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"Young Avengers" #3: Another step forward
Yesterday, the latest issue of Young Avengers Presents arrived in comic shops. It focuses on gay Avenger Wiccan, who spends most of the issue getting to know his long-lost brother. The story also includes an early scene where Wiccan discusses his worries in his bedroom with his boyfriend, Hulkling. I can't think of a scene like that in superhero comics before, where a gay couple is shown in such an intimate setting while their relationship is in a stage that's still fresh and innocent. I talked with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who wrote the issue, about Hulking and Wiccan's romance: "It's not something we see a lot (in superhero comics)," he said. "You don't see a lot of young, blossoming gay love."
Gay characters in comics are usually either "barely there" gays or lead into a "very special issue". Seeing gay characters who are equal members of a team and whose sexual orientation isn't a surprising character twist still leaves superhero fans a little bit confused. The Authority's Apollo and Midnighter had a similarly subtle coming out, one that also left readers wondering if their gaydar was set to "oversensitive". There is one major difference between Hulkling and Wiccan and Apollo and Midnighter, however: The Authority is a title aimed at mature readers (primarily for violence) while Young Avengers is geared for the same age groups as the rest of Marvel's superhero titles. This wasn't without controversy; some Young Avengers readers might remember a frequent contributor to the letters column who kept insisting that the relationship would undoubtedly lead to sexual content that would be inappropriate for an all-ages title. Typically, when it comes to age ratings, any sort of gay content earns a higher rating, but Hulkling and Wiccan are presented as equal to any other relationship in the Marvel Universe. That a teenage gay male couple are shown sitting on the same bed without any apologies or worries is another quiet but solid step toward equal treatment for gay couples. Submitted by on Thu, 2008-04-03 08:50. |
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In terms of gay representation, Young Avengers has been a quietly revolutionary comic. Hulkling and Wiccan were outed without any fanfare: readers picked up that they were gay because their dialouge had a dynamic reminiscent of superteam couples like The Fantastic Four's Reed and Sue, The X-Men's Scott and Jean or The Legion's Val and Jekkie.
Hulkling & Wiccan
Hulkling and Wiccan are very possibly the best gay characters in comics ever. No, they don't makeout on-page or do anything like that. But what they do is reflect a growing reality in society. There are a lot more out gay teens nowadays than there used to be and I think it's great that they can not only see gay characters in comics, but gay characters their own age. When I was a teenager this would have been inconceivable.
It's even better in that the boys are both quite powerful. Hulkling has powers of shapeshifting and super strength, which make him a tough hand-to-hand fighter. This is a great departure from any notion that gays are weak "sissies". Wiccan has powerful magical abilities that are often essential to the Young Avengers. That they are both so useful to their team keeps them from being marginal characters.
As for "sexual content", well that one's always going to be subjective. Consider the lesson of Nuke. To a lot of people with anti-gay bias, any time two gays so much as touch constitutes a "sexual" occurence. It's the double-standard. If Hawkeye or Stature were to kiss a boy it would go right under the radar. But if Hulkling and Wiccan were to kiss each other it would be "flaunting homosexuality". That's just the way some people think and there's no avoiding that attitude from some.
Hopefully they won't go the way Apollo and the Midnighter did. While they were great characters in the early Authority comics they started to get very agressively drawn as gay, gay, GAY in later ones. Most nauseatingly shown as having a very frilly bedroom and I swear that Apollo's hair (and overall look) gets more feminine looking with each new depiction.
Even so, I do think that another positive milestone has been hit in that we're seeing more gay characters whose gayness is defined by their being a part of a couple. This is a sharp contrast to early gay characters like Northstar who were shown (after much buildup) to be gay, but whose romantic lives were completely unknown, thus furthering the idea that gay men were all loners who have only casual relationships. Now we see more gay characters whose coming out it is made tangible by their being in love with another man, and not just as a public statement. This was also the case with long-suspected gay DC Comics character Obsidian, who was outed in the pages of Manhunter when it was revealed he was dating one of the gay characters in that book (and kissed him on-page).
I think that this emphasis on gay relationships is a step forward.
Not only did Todd and Damon
Not only did Todd and Damon kiss on page, but they're also shown hanging out in bed post-coital (does coitus only refer to hetero sex?) embrace, which actually leads to one of my favorite scenes (Alan Scott beams into the bedroom while Damon is in the shower, hehehe). It's not really fair how Obsidian gets more and better use in Manhunter than in JSA, but his relationship with Todd is really great and I love when the whole group goes out to a club (and isn't Dylan Battles the best pseudonym ever?).
I think the chances of Hulkling and Wiccan sharing a kiss are better than Nuke's chance of a second kiss. Marvel and DC are so desperate for Big Events that Sell Comics I can just envision the "Hulking and Wiccan first kiss issue" being a major selling point. It will be called "Countdown to One More Homoseuxal Day Adventure" and it will sell a million copies and somehow reboot comics as a whole to the mid-70's.
I did adore Todd and Damon,
It just occurred to me that
How could you not mention