Destroyer and Union Jack II were a couple (unfortunately, Union Jack was killed by a car accident in 1953 -- dying in Destroyers arms ;_;). Two long-term loving gay couples.
Right now, Marvel has some very visible homosexual heroes around: Wiccan and Hulkling over in Young Avengers, Karolina Dean in Runaways (she turns point #1 on it's head: her spouse is an alien shape-shifter who is naturally male but usually appears female to please Karolina, who is only attracted to women), and in the X-books there is (or was, depending on current state of alive-ness) Sunfire II, Northstar, Karma, and Anole. Moondragon and Captain Marvel IV are a f/f couple, although Moondragon is currently physically an actual dragon (but they're both telepaths, so They Have Their Ways). Also, Electro (the Spiderman villain) is now canonically bisexual, as is Marlo (Rick Jones's wife). That's all in the main continuity: in the 1602-verse, Angel falls in love with "John Grey", whom he believes to be male, and in the Ultimates! universe, Northstar and Colossus are a couple.
Only tangentially related: this is an awesome post discussing how being a queer fan and being a fan of slash are not the same thing. I'm often frustrated with how a lot of slash fans use the "gay" label, and how many slash writers depict exaggerated stereotypes of what they think being gay is like, and this post touched on some of the roots of the problem.
The interesting thing is that, while the handling of Northstar is the main target of these "suggestion"/criticisms on nearly every point, the first one applies not to him, but to Iceman. (I'm pretty sure it's never happened to Northstar, because what would mean admitting he'd gotten laid at some point in his life. *headwall*)
The poster boy for #4 is arguably Arnold Roth, boyhood-and-beyond friend of Steve Rogers. Yes, that's right, folks: Captain America went to art college and roomed with a gay man. The best part for me is that Cap is totally okay with this when he finds out. I'm also impressed that neither Arnie nor his long-time lover Michael die of AIDS. Instead, they suffer the type of traumas supporting characters in a superhero book often find themselves in, getting kidnapped a lot. Baron Zemo kills Michael, but Arnie dies of bone cancer -- and with him, Cap's last living tie to his past, alas. They aren't the only gay characters to show up in Captain America, either. For example, the WWII heroes Destroyer and Union Jack II were a couple (unfortunately, Union Jack was killed by a car accident in 1953 -- dying in Destroyers arms ;_;). Two long-term loving gay couples.
Right now, Marvel has some very visible homosexual heroes around: Wiccan and Hulkling over in Young Avengers, Karolina Dean in Runaways (she turns point #1 on it's head: her spouse is an alien shape-shifter who is naturally male but usually appears female to please Karolina, who is only attracted to women), and in the X-books there is (or was, depending on current state of alive-ness) Sunfire II, Northstar, Karma, and Anole. Moondragon and Captain Marvel IV are a f/f couple, although Moondragon is currently physically an actual dragon (but they're both telepaths, so They Have Their Ways). Also, Electro (the Spiderman villain) is now canonically bisexual, as is Marlo (Rick Jones's wife). That's all in the main continuity: in the 1602-verse, Angel falls in love with "John Grey", whom he believes to be male, and in the Ultimates! universe, Northstar and Colossus are a couple.
Only tangentially related: this is an awesome post discussing how being a queer fan and being a fan of slash are not the same thing. I'm often frustrated with how a lot of slash fans use the "gay" label, and how many slash writers depict exaggerated stereotypes of what they think being gay is like, and this post touched on some of the roots of the problem.
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And I miss Brian and Roger, they were both such great characters.
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Unfortunately, I only really became aware of Brian and Roger a short while ago, not being terribly entrenched in the Captain America books/fandom. I've always thought he was a likable character, but sometimes he is written more as a vehicle for American flag-waving and, well, I'm not American, so I suppose I have a somewhat lower threshold for it. (Meanwhile, that episode of X-Men: Evolution with him and Wolverine -- "Operation: Rebirth"? -- had me choking up at the end.) My point before I got sidetracked was that I wish I knew more about Union Jack II and the Destroyer, but I'm unlikely to find the pertinent issues.
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And I only began reading Captain America beginning with this new incarnation, because of the Bucky returning rumors, then stuck with it when Brubaker actually un-retconned him and gave a (comic book) logical explanation for why he was still alive. I like captain Bucky a lot too - a lot less flag-waving and a lot more butt-kicking.