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X-Factor #45 ends with a gay cliffhanger
Comics writer Peter David has a pretty gay-inclusive history. His original run on X-Factor is partially remembered for how used the status of mutantkind to explore gay issues, in 1999 he won a GLAAD media award for his work on Supergirl and his Madrox mini-series suggested that some of Jamie Madrox's selves were exploring his bisexual side. With his return to X-Factor gay fans have been wondering where he would take the series and, indeed, he gave them quite a teaser at the end of the most recent issue. But watch out for SPOILERS before you read any further: There's been plenty of speculation about Shatterstar and Rictor over the years. Both characters' sexuality have stayed ambiguous and their relationship has been similarly unclear. At the end of X-Factor #45, however, a formerly-possessed Shatterstar comes to his senses and shares a kiss with Rictor.
The last page to X-Factor #45 Does this mean Shatterstar and Rictor's relationship is no longer ambiguous? We'll have to wait until next month to find out. In the meantime, however, I'm pretty sure this is the first time a male couple has been given the "will they or won't they" treatment in such a top-tier title. And thanks to Cylon for bringing this to our attention. Submitted by on Mon, 2009-06-29 14:15. |
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I see that Shatterstar...
I see that Shatterstar is no longer working the 80's "Poison" glam-rock hair. Normally I'd approve, but now he looks disturbingly like Rachel Summers.
Still, looking forward to seeing this development.
He reminds me of
You're right
I can see that...
I can see where you guys are getting that. It hadn't occurred to me - but, I can see it in that panel. I think it'll look better in future issues, where we can see it more. (And maybe elsewhere in the book even - I've been so fixated on the last page, which I keep seeing posted online, I forget what the rest of the book looked like!)
8)
Daniel Craig
In one of the last panels he has that classic Daniel Craig sullen expression.
Whoever drew this was having a lot of fun.
Ken
Ricstar!
My store ran out of X-Factor on Wednesday, even though it's on my list, so I had to wait till Friday to read it. And I was very happy with what I read! I remember when the X-Force issues intially came out hinting that there might be a 'very close' relationship between Rictor and Shatterstar. It's very nice to see something actually come out about it!
I was reading various boards this weekend, and it seems, like with the soaps, that most fans are pleased with this. And apparently, their 'Nuke'-like name is 'Ricstar'...sounds good to me.
Oh, and I LOVE Shatterstar's makeover! The reaaaallly long hair and horrible outfits of the past made me not like him so much. This makeover makes me appreciate him so much more. Now he seems like a character, instead of a Liefeld-ad!
8)
Yay!
Imagination + nifty
I don't think that the gay storyline for Ricstar ever (explicitly) got that far. As far as canon goes, I think they've been "best friends" for a decade.
Except for in the imaginations of fans! There are GIGS of slash online.
Yup, there has been a lot
Is this Marvel's first gay kiss?
Not First Male-Male Kiss
I seem to recall in X-Force/X-Statix (when it was mutant celebreties on the team) that one of the characters shared a kiss with his boyfriend. It wasn't drawn in quite the detail we see here however. And i could hae sworn that Hulking and Wiccan have been show sharing a kiss or two. Guess I'll have to pull out my issues of Young Avengers to refresh my memory on that.
Once upon a time I died. And like my namesake I got better.
Yeah, there were a couple
Yeah, there were a couple of same-sex kisses in X-Statix, and at least one scene with two men in bed together. I think there has been some other male/male kisses as well, but I can't recall off the top of my head. I know there was one in Peter David's Captain Marvel series...but it doesn't count since the kiss was forced.
Hulkling and Wiccan have not yet had an on-panel kiss though...but, fingers crossed, maybe it'll happen during the current Young Avengers miniseries.
There have been a number of same-sex kisses for lesbian characters though.
New Young Avengers
I'm not a fan of the new Young Avengers series. Its filled with a bunch of mean second-rate villains pretending to be the YA's. Wickan, Hulkling, and the rest are like background scenery. I doubt we get much character development for the duo since the series revolves around this new team. I actually hope they don't have any kiss scenes in this limited series. Hopefully they will get their own series (this seems like a no-brainer, but Marvel never pulls the trigger) or at least get to have a romance in a YA book that actually includes them in a meaningful way.
Did "Ultimate" Colossus and Northstar ever kiss in the "Ultimate X-Men" series? I know they dated for quite awhile, but I don't recall if they ever got to make out?
Young Avengers
Heinberg's Young Avengers
Just because he's working on it doesn't mean it will be out soon. It could wind up having delays like Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine or, well, Young Avengers v1. If they wait until it's complete to run it (which would be a smart move), we could be in for a long wait. If they don't, we could see the first issue soon, but have a long wait between issues.
Frankly, I think they've just plain waited too long. The YA had incredible heat at first, but a long absence except for some middling minis built around crossover events has dissipated that.
Agreed...
YA was really hot when it first debuted. It was one of my fave books when it was out, but it has been forever since they've had a proper outing in their own ongoing book, I don't know if that magic can be recaptured. At least it is being worked on.
Once upon a time I died. And like my namesake I got better.
Finally!!
PAD and Rictor
Hot Sword-fighting Alien + Earth-Shaking Mutant Action
Shatterstar is an alien, so it is an interspecies gay relationship! Shatterstar hasn't been around much for the last few years but if I recall he was a lot like Longshot. Curious and confused by the ways of people from earth. Most likely, being gay isn't something frowned apon in Shatterstars world (the Mojoverse, I believe), so we'll see how this plays out for the two characters.
Peter David (my favorite comic writer of all time) has dropped a few hints about Rictor's sexuality in previous issues. Once Multiple Man asked him if he slept with Magneto's son Quicksilver (another character whose sexuality has been questioned somewhat), but when Ric slept with Wolfsbane I thought his bisexuality (?) was once again beng swept under the rug. Nice to see it is being addressed. When 'Star showed up two issues ago I was waiting for some relationship developments and wasn't totally suprised when they kissed.
I agree with some other posters. I'm not a big fan of the artist on X-Factor right now! To each his own, but that kiss would have been much hotter if the Shatterstar hadn't looked like a bloated girl and Rictor hadn't looked like a poor excuse for Gambit on a bad hair day.
Nice to see Marvel reward longtime readers for a change with this. Too often nowadays continuity has been thrown out the window and past relationships are forgotten. Bravo!
Mojoverse and Homosexuality
The Mojoverse's gimmick is that it's entirely media-driven, so the entire culture's attitude would probably be driven by ratings. Lord knows what the rating themselves come from. I don't pay a lot of attention to the Mojoverse.
Fabian Nicieza, the writer who first laid the groundwork for Rictor/Shatterstar, said his intention was that Shatterstar was raised to be entirely asexual (I think bred to be on some sort of violence-based reality show, but it's been a while), and that he had no idea what his sexuality was. He was going to have a relationship with Rictor as part of exploring that. Fabian hadn't decided what Shatterstar was going to be once the storyline was over.
Interestingly, unlike some other cases, there doesn't appear to have been a deliberate decision to axe this story point. Fabian left the series before he paid off the groundwork he'd laid. The next writer was reportedly going to follow it through, but wanted to untangle the mess of Shatterstar's origin first. Then he got prematurely axed, and the writer after that took the book in a new direction and dropped a whole bunch of characters, including both Rictor and Shatterstar. And neither character had more than brief, undeveloped appearances between then and X-Force.
So neither has been "straightened out" by Marvel. The only other relationship we've seen for either was Rictor pursuing Wolfsbane, but that was resurrected by PAD, the same writer who took pains to establish Rictor as bi, and is giving us this story now.
Dug this up
Got to thinking about these characters and found this in-depth article about their relationship.
Article: http://www.shatteringtheearth.com/ThePairing.html
The duo share secrets: http://www.shatteringtheearth.com/xforce/43-4.JPG
Most recent mention of their relationship: http://www.shatteringtheearth.com/xfactor/14-3.JPG
X-Factor
It looks like most of the posters are pretty familiar with the book, but it might be a good idea to provide a 411 on the series for newcomers:
X-Factor is a revival of Peter David's short but critically acclaimed run in the middle of the original run on X-Factor. The idea is to take C-list mutants - the kind the A-list books wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole - and tell strong, character driven stories that make them just as, if not more compelling than the big-name X-Men characters.
In the current incarnation, the book is a detective series revolving around Jamie Madrox, a mutant with the power to create an army of duplicates. In this version, his duplicates often represent aspects of his personality, sometimes deeply buried ones. Rictor, the character from the book we're all talking about right now, lost his powers as a result of a big MU-spanning event called M-Day, in which 90% of the world's mutants lost their powers. (All the big names, of course, were conveniently in that top 10% who kept their powers.)
After the recent (truly horrific) conclusion of a storyline with Siryn being pregnant with Madrox' child, the team is fragmented. Madrox is stuck in the future, while the rest of the team is working various angles of a case that is somehow connected to what Madrox is doing in the future.
The X-Men franchise has been floundering in the years since M-Day, but X-Factor is the one book to turn that into a strength. Since M-Day ripped the book's reason for existing out from under PAD's feet, he realized that this also did the same to the characters on an in-story level. Now, it's a book about people who've lost their reasons for being, and are searching for a new direction in their lives.
It's an excellent book for lots of non-gay reasons, and well worth checking out.
Interesting developments
Shatterstar's creator Rob Liefeld is mad about the outing.
“… I have nothing against gays, I have gay family, nuthin’ but love here,” he wrote on his message board (registration required). “Ditto gay characters if that’s what their true origins are.
“As the guy that created, designed and wrote his first dozen appearances, Shatterstar is not gay. Sorry. Can’t wait to someday undo this. Seems totally contrived.”
Created by Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza, Shatterstar debuted in New Mutants #99 (March 1991) before becoming a fixture of X-Force when the series launched a few months later.
Like Cable before him, Shatterstar was the quintessential early-’90s Marvel — and Liefeld — superhero. Wearing shoulder pads and countless pouches and wielding an oversized sword, Shatterstar was a genetically engineered warrior from another dimension. With a flowing rattail.
He initially was depicted as asexual, and struggling to understand human behavior. What he wasn’t, Liefeld insists, is gay.
When a forum member pointed out that other writers continued to flesh out the character after Liefeld left Marvel — some even dropped apparent clues about his sexuality and his relationship with Rictor — Liefeld responded: “Your opinion doesn’t change the fact that it sucks and it’s not a positive move in most fans’ eyes. And it’s all well and fine that you don’t respect a creator’s wishes or intent. I’m different like that.”
Later he added, “Shatterstar is akin to Maximus in Gladiator. He’s a warrior, a Spartan, and not a gay one.”
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/07/liefeld-cant-wait-to-someday-undo-shatterstar-development/#more-14650
Peter David responds
I understand that some parents have the same reaction. They were responsible for their children’s first appearances and, when informed of their sexual persuasion, firmly declare it’s impossible, they can’t be gay.
I find particularly distressing Rob’s contention that Shatterstar can’t possibly be gay because he’s a warrior. That might come as a bit of a shock to Alexander the Great. For that matter, among his assortment of gay friends, I suppose Rob has none in the military since of course gays aren’t allowed to serve unless they keep their mouths shut. Perhaps Rob would like to see “don’t ask, don’t tell” implemented in the Marvel universe.
PAD
Liefeld
Eh. I like the fact that Liefeld always dives into every project with the enthusiasm of a 10-year old, and that excitement rubs off, even when he also dives into each project with the TALENT of a 10-year old. But I've long since stopped listening to anything he might have to say about... well, anything.
It's worth pointing out that the groundwork for this relationship was laid by Fabian Nicieza, who co-created the character with Liefeld, and continued to write him for several years after Liefeld took off for Image. So it's not really a case of original creator vs. later writers.
Thanks
Thanks for finding this! Not suprised to hear coming from Liefeld. He HELPED create Shatterstar and he abandoned the character years ago so it is interesting to see him show interest at this point. Leifeld can de-gay Shatterstar as soon as he learns how to draw women with internal organs and not just boobs and 6 foot long legs!