Aron E. Coleite, the new writer on Ultimate X-Men, has put the title's two gay characters front and center in his first story arc, though the spotlight certainly has come at a cost. Since the story has gotten gay comic fans talking, I was happy to get to talk to Aron about the story so far, his perspective on Ultimate Colossus and Northstar as well as Perry Moore's list of dead LGBT superheros, "Who cares about the death of a gay superhero, anyway?"

AfterElton.com: Since this is your introductory arc on UXM, I’m curious about what you’re trying to accomplish with this story – what tone are you trying to establish for your run?
Aron E. Coleite: I just wanted to go as far as I could with the characters. I didn’t want to do anything safe, I wanted to try to stir up conversation, try to stir up debate about the characters I love so dearly. I wanted to make tough choices and I wanted to doing things that people could see the characters doing but maybe they didn’t see this coming.

It was really important for me to do a story that I felt was important to me. I didn’t want to do anything that was middle-of-the-road or safe. Jeph Loeb has this really good advice about writing… anything, let alone comic books. When you write it, you want to feel like ‘Okay, am I gonna cry when I see this?’, ‘Am I going to really feel a connection with that?’ These are characters I felt a real connection to and as long as I was feeling emotional about it and as long as I felt like that it was an emotionally based story, I felt like it was fine.

Warning, things get SPOILER-riffic after the break.

AE: In the second issue, the halfway point of the arc has a shocking cliffhanger with Northstar either dying or very near to death in his boyfriend Colossus’ arms. What led you to that plot point? Was it the emotional connection to the characters?
AC: I wanted to tell an epic love story. Whether its Romeo & Juliet or Colossus & Northstar, everybody loves an amazing love story and I think what I really wanted to be able to tell was that Colossus – especially with Northstar – was a relationship that people found relatable and ended tragically. There are some surprises to come but getting to that point – doing everything that he’s done only to lose him in that moment while he was desperate to save him. For me it doesn’t matter if it’s Scott and Jean or Colossus and Northstar, it’s a love story and I think the audience is adult enough and sophisticated enough and savvy enough, it doesn’t matter if they’re heterosexual or homosexual. It’s just a love story between two people who really care for each other.

AE: Have you heard of a list put together by Perry Moore called “Who Cares About the Death of a Gay Superhero, Anyway?”
AC:: No, never heard of it.

AE: It’s kinda like the Women in Refrigerators list but focused on gay superhero characters and I know some people see the message of the list as ‘Nothing bad should happen to queer characters.’ But what I found interesting was that I saw a pattern where gay characters get to have full lives in mature titles where there also more likely to get killed off -- in something like X-Statix -- but in more mainstream titles they’re on the sidelines and they don’t get full lives except maybe they get to show up as a shocking death in Wolverine like Northstar did.
AC: Yeah, and come back as a zombie.

AE: Yeah. But, when I read your story while thinking of that list, I had an interesting reaction because the affection between Colossus and Northstar really drove that story. It reminded me of how that’s a classic moment with a lot of superhero couples – Phoenix killing herself in front of Scott, that sort of thing.
AC: It was totally about recreating that image of Superman holding Supergirl, of Scott holding Phoenix. It’s across every single publisher and brand and character. I wanted to recreate that classic image of the lover holding their departed in their arms… and it shouldn’t matter who’s arms or what it is as long as you buy it emotionally. If you buy that Piotr is desperate enough to save Northstar, desperate enough to do drugs, desperate enough to go into the lions’ den to save him, only to get there moments too late. For me, that’s where I felt emotionally connected to the story and I think Mark Brooks did an amazing job with the art.

The death of Phoenix, a turning point in X-Men history

AE: Northstar is a major icon for gay superhero fans – partly because there haven’t been gay characters before who have been in such a prominent position (with Colossus being a bit of an exception since he’s a different version). Did you think that it would cause a big reaction having Northstar die?
AC: No… I thought I would get much more reaction that Colossus was a drug user than Northstar dying because it’s comic books and you’re not sure what happens with Northstar in that scene. Death doesn’t mean a lot in comic books… or it doesn’t mean as much as it should mean… I thought, ‘Oh, it’s one of those cliffhanger endings.’ and I wanted to do a cliffhanger ending… because of what I want to do later and because of what it does to Piotr’s character and how it drives the rest of the arc. It was all about that, I didn’t really think it would be an issue because in a perfect world it’d be like killing Phoenix on the moon… I was thinking from a different point of view and not a ‘He’s an icon’ point of view. I don’t know if that was ignorant of me but I was just trying to think of them as characters. I wasn’t really thinking about their iconic class, I was just thinking this was a good story for these characters. Their genders and their sexual orientation didn’t really play into it for me.

AE: One thing you do in this story arc is you expand on the origin of Ultimate Colossus. We see him struggling with his sexuality and keeping a secret that he’s a mutant. We also find out how he got involved with the mafia – after getting kicked out of his home. Will we get to see Northstar’s origin similarly fleshed out?
AC: Not in this arc but potentially later (which might be a spoiler to what I have planned) but there’s going to be more backstories in future stories and Northstar is definitely going to be one of them.

Jean discovers one of Colossus' painful memories

AE: What got you to bring Alpha Flight and Aurora into the Ultimate universe?
AC: I’m a big sucker for Alpha Flight. I’m an old time X-Men fan going back to the Claremont days and I’ve always had a love of Alpha Flight. I don’t know what it is but there are a lot of people who love… who adore Alpha Flight. Now (John) Bryne’s run was amazing and the Chris Claremont stuff in the X-Men books was excellent but there couldn’t be a superteam more lame if you tried. But the X-Men are so iconic and so cool and whenever a new writer comes along to Ultimate X-Men you get to package them... and I noticed they hadn’t used Alpha Flight yet. At the heart of it was the Colossus story, I knew this Northstar angle could be a way to get in, to get Alpha Flight, to get Aurora and get the brother/sister relationship going and her disapproving of his relationships… I think we all have family, siblings or people in our lives as close as siblings who disapprove of our choices and this felt like riche territory in which to go.

AE: In this story arc, you also introduce Banshee, a drug that gives people superpowers and mutants more powers. We learn that, without Banshee, Colossus doesn’t have the strength to do anything in his metal form. Where were you trying to take character with this revelation? Is there something you’re trying to tell us about Colossus with his Banshee use?
AC: I was really trying to -- when the steroids story broke out with baseball -- I’m a huge baseball fan, always have been and I knew people were using steroires, I knew what was going on and I was still oddly emotional when the players’ list was broken. I was surprised how emotional I was in reaction – I knew people can’t throw a hundred miles per hour without help. I got involved with Ultimate X-Men around the same time and I wondered ‘What would happen if I found out some of the characters that I love, like the X-Men, were doping? What if I found out they were using performance-enhancing drugs to do their superheroics? How would the characters react? How would they feel?’ I was obviously drawn to the muscle man of the group to be able to play that story and I remember as a kid I always thinking, ‘Well he can turn his skin to steel but why does turning your skin to steel mean you’re super-strong?’ I never got that, I was always the kid… overanalyzing every character trait and Colossus was one of those things.

When you think about it, Stan Lee -- awesome, Chris Claremont -- amazing but when they come up with some of their characters its for flash – because it looks good that’s why. That’s why he’s super strong – because it’s awesome. And that’s a good enough reason. But I think that the things that Grant Morrison does, that (Warren) Ellis does so well and what Alan Moore does so well is deconstructing what the heroes’ mythology is in this day and age. I started to look at Colossus and think, ‘You can turn your skin to steel but what if that’s a bad thing? What if you don’t have the strength to accompany it? What if you’re too weak to lift up your own arms? What is it like to be encased in steel, what the benefit of that mutation?’ So -- what if you needed something like Banshee to make yourself useful and what if you became addicted to that? What does that do to the character? When Mark Millar introduced the character he was working in the mafia, so it occurred to me that… he could have this secret history and be doing this for, ostensibly, 93 issues, never telling the rest of his friends… and for somebody like Colossus it’s so important to be a hero, it’s so important to be a good guy. It helps him to be a good hero and that’s what’s important to him. He wants to be a hero and it doesn’t matter if he has to take a drug to be a hero. I think a lot of people when they were taking the steroids, they said ‘It’s making me a better baseball player and that’s my job, to be a better baseball player. It’s a competitive market and I need to stay competitive.’

For me, re-reading those issues I think the argument may be one-sided.. that doing Banshee is wrong and that the people doing Banshee are wrong but the truth is I was trying to understand why Colossus would try to do Banshee, especially in the dangerous world where they live, especially when Captain America did drugs to become a superhero.

AE: One of the other developments in this arc is that Colossus’ relationship with Nightcrawler starts to mend. We see Kurt make some conciliary gestures and even join his team to rescue Northstar. Where did you want to take Nightcrawler with this story? Is his religious views becoming more nuanced as he experiences more of the world?
AC: Kirkman did so much with Nightcrawler leading the Morlocks and being down with all the ugly people. I think he grew a lot in that, I think it was less about his religion down there and the humanity of what people go through, what it really feels like to be an outcast, what other people feel like when they are outcast. Living with the Morlocks allowed him to turn to Piotr and they used to be really good friends and let him say ‘Look, I think I finally get it and I’m really sorry I said what I said. I didn’t understand.’ I was trying to do it in a shorthand, to do it in a way of saying that their friendship was so important. Kurt’s gesture of support is going to be ‘Yeah, I’m going to help you out, I’m going to help you get Northstar back, I’m going to be by your side because I totally see what you’re saying and I agree with it.’