Ho Yay / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Notice the hand? So have all the shippers.

The following have their own pages:

• X-Men

---

• Captain America and Bucky. Cap almost constantly mourned Bucky when he was brought out of the ice; he had to be snapped out of it with an intervention. And there was an Elseworld where Namor woke Cap and the only word he could say was "Bucky." After Bucky came back following the Winter Soldier series, this was dialled up significantly, which, combined with Steve's similar dynamic with Falcon (who, out of respect for Steve, sought out and befriended Bucky, becoming his closest male friend besides Steve), lead to a weird three-way situation where all three men would regularly engage in Ho Yay shenenigans with either one of the other.
• Captain America and Iron Man get this a lot too.
  • The entirety of Civil War: The Confession reads like a horrifically bad break-up between Cap and Tony Stark. Once you get to the point where Tony's sobbing over Cap's corpse and saying, "It wasn't worth it", it's practically undeniable.
    • As mentioned in the list of slashy moments, there's even a point in Civil War where Moon Knight tells Cap that he and Tony should just get a room and leave the rest of the heroing community out of their spat.
    • It gets even more blatant by the end of "Fallen Son" because it culminates with Tony with telling the dead Cap "I miss your battle cry".
    • To top of all this off, Rogers and Stark are married on Earth-3490 (in which Stark was born as a woman). The featured image of the couple has Cap and Natasha "Iron Woman" Stark kissing on their wedding day, in full costume.
    • It was only a matter of time before someone photoshopped Tony's signature beard (no, not Pepper) over said image.
  • For that matter, the fans who ship Captain America and Iron Man together have a list of one hundred and counting Ho Yay moments between the two. Most look like nothing more than the actions of two teammates and good friends, but several, including dramatic◊ mouth◊-to-mouth◊ and especially one that is just as (arguably) bad◊ as the Superman/Batman example above, make it fairly◊ difficult◊ to see the two as Just Friends.
  • And now, thanks to Dark Reign: Fantastic Four, we have, as one commentator put it: "So they're basically saying that Tony and Steve aren't gay, but if they had the opportunity to have it be heterosexual, they'd totally get together." Subtle, Marvel. Really.
  • And that's without mentioning the time Tony's armour became sentient and started acting like an abusive boyfriend, refusing to let him see his friends and current Love Interest, demanding that Tony get inside it, and eventually taking him to an island and torturing him... where Tony's memories of Steve helped him keep fighting.
  • Read the end of Avengers Prime and try to say that it doesn't sound like that scene in romantic comedies where the guy admits what a jerk he's been and praises the girl to the high heavens so they can be together. Just look at Tony's face when Steve hugs him!
    • Tony: "I'm not half as good at — at anything as I am when I'm doing it next to you." He sounds like he's proposing!
    • Doesn't hurt that Alan Davis has drawn the group surrounding the hug as if they're all thinking "Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other!"
  • And then there are scenes like this, where Cap literally comes riding on horseback dressed in shining armor and wielding a sword to rescue a (naked!) Tony from medieval ogres, and Tony stands there dreamy-eyed while Steve stands in front of him brandishing a sword and looking for all the world like he's protecting Tony's virtue from would-be rapists. And then he carries Tony off on his horse. Most blatant Knight and Damsel metaphor ever.
  Steve: Hop on.
  Tony: There's got to be another horse running around here somewhere.
  Steve: Hop on! Let's go.
  Tony: [climbs up on the horse] Any excuse to get me to hold you.
  Steve: You see right through me.
• Really, Captain America has this with most men he meets and befriends. Frequent ally D-Man actually invited Steve to shower with him when they first met after a workout, which Steve accepted. Years later, D-Man would be revealed as gay, which...really isn't surprising when you take those early scenes into account, alongside D-Man's noted lack of female love interests.
• Another popular companion for Steve is Clint Barton. After the two became friends, they'd regularly be seen working out together, would grin like schoolgirls any time they saw one-another, and generally depicted as really close. Though Steve has many companions he's extremely close to, until the resurgence of Bucky, Hawkeye was the go-to for Steve's most loyal companion when Iron Man wasn't an option.
  • During Hawkeye's first solo-miniseries, what's essentially four issues of Clint courting his future wife, Mockingbird, is interrupted by them randomly running into an out-of-costume Captain America. Though Clint claims that the tension is because he's concerned that Bobbi might find Steve more attractive than him, his behaviour actually comes off more like a man who's just bumped into his ex.
  • During Busiek's first arc, the Avengers are transformed into figures in a fantasy setting, with Steve being the only one to retain his actual memories. The first person he seeks out is Hawkeye, who only needs to gaze into Steve's eyes for a second before his true identity and memories resurface. When thanking Steve for seeking him out first, Steve happily responds that he was the obvious choice, a statement that comes off as mildly flirtly.
  • At one point, when Steve became dissilusioned with the Avengers after a disagreement on killing, Hawkeye follows him out, takes him to a bar to cheer him up, and when he's still glum, suggests they just form their own team together. It wasn't intended as such, but it does end up coming off as if Clint is trying to get Steve to run away with him.
  • During the conflict between the Thunderbolts and the Avengers, Clint is conflicted due to having been a long-time member of the latter, but having trained the former and helped them become the heroes they are now. The focal point of the conflict, however, ends up being Clint's inability to decide between Karla, his ex-girlfriend with whom he was in love with, and Steve. Though Steve was confident that he'd choose him, he's shown to be hurt when Clint instead chooses Karla, and the two act like a recently broken up couple at the end.
  • Its notable that Clint also has frequent problems butting heads with other close male friends of Cap. Though his conflict with Falcon was more due to Henry Peter Gyrich's interference, his rivalry with Bucky is, largely, based on jealousy over his closeness with Steve. When he finds out about Bucky being alive and becoming the new Captain America, he angrily confronts him in a manner not unlike a jealous lover, he picks an argument with him over how he was the 'first choice' of Steve's replacement, and later takes the opportunity to embarrass Bucky in front of Steve, ostensibly just to show him up in front of their mutual friend. The pair did patch things up (in fact, they had their own share of these moments briefly), but only did so for Steve's sake, and would later have a similar falling out over their mutual relationship with Black Widow (Bucky's long-time girlfriend and the love of his life, whom Clint had recently had a fling with during an emotional moment in both their lives).
  • Speaking of Hawkeyes, Kate Bishop was very... impressed with Whitney Frost AKA Madame Masque's physique in the Matt Fraction run's annual. She even apologizes for acting goony.
• In Supreme Power, Mark Milton (Hyperion) and half the male cast members, most notably Blur and Doc Spectrum. His first battle with Spectrum is a BDSM-laden spectacle, complete with Mark begging him to hit him.
• Marvel's The Incredible Hercules features the titular muscular shirtless god Public Domain Character traveling around with teenager Amadeus Cho. The innate Ho Yay was lampshaded by the Amazons in issue #121, who kidnapped Cho upon mistaking him for Herc's eromenos. A shocked Cho replies "I've read those internet postings too, and take it from the source, it's total bull!" followed soon by a defensive "The technical term is 'adventuring companions.'" Pages here◊ and here.◊

• In the Prince of Power mini, one villain taunts Cho by saying "Heard someone killed your boyfriend." Cho doesn't bother responding.
  • Said mini also features one character (Delphyne, the same one appearing in the above-linked scenes) openly state that she believes Cho cares about Hercules above all others.
• During Hercules's funeral Hercules's various... lady-companions get up to talk about... laying with him. Snowbird says that there are more in the crowd who should join them. Northstar, an openly gay superhero, immediately makes an excuse to leave, much to Namor's surprise.
• It's occasionally suggested Cho reminds Herc of Iolaus. Greek myth is pretty clear about the relationship between Hercules and Iolaus...
• In one issue, as Cho and Herc are going into Hades for Zeus, Cho gets in trouble for counting cards while gambling and is being manhandled by security. Herc gets severely over protective and almost brawls the security guards away from Cho.
• During the "Secret Invasion" arc, Hercules outright flirts with some of the male gods that appear. His bisexuality is just taken as a given at this point without Word of God.
• And then there was Avengers Academy #29, where a naked Herc asks which one of the "strapping young lads" would like to help him recreate the first Olympics...

• The Punisher has this with Cap, too. During Civil War, Cap gave Frank a brutal beatdown while the latter just stood there and took it, saying he won't fight back, "not against you". Cap is the only ideal Frank still believes in.
• Iron Man and War Machine. Even before Rhodey got his Sidekick Graduations Stick, the two were Heterosexual Life-Partners. Rhodey is the one who's always there for Tony, the one Tony allows inside his secret Home Base, who helps him out with his double life, and other, sadder, parts of his life. Tony foists his problems on Rhodey and Rhodey just grins and bears it like an exhausted wife who just doesn't know what else to do to straighten Tony out. The number of times Rhodey also put his foot down and said, "I can't do this anymore. I can't keep watching you hurt yourself. I'm leaving until you stop making both of us suffer" cannot be counted on two hands.
• An issue of Fantastic Four showed Johnny Storm sleeping in his bedroom, which is adorned with Spider-Man merchandise. In particular, he's cuddling a Spider-Man doll.
  • Then there was the time Johnny and Spidey became roommates. Johnny cooked Peter breakfast wearing nothing but boxers and a frilly apron, and generally acts like a jealous housewife.
  • In Dark Wolverine, Daken snidely implies that Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, has feelings for his old pal, Johnny Storm. Ben's enraged response suggests that Daken hit a raw nerve.
  • One Universe away from 616 Jack Storm and Reed Richards are a married couple.
• In the Ultimate Universe, Johnny Storm ends up once dating Jessica Drew, then the Ultimate Spider-Woman (now the new Ultimate Black Widow), who in this world is a clone of Peter Parker, including memories and personality, but in a female body. The original Peter is pretty horrified by this.
  • In All-New Ultimates #4, a group of superheroines goes to the beach and their conversation turns to their respective romantic histories. Jessica talks about how her being Peter Parker's clone affects her and that, apparently as a consequence of this, what feels right to her is "Haha, yeah, girls. Natural redheads in particular." Ultimate Kitty Pryde, who used to be Peter Parker's girlfriend but was sidelined when he got back together with redhead Mary Jane Watson, reacts with a sarcastic: "Great!", to which Jessica responds: "I kinda have a thing for Jewish girls, too." Eight issues later, in the final issue of the series, Jessica admits to Kitty that she has a "big, fat crush" on her and apologizes for making her feel awkward. Kitty however takes it in her stride and says it was awesome of Jessica to admit her attraction to her. However, Jessica then jokingly suggests they make out.
• There was some Les Yay between Gwen and MJ in Amazing Spider-Man — even during their catfights over Peter. An exchange between them at one point goes like this:
  Gwen: Come along, little one! Gwen will buy you a movie mag to keep you cultural till Pete's on his feet again!
  MJ: But, it's like tragic to waste all those dreamy discs!
  Gwen: If it's music you want, bunny, we can grab a kazoo on the way!
  • In the Ultimate Marvel Universe, of course, Gwen is explicitly stated to have had a crush on MJ, though it was only confirmed after her death.
• The Juggernaut and Black Tom were cellmates in prison for a while, and were partners ("in crime") for a really long time after getting out. Any time Black Tom got hurt, the Juggernaut would literally cry. The Juggernaut, bitch. And there's been naked cuddles. And of course, after he slept with an alternate universe's She-Hulk, he commented, "Sometimes it's just better with women."
• Zig-zags in the interaction between Phat and Vivisector in X-Force and X-Statix. After some flirty interactions, they begin dating - which turns out to be a fake relationship for media attention. This helps them both realize they really are gay, but not attracted to each other.
• Aside from the apparent dates between Captain America and Iron Man, the Marvel Adventures: Avengers series pulled off some Les Yay between Storm and Giant-Girl when Hatemonger's emotion-influencing device went haywire. The two went from yelling their heads off and attacking each other to an embrace and talking about how jealous they were of each other. Spider-Man even mutters "Maybe... they're gonna..." to himself as the other Avengers watch.
• This trope might be the real reason Spider-Man prefers to work alone, but that didn't stop Norman Osborn from piling on the insinuation about him and Harry in "American Son."
  Norman: Just accept it and come clean... about Harry and your obsession with him.
  Norman: Would it loosen your tongue to know that Harry sold you out for a woman?
  • And finally, outright
  Norman: Do you love my son?
  • Spider-Man does get quite a bit of Ho Yay.
  • Norman Osborn's default interaction with anybody seems to be creepy sexual tension. A notable example is him watching Namor shower. Also, if his early relationship with Peter Parker was supposed to be paternal, it was the sort of paternal that gets you arrested.
    • Heck, he even had this with Trapster, a minor Spidey/Fantastic Four villain. Of course the twist there was that Spidey was disguised as new supervillain Dusk, whom Trapster took under his wing in the hopes that they could kill Spidey together.
  • At one point the Chameleon outright says "I love you, Peter."
• The idea of Les Yay between She-Hulk and Wasp has been played for Fanservice and laughs at least once. Back during her fourth wall-breaking days, Jen ends up reviewing potential new creative teams for her comic, all of which actually did pages for the issue, intentionally poking fun at their usual work. Of note for this trope was Adam Hughes (AKA: "He of Cheesecake Art"), whose submission had Janet going into combat naked because the clothes she'd been wearing that day hadn't been particle-treated, and Jen appears to enjoy the view before rushing off to join in the upcoming fight as well.
  • Jen's friendship with the Skrull Jazinda had some pretty strong undertones as well, to the point where Jazinda, captured and about to be dissected by the government, is almost certainly about to say "I always loved you" when her connection gets cut. This is Peter David again, so, not that surprising.
    • Not to mention that PAD had fun with She-Hulk and Thundra... Jazinda jokes that She-Hulk and she met through an inter-galactic lesbian dating service and Thundra expresses disappointment when She-Hulk denies this. And of course, Thundra is the leader of a society in the future where women have enslaved most of the male population, so besides sex slaves options for partnership are somewhat limited. Given her background, it's somewhat surprising her Les Yay hasn't been played up more but then, she started out as more of a straw feminist than anything.
    • Hell, Jazinda canonically has the hots for Jen...one half of this pairing is already in place.
• Nico and Karolina of Runaways. Karolina nurses a crush on Nico for the first 25-or-so issues before trying to kiss her. Nico is shocked but doesn't exactly deny that she might be interested - it has more to do with the fact that her first two love interests turned out to be manipulating the entire team. Of course, before either of them have five minutes to talk about it, it turns out that Karolina has an Arranged Marriage to a Super Skrull that not even she knew about, and it may be the only way to stop an interplanetary war. It's the Marvel Universe, go figure. They've still had Ship Tease moments ever since K and Xavin came back, and now that Xavin's been Put on a Bus, Karolina and Nico are finally a couple.
  • And then there's Molly and Klara, who are seldom ever seen apart. The way Molly frets over Klara when she gets seriously injured and the way Klara usually defers to Molly's whims (and instinctively moves to protect Molly from a Sentinel during their visit to Avengers Academy) suggests that they might be more than friends, even if neither one is quite of shipping age.
• Nova and Peter of Annihilation.
  Nova: What would I do without you?
  Peter: Die alone?
  Nova: Did not need to hear that.
  • A little later on, when Nova decides to go on what is essentially a suicide mission to take out Annihilus:
    Peter: Did you really think I'd let you run off and get yourself killed without my being there to tell you "I told you so?"
    Nova: Never even crossed my mind.◊
• Some readers of Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool think the entire series is swimming in homoerotic innuendo. After all, it is about two muscular life-partners who go around welding tools while half-dressed...
• It was a running theme with the Marvel character Starfox (real name Eros). Technically, his powers aren't supposed to be sexual, but they're always described with words like "caress" and "tickle," ambiguous drawings. Some notable examples include: Captain America◊, Triton◊, and male-coded robots◊.
• Mark Gruenwald and Carmine Infantino's run on the original Spider-Woman series was hilariously loaded with Les Yay, with Jessica Drew repeatedly bemoaning her boyfriend's inability to understand that Spider-Woman is a part of her identity (a part which, incidentally, comes with a costume with two upside-down triangles on it...) Similarly, she abandons him twice in one issue to go chasing after Gypsy Moth (who was later outed as bisexual), and after GM is injured (by Jessica Drew's moronic boyfriend, no less), Spider-Woman carries the girl off to recover and lets her go, even though she terrorized partygoers (albeit hilariously pretentious ones), saying that she has more in common with the strange insect-costumed women than with them. The issue ends with Drew coldly refusing to apologize to her boyfriend for blasting him in the face to prevent him from harming Gypsy Moth. Later, after the obligatory "couples therapy via supervillain kidnapping" arc, more Les Yay arrives with the introduction of Lindsay McCabe, who is somehow immune to Jessica Drew's hostility-inducing pheremones, and the arrival of Nekra, a supervillainess determined to kill Spider-Woman because the pheremones cause her to feel "alien" affection for SW. After a culminating fight in which Nekra's hate-fueled powers crap out and SW accidentally puts her in a coma, the arc ends with poor Jessica Drew getting dumped. After a bizarre mini-arc where SW battles a creepy "waxman", she's bailed out of a humilating therapy session by Lindsay, who insists that Jessica stay at her place till she gets her head together. Immediately after that, all the loose ends and subplots from the Gruenwald/Infantino run are abruptly settled in an issue where Jessica Drew is fired from her job AND evicted from her house, leaving her free to move in with Lindsay. One can only wonder if Gruenwald realized that his run on the series could be interpreted as a thinly-veiled story about a woman coming to grips with her sexuality...
• Daken and everyone, but most notably Bullseye, Johnny Storm, Gambit, and even his own father, Wolverine.
• Black Widow and Mockingbird have had a lot of this whenever the two team up or interact for a certain amount of time (which is sadly too little). Their first thoughts upon meeting for the first time were, quite literally, 'she's pretty!', before embarking on an adventure together that they both enjoyed. Years later, when Mockingbird was transformed into a Communist sleeper agent thanks to a cybernetic STI she got from Widow (thanks to Widow's past relations with Hawkeye, Mockingbird's husband), Widow has to administer a cure, which essentially has her wrestle Bobbi down and make out with her (because the cure is in Widow's saliva), resulting in Mockingbird looking like she's having an orgasm before passing out. Later in the story, after spending a short while making sure Mockingbird was OK, Widow went after some other people infected where it was revealed that a Tap on the Head would also work (meaning she chose to kiss Bobbi), and at the end, Natasha's boyfriend Bucky Barnes mentions he checked on Hawkeye and Mockingbird to see if they were OK, with Bobbi apparently telling him to tell her to 'call if you're still curious'.
  • Both women also have something minor with Spider-Woman as well, with Bobbi at first being annoyed that Jess had hooked up with her now-ex-husband Hawkeye but later ended up working with closely, while Natasha and Jess develop a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship after the latter joins the Secret Avengers (a fact that, really, makes the fact Bobbi left the team just before Jess joined all the sadder).
• Let's not forget about Warlock's...unusually intimate A Boy and His Robot relationship with Doug Ramsey. How intimate, you ask? Well, so intimate that they fuse their bodies together, Warlock refers to Doug as "selfsoulfriend", and at its most suggestive, even features the line "I love you and you are breaking my heart."
  • In one of the alternate worlds seen in Exiles, Warlock accidentally started a cyborg-zombie apocalypse when he merged with Ramsey in an effort to save the boy from the Legacy Virus, which resulted in the virus mutating so that it caused everyone infected with it to become a cyborg zombie. The narration explicitly states that Warlock nearly wiped out humanity because he loved Ramsey and couldn't bear to face life without him.
• Lampshaded in Ultimate Fantastic Four when Ben and Reed go to face Thanos:
  Oh, this is just pathetic. This laconic, heroic, tragicomic— garbage!!! Walking off to certain death with your heads held high! You might as well hold hands, because that's how homoerotic it is!
• Deadpool: Putting aside the massive amounts of Homoerotic Subtext between Deadpool and Cable in Cable & Deadpool, there's plenty more where that came from.
  • Bullseye hero-worships Deadpool to the point where it starts smelling rather Ho Yay-ish in Dark Reign, going so far as to imagine Deadpool as something of his savior from the teachers and kids he hated in school. He cried when they said goodbye! Heck, back in Joe Kelly's run, he mentioned he liked Deadpool because he made him laugh. He's probably the nearest thing he has to a friend... when they aren't trying to kill each other. Which Deadpool usually doesn't take seriously. Really!
  • Steve looked like he was going to blush when he was going to sit in Deadpool's lap.

• Moon Knight and his pilot Frenchie in spades, with a recent retelling of his origin even presenting their first meeting as if Frenchie was trying to pick Marc up at a bar. In this case its intentional, as Frenchie is in fact gay and was in love with Marc, but Marc, being straight and too focused on his work, didn't notice. When the two reconnected after Frenchie moved on, their relationship is depicted as being highly sour, not unlike two exes after a bitter break-up.
• Carol Danvers and Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman certainly qualify. In the first story they appear in together, Avengers Annual #10, Carol’s powers and memories are stolen, and she is left to fall to her death over the Golden Gate Bridge until Spider-Woman swoops in to the stranger’s rescue — a courageous hero come to save a Damsel in Distress. For the rest of the issue, Jess is very protective of Carol and is determined to figure out how to help her recover. In the decades since, Jess and Carol have remained “best friends”, often playfully teasing each other or bickering Like an Old Married Couple during their team-ups. When Jessica gets pregnant and has a baby who she names Gerry, Carol adores him as well◊. Gerry pretty much has two moms.
• Wonder Man, of The Avengers and Beast, of The Avengers and X-Men. When Wonder Man comes back from the dead yet again in the pages of the Busiek/Perez Avengers, Beast shows up (with a bouquet of roses!) and gives him a big tackle, then a sloppy kiss on the lips.◊
  • In an issue of Marvel's Alternate Universe comic Exiles, the team's Alterna-Beast chose not to return to his own universe because, with his lover Wonder Man dead, there was nothing there for him.

---