Marvel Comics Outs A Founding X-Man As Gay

[Lightknight]

Rogue from the movies must be sooo unhappy to learn that she's been a beard all this time...

Seriously though, dude doesn't even get to come out on his own terms. Just gets outed by a psychic. Really weird outing on their parts. Wish better writers had been on the scene. It frames him in a negative light and her in a good one. If they want it to be positive diversity then it should have framed him in a positive light.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I wonder how cultural anthropologists 2000 years in the future will research superhero comics culture. "From the 1950's onward a new religion rose. It contained a vast pantheon of different deities, almost all differing and changing in age, size, gender, sexuality, hair color, abilities and ways they were depicted in ancient drawings. From recently deciphered ancient texts it is apparent that the followers of this particular faith were often divided and debates over what depiction of what particular character was true were common."

OT: Ehh, this smells like publicity bait over anything else to me. I'm not well versed or even that interested in Marvel lore, but is this the original Cyclops from the 60's, or some alternative universe version of him? Like when Green Lantern was announced gay, except it wasn't Hal Jordan and it wasn't even in the main DC universe to my memory?

Still, can't fault comics writers too much for trying to keep a job in a floundering market that's already done practically everything else.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

That was incredibly clumsily written. I'm getting flashbacks of Dragon Age Inquisition right now *_* (honestly, having an after-school special in a world where random flavour text aggrandises Bioware's capacity to create a fully tolerant world is just...bad writing).

It's like,
"hey, why did you say she's hot?"
"Cause she is?"
"No but you're gay doe"
...

 

[Signa]

I came in here expecting to see Professor X or maybe Beast be gay, but Iceman? The fuck? Professor X actually would be better gay, because it would explain his relationship with Magneto far better. It would be just like Dumbledore and Grindelwald.

 

[Callate]

Part of me just thinks that in a genre where one day a character is merely super-strong, the next he can teleport between parallel worlds, the next he's dead, and the day after he's his own clone- being "retroactively" gay, while potentially contentious because of the real-world analogue, ought to be no big thing.

Another part thinks this is just further proof that writers have been trying to ride something that can only laughably be referred to as a "continuity" for too damn long and ought to introduce some new characters, if not break away from the existing continuity all together.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Pff, if you really wanted controversy you'd make Wolverine gay.
Go on, do it Marvel. I dare you. I double dare you.
Bring everyone's favourite hairy Canadian back to life and have him marry Sabretooth. You know you want to...

 

[Lightknight]

I came in here expecting to see Professor X or maybe Beast be gay, but Iceman? The fuck? Professor X actually would be better gay, because it would explain his relationship with Magneto far better. It would be just like Dumbledore and Grindelwald.

He actually has an incredibly diverse history of lovers and multiple children. Magneto also has a well established orientation such as being the loving husband of Rogue. However, Bobby Drake also had a long history of girl friends: Zelda, Lorna Dane (he gets pretty mad when Havok announces their marriage too), Opal Tanaka, Kitty Pryde and something really short with Mystique. He even ignores or is oblivious to North Star's advances to him (because Bobby isn't gay, or wasn't). So it is kind of weird for them to pick him specifically, the ladies man that he was.

It does the community somewhat a disservice to just orientation swap these characters. Like they can just change orientation at the drop of a hat.

It would be better if they designed meaningful characters that happened to be gay or chose characters with no formally expressed orientation to make this reveal. It is bizarre that Marvel thinks raiding existing heroes is the way to go rather than establishing unique characters.

But Bisexuality as we see here can work in any scenario because a person expressing one orientation may just have not delved into the other to show that. So bisexuality would probably be the easiest to project on existing characters. That still begs the question of how a homosexual or bisexual, even repressed, would remain oblivious to North Star's advances. So that makes Bobby a particularly weird choice here.

 

[K12]

As far as comic book hero retcons go this ranks somewhere in the middle.

 

[Therumancer]

Why? just cause marvel needs diversity? thats dumb, don't turn characters gay just cause you need to push diversity, create a character that from the start is gay, and please don't make it the atraction point, this should be his/her background not the part that defines the character.

Well, it's politics and shows the slant Marvel's writers have, no matter how they try and dress it up as being "good story telling" as especially when it's introduced as weakly as that. The thing is Marvel doesn't even have a diversity issue, but turning characters gay is still a good way to get attention. Someone just posted a link to an 8 page long list of open homosexuals in The Marvel Universe (many of them from 616).

To be honest it seems to me that they decided to make Ice Man gay because it would be shocking. Ice Man is an old school "poon hound" to an extent and him chasing girls has actually been a plot point (or sub-plot point) at various times, and has complicated things to the point where "simply putting on a show" wouldn't have made sense. The idea here is that instead of taking a person who was undefined or open to interpretation, or acted fairly normally, they were going to take one of the more obviously assertive heterosexual characters and decide they were going to be officially gay. The only thing that sort of surprises me is that they chose to do it to Bobby Drake instead of Johnny Storm (as they are cut from very similar cloth, and while I supposed they grew apart, for a long time people had argued they were basically the same character, playing the same team role personality wise, but with the nature of their powers reversed... like some creator saying "you know, imagine a guy just like The Human Torch, but he turns into ice and controls ice and cold!". I say this because generating controversy with "The Human Torch" could be taken as a short at the upcoming movie.

That said very soon Marvel is approaching something similar to a universal reboot, so I'm guessing they are experimenting, and presumably getting weird stuff writers wanted to play with/make political statements about out of their system. Apparently the upcoming "Secret Wars" is going to reboot large chunks of the universe, and presumably alter a lot of characters. While I have no doubts we will see some diversity changes I'd imagine a lot of the weirdness we've seen over the last few months will not remain part of the status quo. Right now the only character that is fairly safe is Peter Parker, simply because Marvel joked about Miles Morales replacing him permanently as an April Fool's joke and then announced that it was not going to happen, so thus we know Peter is going to be Spider Man again after Secret Wars, and presumably a lot of the really strange stuff that came about as a result of "Superior Spider Man", "One More Day", and the "Clone Saga" being replaced. Apparently someone also stated at one point that The Scarlet Spider will also still be around, though some have suspected it will be redefined and Miles might be donning that costume and namesake.

 

[ckam]

Shrug... I don't think this really matters and the reaction has been completely unwarranted.

 

[viranimus]

Waits for the jokes like
"Hey Professor X, I just cold cocked some dude"
to roll in.

/self induced eyeroll

 

[Baresark]

I had to come back... it's too funny. He is not great with relationships, so he is gay. I love it in its absolute ridiculousness. He is full gay... not just gay... just gay could mean bi-sexual sometimes to Bendis? Haha... it's just so ridiculous. I can't stop laughing at how bad this is presented.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Yay, trendy revisionism of existing characters. No way that could prove controversial.

Anyway, I thought Colossus was already gay?

I thought that was just Ultimate U Colossus - Earth 616 Colossus was always straight.

Does Ultimate anyone still exist? I have no idea what happened to that universe after it got merged with the 616 (I'd also not consider anyone from that universe a "founding member" of any hero team that wasn't specifically the Ultimates version if that was the case).

See...this is kind of the problem I have with comics.

Too many continuities and too many variables. It just comes across as a mess.

As for the OP:

Meh? It's just another alternate character and ultimately doesn't mean anything, for good or (not that I think it is) ill. How clumsily it was done just sort of highlights the weirdness of such a decision.

Makes it come off as being done for headlines, rather than as a natural progression of a story, which is already ridiculously hard to do, given all the branching/conflicting narratives that have and continue to take place in the world of comics.

Throw in the whole bi angle and it just makes it weirder; kinda like the people involved don't understand the orientations they're working with.

 

[Zontar]

See...this is kind of the problem I have with comics.

Too many continuities and too many variables. It just comes across as a mess.

Well in all fairness for the past decade there have only been 616 and Ultimates in terms of universes, and you can tell which is which based on weather or not it had the word "Ultimate" in the title. The part where it becomes a clusterfuck is now that the Ultimates is being merged with the 616 universe, which sucks because honestly Ultimates really should just be brought to an end. The story actually has advanced and evolved over the years, the characters developed and when they died they stayed dead. If they wanted to stop the print just have the stories wrapped up.

 

[NerAnima]

You know, my issue isn't with how they made Iceman gay, since some people do chase one gender whilst they crave the other, but my issue is with how horribly they presented it.

One, he didn't even get the choice, Jean Grey just told him, by reading his mind, or by changing it to that, she forced it out, so she's kind of a ***** in my opinion; you don't force someone to admit that, only because of the writer did he take this so well.

Two, why in the name of the Sun is this drawn so terribly?! That one page in particular is an egregious sin, having 6 of them be the same bloody frame, just with different text bubbles. Hell, they didn't even bother getting rid of the lines for Jean's pic! I think someone said it looked as if she were doing a cheerleading routine, and I have to agree. I don't read a great deal of comics, I admit that, but I've seen a few online that were done a lot better than that tripe.

So yeah, I have no problems with them saying that he's gay, but that was just so poorly done, so it's really just a sour note for me.

 

[NerAnima]

Pff, if you really wanted controversy you'd make Wolverine gay.
Go on, do it Marvel. I dare you. I double dare you.
Bring everyone's favourite hairy Canadian back to life and have him marry Sabretooth. You know you want to...

They haven't quite done that, but they did have Wolverine in an alternate universe getting some Canadian wood for Hercules, and had a shot of those two going at it right in front of their latest - and maybe greatest - kill. Not too racy, sadly.

Still, does that count? I think it should at least get some points, even if it doesn't.

Edit: Besides, having him marry Sabretooth...? That sounds a bit silly, even by comic book standards.

 

[silver wolf009]

I wonder, if I replaced "Full gay" with "Maximum Homosex," would that be more or less progressive?

At any rate, obvious, overt, shameless pandering for the purpose of getting a few more sales, and a precious few seconds in the public's memory. It'd be disgusting, if it wasn't routine.