i've spent most of today reading and re-reading my issues of young avengers and runaways. and it makes me wish these books had been out when i was a teenager. especially young avengers. the book is just so well written, and the fact that it has a gay male couple is even more enticing, which has also been a huge topic on its letters page.
many people have written in to say that comics aren't the place to comment on society. to that i call bullshit. i mean, what was x-men originally then not a social commentary? especially in the 70s when it got its all-new, multi-racial cast. and the avengers have always been about diversity, although to this day i can't think of one gay avenger, although they did have the son of satan as a member, and if that's not diversity, i don't know what is.
there's been one guy that wrote in to young avengers saying these kids in the book shouldn't even be experimenting with romance. but romance comes into every comic book. in the avengers, there was the wasp and ant-man, sersi and black knight, the scarlet witch and the vision, hawkeye and mockingbird, to name a few. in the x-men, there was marvel girl and cyclops, polaris and iceman, polaris and havok, storm and forge, colossus and shadowcat, rogue and gambit, psylocke and archangel, cyclops and emma frost. the new warriors had firestar and justice (who ended up as avengers), and namorita ended up dating the human torch for a while. and, hello, the fantastic four has the very married mr. fantastic and invisible woman.
for someone to say that romance has no part in a comic book, and let alone in a comic book that features teens, is a fucking idiot. i mean, part of being a teenager is discovering exactly what it feels like to be attracted to someone, whether you act on it or not. and to be a gay teen is even more confusing. asgardian and hulking are good role models for gay teens. and i can't think of a better example of what gay teens are going through in their minds than karolina over in runaways.
like i said, i wish stuff like this had been around when i was a teen. but there wasn't. the only mainstream gay comic characters i can think of off the top of my head are northstar and karma, both marvel characters, both mutants, both x-men. both radically under-developed.
i don't know. i guess it upsets me when people still insist on living in a bubble when there's so much going on it this world. fuck, teen titans has a member that has AIDS. but yet there's more press being made over the fact that young avengers might be showing a gay male couple in a positive light. these are all aspects of life. this isn't make-believe. these are issues people deal with, and comic books have always been a way of reflecting society, no matter what some idiots might say.
ok, that's my late-night rant. now i have to try and get some sleep so i'm not a complete zombie at work tomorrow. night, all.
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