Marvel Comics General

I would say in the greater mainstream culture, Storm is still A-List and probably Marvel's Alternate Company Equivalent to Wonder Woman (at least in who's the most recognizable woman). She did take a tumble comics-wise, I'm doing some back-reading and the way she was sidelined for Logan and Scott's crap is ugh.

Yeah, this year has kinda sucked for LGBT representation. Just last year we had Young Avengers and Avengers Arena with prominent gay storylines, and I think last year we had trans representation in FF, X-Factor was still going and had Shatterstar and Rictor...yeah they dropped off. Young Avengers should've been an ongoing.

edited 17th Oct '14 5:32:50 PM by MegaJ

Yeah, Tong came out as trans in FF. FF was just awesome all around. Young Avengers was intended to be ongoing for however long the Mc Kelvie gang wanted to stick around, they just decided to move on after tying the first arc up. This year as far as sexual minorities go there's just been X-Men, Captain Marvel, and Original Sins (as far as I'm aware) but on the other hand Al Ewing has been doing a fantastic job of representing Loki as a genderqueer character in Agent of Asgard.

In terms of LGBT representation at Marvel in 2013: Young Avengers, of course, was the big one. FF had Marvel's first transgender character with Tong. Astonishing X-Men had Northstar and Kyle, along with having Karma as part of the cast (even if she continued to have no luck with finding anyone to date). X-Treme X-Men had Howlett and Hercules as a couple. Uncanny X-Force had a brief same-sex relationship between Psylocke and Cluster. X-Factor finished its run, with Rictor and Shatterstar still there. Hawkeye had that nice gay couple Kate Bishop was friends with (along with a lesbian in Clint's building, though she was extremely minor). Avengers Arena had Cullen Bloodstone. Superior Spider-Man still had Max as a supporting character, for a while. X-Men had a running subplot involving Bling!. Fearless Defenders had Annabelle Riggs, and she eventually got a girlfriend. Scarlet Spider had Wally and Donald. Even Uncanny X-Men had Benjamin come out as gay, right near the end of the year.

So last year had an absolute shitload of LGBT content.

This year's had Loki, Cullen was in Undercover. Ultimate Jessica Drew came out as liking girls. Hawkeye still had Kate's buddies. Hulkling and Prodigy were in the Original Sins mini. X-Men continued the Bling! subplot for a few issues before wrapping it up. Captain Marvel had a lesbian alien during its first arc. Wat XM has had occasional cameos from Anole. Northstar has been part of Amazing X-Men's cast. ANXF has had Danger propositioning both men and women. But most of this is really minor stuff. So it's a huge drop from last year.

I'm hoping next year ends up being much better.

Anole has some sort of spotlight issue... thing coming up IIRC. Granted, it's just one issue.

Yeah, an upcoming issue of Amazing X-Men, I believe. Or the Annual. I forget which. We'll see if his sexuality comes into play in that.

Ult!Jess wasn't that surprising to me. Her first appearances had her still having feelings for MJ. Though this could initially have been a form of Single-Target Sexuality.

edited 17th Oct '14 6:51:16 PM by ScarletCajun

Falcon has a criminal history?

Pimp. No one liked it. No one mentions it.

Always thought that was discontinuity in fact if not exactly in name by now.

Yup. TIME! FOR!! BACKSTORY!!!

Up until the mid-70's or so, Falcon was just a good honest guy who just happened to have been stranded on an island alongside Cap. Oh, and he also just happened to be able to talk to birds. Then, Steve Englehart came along and revealed that 'Falcon' had been a trap set by the Red Skull, when he first used the cosmic cube. It turned out that Falcon had, before becoming The Falcon, been, for lack of a better term, a pimp. Red Skull then decided to take some random crook (which just happened (again,) to be Falcon,) and transform him with the cube into the Falcon, to lure Cap into a false sense of security, and stab him in the back when both Cap and Falcon least expected it.

I'm being 100% serious here. Honest.

edited 17th Oct '14 8:34:05 PM by kkhohoho

Look up his "Snap" Wilson story. Or, better yet, don't. Don't look it up. If you ever stumble upon it, immediately wipe it from your memory.

If you must know: The brief, fucked-up story is that Sam Wilson, as a young man, had a nervous breakdown and became a criminal going by the name "Snap" Wilson. Then the Red Skull used the Cosmic Cube to suppress the "Snap" persona in order to make him Captain America's buddy as part of a needlessly complicated plan. While running for Congress, Sam actually ended up on the verge of another breakdown, and his "Snap" persona started coming back, but he hallucinated a conversation with a preacher friend of his father's, which helped him regain control of himself.

The "Snap" Wilson idea was a fucktarded idea from the start, and later writers kept trying to figure out a way to make it less horribly offensive, which only resulted in it becoming ridiculously convoluted.

edited 17th Oct '14 8:23:01 PM by Tiamatty

It's still referenced from time to time (a few years ago they did a one-shot where he helped out was a woman who was implied to be one of his former prostitutes) but yeah for OBVIOUS reasons they left that out of the movie and try to ignore it as much as possible in the comics.

Wow that sounds incredibly racist.

Annnnnyway, the lesbian aliens from Captain Marvel were apparently based on fans that the writer met. Its actually kind of a sweet story.

Magneto sure made some random picks while putting together his supervillain team in Axis.

Remember when superhero team rosters were semi-organic?

edited 18th Oct '14 7:53:22 AM by Bocaj

It was a good time. Now they've got all these robots taking their jobs.

And marrying organic women.

Its sick, really.

Thanks, Cyborg!Obama.

Robobama! Now I want to see a comic with Robobama.

And yet despite it all, I can't bring myself to hate the one all-robot team Marvel's had as far as I'm aware of. Because it had a Doombot who hated them all and cheered up a nice old lady who was freaked out by having tentacles now.

You would've thought he'd go for more heavy hitters. Sabretooth I can see but Hobgoblin stood out to me as the really random ones. Has he done anything of note in recent years?

He's a supervillain franchiser now. That is, he bought the rights to a bunch of C-List supervillains' identities and auctions them off on the black market to prospective henchmen. He's apparently quite powerful in the underworld due to this.

I miss Doombot already. And his bromance with Victor Mancha. Man, AI was such a great book. Shame on people for not reading it.

I think I picked up the first couple issues, but I wasn't a huge fan of the art. I should go back and read the rest of it.

I got the first twenty something issues on sale. It was okay but the AI stuff felt like X-Men mutant rights retread and I didn't like the Vision's nanomachine goop powers and it was weird that Victor Mancha would just leave the Runaways when last time he ran into Pym he said he wouldn't. Doombot was good though.