All-New X-Men vol 7 – “The Utopians”
The final volume of Brian Bendis’ All-New X-Men is a bizarre affair. If you were expecting Bendis’ final volume to build to anything in particular, you’re going to be disappointed. This grab-bag of stories feels more like somebody who’s running down the clock. If anything, these stories – and their counterparts over in Uncanny – seem to be mainly concerned with setting things up for whatever comes after Secret Wars.
What you actually get in this volume is five rather random issues – a single issue story from issue #37, the Utopians two-parter from issues #40-41 (if that can really be called a story), and sandwiched between them, parts 4 and 5 of the thirteen-part “Black Vortex” crossover. It’s hard to imagine that people reading the series in the trades will be thrilled about this, nor should they be.
“Black Vortex” does have some material which is important to the series – Cyclops rejoining the cast, and Angel getting his inexplicable fire wings – but I’ve written about it before, so let’s talk about the other three issues.
Issue #37 is an Emma/Jean spotlight issue, with Emma taking Jean to Madripoor to train her in doing more with telekinesis. The token mission involves her breaking up the Blob’s MGH operation, which is fair enough; he’s at about the right point in the pecking order to pose a threat for a few pages without being an unreasonable choice for a training mission.
It’s a good issue. The story is basic but fine for what Bendis is doing; Mike Del Mundo’s painted art is lovely. It’s surprisingly traditional, in fact – you can easily imagine Claremont doing the same plot – but I suspect it’s the discipline of keeping it to a single issue, together with the advantages of a very small cast, that give it the focus that’s often lacking in Bendis’ team stories. And it has a point, which is to position Emma as a viable mentor for Jean going forward, and make the argument that Xavier’s approach to training her didn’t necessarily work out all that well, what with her winding up cosmically genocidal and ultimately dead.
At the same time, the story bends over backwards to stress that Jean should not be afraid that embracing her power will put her on the road to becoming Dark Phoenix again, because Dark Phoenix is ultimately something that happened to her from outside, not something that was inherent to her nature. This looks to be an attempt by Bendis to free the character from the long shadow of Phoenix and clear the way for future writers to try something else, which is all fine. (Nor does it entirely close the door on other readings. After all, Emma Frost may insist that Jean has nothing dark in her nature, but it’s easy to argue that Emma’s idea of darkness is a bit more lenient than some people’s.)
Issue #40 is notionally the first part of “The Utopians”. In practice, that’s just a prominent subplot, in which a bunch of minor and forgotten characters have set up shop on Utopia and are fighting off anyone who tries to disturb them. Utopia, incidentally, is now a wrecked island floating on the surface, which is nice, because it was at the bottom of San Francisco Bay in Storm #8. Let’s be charitable and assume that Damage Control have been busy.
Anyway. Nobody cares about that, because the main focus of issue #40 is the scene where Jean tells Bobby that she knows he’s gay, which of course also has the side issue of establishing him as gay.
The idea that Iceman might be gay seems to have taken hold with fans somewhere in the mid-nineties after a Scott Lobdell issue where Emma Frost said something snarky to him about a possible interest in interior decorating. I’ve always thought that was reading way too much into the issue, given that Emma made that comment in the context of him having just filled her office with ice. Given the lack of follow-up, and the level of subtlety Lobdell brought to bear when he outed Northstar, I remain extremely sceptical that he intended any such reading.
But, looking at matters in 2015, there’s a pretty good case to be made for this decision, especially from a meta standpoint. Both Marvel and DC have a similar problem: their superhero universes are dominated by characters created in the 1960s, plus a smaller number from the mid-70s and a handful of hardy perennials from World War II. Inevitably, those characters reflect the attitudes to diversity of their eras, which are very, very different from those prevailing today.
Yet redressing that balance within the existing Marvel and DC Universes is an extremely difficult task for a whole range of reasons. Many of those reasons relate to publisher motivation, but Marvel seem to be coming round on that one. That still leaves the reality that to truly bring about a more representative Marvel or DC Universe would require either introducing a large number of new characters to balance out the existing ones – which is extremely hard given how few new characters of any description have successfully taken root in the last quarter century – or changing the characteristics of existing ones. That latter approach can work when reinventing characters for a reboot such as the Ultimate Universe (e.g., Nick Fury), but is hard to pull off as a revamp within an established continuity (e.g., Nick Fury).
The one major exception where you can plausibly change an existing character without outrageous convolutions is sexuality. For that reason alone, it makes a lot of sense to find a workable candidate and do it. And Iceman is about as good a candidate as it gets, largely because the character has done so little over his fifty years. Pretty much every other candidate has some character-defining romantic relationships or, for the likes of Tony Stark, at least a history of inveterate womanising. Iceman does have a string of relationships too, but it’s not like any of them could seriously be claimed to be central to his character today. He’s arguably the blankest slate remaining from Marvel’s Silver Age creations, and thus the best available choice.
Now, all that being said. There’s been some criticism of this particular decision for ignoring the idea that Bobby could simply be bisexual, and you can see where that’s coming from. And it’s not entirely clear how Bendis is trying to square the two versions of the characters. At some points in the scene, he seems to be suggesting that the older Iceman was shaped by an era when coming out was a less attractive option. But the story also seems to assert outright that the older Iceman is straight – Bobby makes this claim explicitly and Jean agrees with it. That’s getting into the territory of asserting sexuality as a choice, which is at the least contentious. Probably simpler to run with the idea that both versions of the character are gay; I can’t see this particular concept leading to anything but problems.
It’s also a scene that arguably underplays the implications of Jean simply reading Bobby’s mind on this. But Bendis set up long ago the idea that this is nothing new with the All-New version of Jean. In that sense you can see a reading where Jean feels it’s ridiculous to keep pretending that she doesn’t know, given that the general idea that she lacks self-control has been well established. Perhaps it jars more because the scene casts her (maybe by default) in the role of the wise elder sister; but in his understandable desire to distance Jean from her conventional role as the X-Men’s saintly mother figure, there’s something to be said for bringing that side of her back into play. On balance, I think he gets away with it.
Anyway, the Utopians. Remember them? Bendis gets to them properly in the final issue, which pretty much consists of the X-Men going to Utopia at Maria Hill’s request, having a little squabble with them, and bringing them back to their base. (Which they’re now occupying on their own, since everyone but Magik has given up and left following recent events in Uncanny.)
The Utopians are one of those teams who seem to have been assembled from whichever off-cut characters were lying around – Random, Masque, Elixir, Boom Boom, Karma, and Madison Jeffries. Last time we saw Elixir, in Death of Wolverine: Logan Legacy, he was looking a bit dead, though in fairness the issue didn’t say so outright. Still, you’d think we could expect something more than him just showing up again.
At any rate, the basic hook for the Utopians seems to be that they’re trying to withdraw from the world and live in peace, though quite why you’d go to the wreckage of Utopia for that purpose is difficult to fathom. The X-Men’s offer of a place in the New Xavier School in the middle of nowhere seems a better suggestion in the circumstances. But for Bendis to introduce all this in the final issue of his run makes no obvious sense, unless it’s setting up something for the next writer. Even on that basis, it’s a strange way to end the run.
This is a very odd collection, presumably dictated by the need to fill a page count rather than by any particularly narrative logic. It’s impossible to recommend, since nearly half of it is taken up by middle chapters of a crossover, and a third issue is banal character-shuffling. But issues #37 and #40 are among the more memorable issues from Bendis’ run. You’d be better off getting them individually, though.
I think some of your review got cut off. The third from the last paragraph ends with “As for the rest,”
“If you were expecting Bendis’ final volume to build to anything in particular” then you’re a gullible fool.
@1: I’ll get that fixed.
Hoping we get an overview of Wolverines soon. A weekly (except for those times that it wasn’t) exercise in starting plots then just dropping them, creating characters just to kill them.
I might have said this elsewhere, but Bendis’ approach to making Bobby gay really bugs me because it happens at the very end of a long run. It seems really bad form to make such a substantial change to a character when you know you’re not sticking around for the follow-through–especially when you’re passing on to the next writer a change that’s going to be extremely scrutinized. I might be thinking about it too “meta” and there’s probably a lot of editorial coordination going on behind the scenes, but the way Bendis handled this really rubs me the wrong way.
Diversity of perspectives *is* a goal worth striving for, but it needs to have strong evidence of follow-through to avoid tokenism. There was a bit of a sense that Northstar’s wedding was a stunt, but at least Liu was on the title long enough to explore what their relationship meant beyond a flashy headline.
Also, I’m going to give Bendis the benefit of the doubt and assume including Random on the Utopians was a self-aware meta move.
I’m one of the people dissatisfied by the decision to make Bobby gay instead of bi (never mind that the last established X-character to come out, Rictor, had a similar “are you bi? No” bit) but I kind of understand the decision. I think it boils down to “If we establish him as bisexual, later authors can pair him exclusively with female characters and ignore the change, so we have to make sure it sticks.” It’s frustrating that Hercules is pretty much the only male bisexual Marvel char I can name, but I understand the desire to make it something that can’t be buried.
@Zach – There’s also Prodigy of the Young Avengers. I find that to be a more satisfying case than Herc, since (AUs aside) his bisexuality has never been confirmed on page, just alluded to.
As for Bobby, I’m chalking that one up to a poorly executed stunt that at least has the potential to go somewhere good under writers who’ve given the subject more consideration than Bendis seems to. I just can’t give BMB points for good intentions on this one, given that he couldn’t be bothered to give the last character he outed any follow-up either (anyone remember Ben Deeds?). This just feels like move to make sure sales stayed up on his way out the door.
Fun reading as always, Paul.
@Zach Adams: Shatterstar was confirmed as bisexual some time ago.
This run on X-Men just sounds disappointing. I feel like the X-Men is still one of the strongest concepts in comics but, man, this franchise is just spinning its’ wheels.
I too disliked the outing of Iceman for several reasons. Most importantly, the fact that they flat out say that the older one isn’t gay. They are supposed to be the same person right? How can one of them be gay and the other one not be? It’s exactly like saying it’s a choice, not part of somebody’s nature so if they were going for diversity and political correctness, they failed miserably. I can only see it as a badly executed stunt which serves no one. The Young Avengers had offered a couple of good role models for gay teens who read comics, this one does the opposite.
My other problem is the way it was done. Effectively Jean shames him into realizing he is gay. “Why do you say things like that when you’re gay?” seriously? The only worse possible way would be to do that in front of the others. Still, no real friend would do something like that. More importantly it reads as if as if it were written by a homophobe who doesn’t understand or care to understand how those people would feel about something like that
I realise they’ve been glossing over this point for a long time, but have Marvel now officially retconned the Dark Phoenix Saga so it was Jean, and not just the Phoenix Force in a body that looked like hers? (Which, I know, was a retcon itself, but since it’s the canonical explanation as to why Jean wasn’t a dead mass murderer…)
I love that little Bobby is gay and big Bobby is straight. I’m not saying Bendis did this on purpose or anything, but I think it really messes with the idea of simple, fixed, easy labels of sexuality. Because who knows exactly how sexuality is constructed and expressed? Nobody. It’s certainly not as simple as “choice v. genetics” despite what media and politics suggest.
Or maybe little Bobby is just an alternate reality version of big Bobby, and this is one of the ways they’re different.
Or maybe being pulled through time changed the O5, and now certain things that remained dormant before are being expressed. Who knows?
Since everybody loves those Professor X was a dick this whole time retcon stories, maybe the Bobby taken from the timestream in All New X-Men is Iceman before X used his telepathy to make Bobby straight.
Big Bobby is straight? That’s quite an assumption at this point, as this will be addressed in Uncanny #600.
Frankly, anything else than Big Bobby coming out too (fully or not) would be a big surprise to me.
“Frankly, anything else than Big Bobby coming out too (fully or not) would be a big surprise to me.”
Thats what she said.
One being gay and one being straight reads to me like more “time is broken!” fodder, and an easier and more obvious (but stupid) way to make the same point as is being made with Cyclops being “different” from his older self. That is, I don’t think there’s anything there other than Bendis anticipating people thinking this means Old Bobby is gay, and responding, “Guess again!”
@Ronnie: That is an awesome idea. The mechanics of it would have to be pretty pervy, too. Naughty old Professor!
You guys sure do seem eager to take it on its face that old Iceman is straight. Smart money says the plan was to out him as gay in #600 (which will probably still happen, but the delay could change that). They released black-and-white preview pages with no dialogue, and it looked a heck of a lot like young Bobby and Teen Jean forcing old Iceman out of the closet.
Which would be much more problematic than simply having a gay young Bobby and a straight old one. Doing something new with a relatively fresh version of Iceman is different from foisting a defining characteristic (and what’s certain to be plenty of baggage) on a 50+ year old character out of nowhere to appease conspiracy theorist fans.
@ASV: Time being broken does not address young Bob supposedly being gay while adult Bob supposedly is not.
It is not _quite_ as much a paradox as their parents never having met, but it is close.
@Dazzler: Well, at least it’ll give old Bobby a reason to be in stories. 50+ years is long enough to stand around doing nothing and having no narrative purpose.
The Utopians really were a rather odd grouping of castoffs, weren’t they. I find it hard to believe that a collection like that would have anything in common, aside from “trying to escape the overall narrative.” I’m not sure any two of them have ever even served on a team together, unless it was Karma and Elixir during the New Mutants/New X-Men era at the school.
Masque? Hardly a team player unless he’s leading it… I’ve always wondered just what underlying mental issues he might have to justify how weirdly he’s whipsawed from one motivation to the next.
Random? Very.
Boom-Boom? You can’t tell me she wouldn’t be happier hanging out with real friends…
Honestly, this is the exact sort of group you’d expect PAD to turn into a new team. A combination of obscure and just unappreciated.
paul, something that’s hard to grasp from some of your reviews – though it is more or less patent in others – is what exactly are your feelings on the line as a whole, and since you’re now focusing on volumes rather than weekly follow-ups it sometimes feels as if you’re analyzing these contained units (TPBs) in a way that withdraws your attention from wider phenomena in the franchise as an ongoing, inter-linking (narratively, thematically, commercially) affair. would you consider doing a piece that’s more of an overall view of your position on the line of x-books as it stands? kind of like the yearly posts you did in the x-axis a few times. i for one would be really interested.
Wouldn’t it being an example of ‘time is broken’ now be completely pointless? Presumably once the universe(s) is restored after Secret Wars that won’t be the case any more. Also, the whole concept of broken time was clearly one of those Bendis ideas that was never going anywhere anyway.
I think this volume should include the portions of Uncanny X-Men 600 that pertain to All New X-men. Maybe then readers would feel like All New was building to something. Thanks to Marvel we will be left hanging until October or whenever Secret Wars ends.
Weirdly, I think there’s sort of even a precedent for future and past Bobby having different sexual orientations, if you embrace the alt-universe version of Marvel time travel–there was at least one alternate reality character during the Exiles series that was gay when their 616 counterpart was not. (I want to say Spider-Mary Jane from the Legacy Virus universe, though that might be wrong.)
Hell, in the Ultimate Universe Colossus is gay.
That’s a better example.
Isn’t there also a gay Wolverine?
I see no problem with 616 being straight and li’l Bob being queer or bi. I also se no problem with retconning Big Bob to be queer or bi. Both are as believable as 90% of retcons and alt-universe situations we’ve seen before.
Anyhow, the Utopians are a terrible groupig of characters. Neither Masque nor Random fit the mold of “monkish retreat from society.” Random’s too materialistic, and Masque is too viscous.
Furthermore, Karma and Boomer make so sense in this either. Both have strong ties to other X-Men, and would take a more moderate approach. Heck, Karma has retired I dunno how many times, and mostly lived a life away from Xavier’s. When she comes back, it’s usually because she chooses to. She has no need to take off to a deserted island. She could go back to being a librarian in Chicago, which worked just fine for her character.
Like most of Bendis’ run, this arc has been dumb and boring. I can’t wait to move on to something better.
“But the story also seems to assert outright that the older Iceman is straight – Bobby makes this claim explicitly and Jean agrees with it.”
I didn’t read the conversation as Jean agreeing with Bobby about older Bobby being straight.
I read it as Jean not even feeling it was worth the effort to dismiss. Bobby was throwing out multiple misdirections, but Jean stuck with the claim.
As for the bisexual possibility, Bobby himself admits that he is gay, not bisexual. The conversation very much reads that Bobby *knows* he is gay, and that he only brings up the idea of being bisexual as his final attempt to throw off Jean. When it fails, he admits to Jean what both of them already knew, that he was “full gay”.
“I think there’s sort of even a precedent for future and past Bobby having different sexual orientations, if you embrace the alt-universe version of Marvel time travel”
Yep. Considering the year 2099 has its own designated earth #, it seems that all past/future timelines are just alternate earths anyway. Which kind of makes sense when you think about it, but just comes across as a pain in the ass for this kind of storytelling.
I’ve been working under the assumption that “time is broken” means they won’t be able to go back in time to undo Secret Wars.
original Matt,
Funny, I thought just the opposite. Marvel’s set-up has always (well, usually) been that you can’t go back in time to change events, you just create alternate timelines. That makes sense because otherwise every story would end with Reed Richards using his time machine to undo whatever horrible event just happened. Time being broken allows you to go back and actually change events. So you can undo Secret Wars, but if time is fixed in the process you can’t keep going back to undo things.
I meant as more a simple explanation.
Black Panther: “Hey, let’s go back in time and stop the incursions”
Beast: “We can’t, time is broken”
Iron Man: “funny stuff has been happening, but we can still try. Reed has a time travel device.”
Reed: “it’s true, I built one into my iWatch”
Beast: “No, time is completely broken now. I brought the original X-men into the future for no real reason and can’t send them home.”
Iron Man: “You furry, blue idiot.”
Of course, if Hickman writes the scene, he’ll use your version. But with an analogy of peeling a potato, a map of Europe, 4 graphs and a spreadsheet.
Just because Iceman has been an underutilized character, doesn’t mean foisting this retcon on him is a good thing.
Of all the characters to thrust into this role, a member of the original X-Men actually makes the least possible sense. He’s been a member of this hippie mutant commune since puberty, sandwiched between telepathic friends and foes, none of whom has ever implied anything about his sexuality in any way, shape or form. It would make much MUCH more sense for them to reveal that Steve Rogers has been gay this whole time. Not someone who’s been a student of Xavier’s since he was a kid. Makes no sense. It would have come out at SOME point before this. And I’ve seen the compilations of out-of-context scenes people are grasping at for “evidence” and no, none of them are suggesting anything.
And the fact that the possibility of bisexuality is dismissed actually taints a lot of romantic scenes with a completely unintended subtext that Iceman is manipulating these women and their feelings. Most recently his relationship with Kitty. Whether you liked the ‘ship or not, Jason Aaron wrote some nice, sweet scenes of that budding romance that are impossible to take seriously. And when Kitty was discussing the relationship with Rachel in the Doop miniseries (what, just last year?) she talks about Bobby being “uncomplicated” with a straight face. A ruthless telepath raised in a dystopian future, but apparently she’s not direct enough to even suggest to Kitty that their relationship might never work because he’s gay. It makes no sense.
If you’re into things that make no sense, this is the change for you!
“He’s been a member of this hippie mutant commune since puberty, sandwiched between telepathic friends and foes, none of whom has ever implied anything about his sexuality in any way, shape or form.”
Comics barely touched on sexuality until the past decade.
Also, maybe he thought he was straight the whole time (like many gay people initially do), and so there were no “traces of mental gayness” for anyone to read.
Traces of mental gayness. Ahhhh comics.
“He’s been a member of this hippie mutant commune since puberty, sandwiched between telepathic friends and foes, none of whom has ever implied anything about his sexuality in any way, shape or form.”
In addition to that, the X-Men have always been in a way a comic book parallel for gay people. How many mutants have been beaten to death (either in or out of panel), how many mutants got rejected by their families after being outed as mutants, etc etc etc. And let’s not forget the outing of Iceman to his family in the movies, which was a textbook gay outing. So, why force the point home by doing it to such a long established character?
I guess the jerk Xavier explanation will be used again to cover up for the problems with the telepaths but that’s kind of becoming a deus ex machina, like time travel, a cheap way to solve everything. They will probably say that Xavier made Bobby think he was straight, which will be a new low. If Xavier was this immoral, then why didn’t he just do the opposite of what the red skull is currently doing, use his tp to make ppl love mutants?
@Leo
I think it’s okay for people to say they feel sad (or even resentful) if part of why they identified with Bobby lies in his straight romances. As straight folk, we still have, like, ninety percent of the X-Men to relate to, and I think gay kids deserve points of identification too (don’t you?), but at least the argument comes from a sincere emotional place.
The metaphor argument, though, loses my sympathy entirely. Said no one ever:
“The X-Men have long been a comic book parallel for racial diversity, so why force the point home by making a central character like Storm black?”
“The X-Men have long been a comic book parallel for the isolation young people feel growing up, so why force the point home by making an established team like the New Mutants full of young people?”
“Under Morrison, the X-Men have been a comic book parallel for being at the forefront of progressive thinking, so why force the point home by having established characters like Beast and Jean express progressive ideas?”
“In addition to that, the X-Men have always been in a way a comic book parallel for gay people.”
Well, if by “always” you mean the late 1980s or all of the 1990s.
Those damned gay-hunting giant robots.
And that dude in the cape and purple clothing that wants to take over the world…. okay… that can be misconstrued as gay.
Anyway, like ALMOST (but not quite) all retcons, this is convenient and all for the current writer but tends to undermine earlier stories.
That said, those earlier stories are not significant for the current comic, and almost every story is most significant because it is the one you are reading right now.
In all those X-Factor stories with Opal Tanaka Bobby Drake is clearly not gay.
In this story, he probably is very much gay.
Do we reconcile the two? Not really. Go with it if you want, reject it if you don’t. It’s Bendis and I see X-Men comics after Whedon to be apocryphal anyway…. heck. Maybe I see all X-Men comics after Morrison to be apocryphal except for most of Peter David’s X-Factor…..
Well, maybe not misconstrued as gay… if we can retcon anyone Silver Age to be gay, Magneto can be gay.
Not like he has kids or anything.
Chris is making the point. It undermines previous stories. It actually completely destroys some recent ones (like the Kitty romance subplot and all of the Doop miniseries that bent over backwards to break up Kitty and Bobby when his retconned homosexuality would have done it with a lot less effort). It’s not like there has ever been any actual subtext implied by any Iceman writer in history that suggests that he has ever been a homosexual. It’s 100% all in your heads.
And if for some reason gay people want an icon who is canonically NOT GAY, and had his sexuality switched out of nowhere by a writer ON HIS WAY OUT THE DOOR, then God help us all. This character is being shoehorned into this role at least 20-30 years too late for this to count as a “revelation” as opposed to an arbitrary change. It makes less sense than revealing that Warren Worthington has been a Native American this whole time.
It strains credibility WAY past the breaking point that this kid who’s spent his life as a core member of this hippie mutant commune, surrounded by telepaths who would both want to HELP him (by opening a dialogue with him to get him to accept this aspect of himself) and HURT him (by taunting him with this secret) and nothing comes up until now. It makes no sense. It’s bad writing. It’s an injustice to the character AND the readers, and if I was gay I’d be pissed off that Marvel is so casual about this sort of character defining retroactive change.
I just reread most of X-Factor v.1, including the Opal Tanaka storyline. Rereading it with the new knowledge that Bobby is (may be) repressing his homosexuality in no way detracts from the story or makes it less credible, enjoyable, or coherent. It does add a new dimension for interpreting his actions; that’s a good thing, making the story more layered.
I expect the same to be true of any old story you reread in this new light (with perhaps a few exceptions).
Well that’s the thing.
a Bendis story published in 2015 should never detract from an old story published long ago.
If you want a new story retcon to cast an old story in new light, that’s your business as a reader.
I mean an actual old story. Not Aaraon’s and Bendis’ competing parallel canon…. because they really both cannot be canonical here.
At this point I never do that though… although I used to, and it’s okay to do that (obviously), depending on your tastes.
When I re-read X-Men #1, I definitely don’t read it with the Jack O’Diamonds Cyclops origin in mind. For example. When I re-read the first few issues of Fantastic Four, Ben Grimm is not an old friend of Reed from college but the poor guy that was hired to fly the ship and got stuck with them in his mutation…..
But, you know, your tastes may vary, as they should.
Although I chuckle at the idea that Bendis makes something more layered and not less…
@Dimitri you imply that I am a heterosexual (which I am not) and that’s why I am unsympathetic to the retcon.
Storm was created as a black character. Hulkling and Wiccan were also gay from the beginning. Northstar and Enole may have been retconned into being gay but those were minor retcons of relatively new characters whose sexuality hadn’t been explored yet. All of those I like. Any any new characters that represent minorities, as long as they are properly promoted and well written, I will support them.
With Iceman we have had 60 years of history and yes, most of them are products of their time but why is that a bad thing? They can express diversity by creating new characters, not by turning a long established straight character into gay. It’s like painting a white person with black dye and pronounce them as a person of color. To me that’s more offensive. And i say that as a gay person myself
@Leo
According to John Byrne Northstar was NOT retconned into being gay. He was gay at the start of Alpha Flight (if not X-Men, because they weren’t fully developed characters beyond their power sets) and that later writer, I think Scott Lobdell, only outted him, not rectonned him.
Mind you the writers of Astonishing X-Men did retcon Northstar into someone that other people wanted to hang out with.
I guess that’s a better choice than having you at that point most visible homosexual character being a selfish prat.
For the problem isn’t Iceman being gay, it’s just the clumsy dumb way Bendis went about doing it. But why waste a long term story arc about Bobby dealing with and coming to terms with his sexuality and that he is gay? Eff that, just do it in one issue!
And it is ridiculous that Young Jean telepathically figured out Young Bobby is gay, but none of the adult telepaths could as well. “Bobby, you keep saying you want to make out with Opal, but you keep thinking about Warren for some reason instead…”
And to think, all of this started because of one off-hand comment people misinterpreted from a mid-90s issue of Uncanny…
@wwk5d
My guess on the telepath issue is that the other telepaths either chose not to out him, or simply never looked for confirmation in the first place.
Jean didn’t even really out him. She took him aside to ask him to stop pretending. She kept at it, refusing to be turned aside by his distractions, but she didn’t even out Bobby to himself. The way the story was written, Bobby already knew he was gay (not bi-). Bobby had even earlier in the conversation explained why he was pretending, because he felt he couldn’t handle being both gay and a mutant, and it was easier to hide being gay than to hide that you could turn yourself into a snowman.
@Leo
Ironically, I had edited my comment to make sure I didn’t “imply” anything as to your orientation, referring to “people” in the first line (as in it’s an argument I see a lot, but not necessarily yours), and “we” when speaking of the straight perspective (as in it’s partially mine, not necessarily yours).
Having said that, I did *assume* you were straight, and if that came through despite my edits and made you feel like I was distorting your perspective, I assure you that was not my intention.
As I stated, it’s the specific “metaphor” argument that I reject. I do have appreciation for a lot of the other arguments presented on the topic. Case in point:
@Dazzler:
You said, “It makes less sense than revealing that Warren Worthington has been a Native American this whole time.”
That one struck a chord with me. It reminds me of Psylocke being mystically turned into an Asian woman, which always bothered me. As an Asian person myself, I would rather Psylocke go back to her initial race or be replaced by a born Asian (Revanche becomes the new Psylocke or the new Marvel continuity has the Braddocks be half-siblings or adopted siblings). As such, I can understand how some homosexual readers may resent the Bobby retcon if they hold a particularly strong value to the “born that way” notion.
On the flip side, this article makes a compelling argument that there’s some good aspects in the way this was handled too: http://www.rachelandmiles.com/xmen/?p=3503