The Captain
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Post by The Captain on Apr 23, 2015 7:45:25 GMT -5
Or as a culture we are more willing to accept a woman may be passing or bisexual than we are that a man might be. There is is a huge double standard there where a two woman relationship is seen as having a mystique or tantalizing, but two men is almost always been taboo. It's changing, but the vestiges of that double standard still influence a lot of reactions to discovering a person (or character) is gay depending open whether they are male or female. -M Interesting choice of phrasing here on the bold portion, as Mystique's relationship with Destiny was pretty much out in the open and no one seemed to take too much issue with it, at least to my admittedly-limited knowledge. As for the OT, I'm torn on my feelings for this. I have no problem with GLBTQ characters in comics, provided it is one aspect of their total being and not their sole existence for being; tokenism doesn't do that community any favors, as it either comes across as disingenuous pandering to that demographic or a publicity stunt to make the publisher money. Some of the articles and comments I've read at our former home over the years keep calling for more GLBTQ characters for the sake of having more GLBTQ characters, not because they will add anything to the stories, which I think is the wrong way to go about it. In this case, while there may have been vague hints over the years about Bobby, those dots are so few and far between that connecting them to put the picture of his homosexuality together seems like a total stretch. It doesn't feel organic to me and maybe I'm in the minority on this, but I'm not a fan of the "here's something shocking about a legacy character that you never knew" moments. When Marvel revealed that Julie Power was a lesbian, it seemed reasonable, as we were introduced to her as a young child with no reveal about her sexuality, so it didn't seem to come from out of nowhere when they had her turn out to be gay. With Bobby, we were introduced to him as a teenager and saw him have girlfriends and go on dates and establish, at least outwardly, his heterosexuality, so by going back and making readers squint at the "signs" that he actually was closeted, it reeks of Marvel putting something there that was never intended to be there for the sake of generating publicity. It almost seems like they've decided that Bobby is the least-interesting or least-discussed (I hate to say "liked", because there are a lot of people who despise Scott) of the original X-Men and given him something that will get people talking about him. |
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Post by spoon on Apr 23, 2015 18:03:34 GMT -5
I know that back on CBR we had a lot of discussion on Iceman being possible gay (going back to at least the early 2000s), so it's not really that surprising. @rr: He has shown interest in women, but so have many gay man over their lives, mostly because in society that was what was expected of them. It's noticeable that of the early X-Men Iceman showed no interest in Jean in the first issue of X-Men and over the years (until his relationship with Kitty), Iceman pursued girls and women, but once he was in a relationship, he immediately lost all interest in them. And then there was his relationship with Cloud way back in Defenders (Cloud had both a male and female form, something which turned Iceman off at first, but he later confessed to Cloud that he didn't care.) If I recall correctly, a big impetus to the "Iceman could be gay" speculation was when Emma Frost took over Iceman's body back in Uncanny X-Men #314 (way back in 1994). After her mind was removed from his body, she made some sort of cryptic remark to him. I don't remember exactly what it was. It may have something like she knows why his relationships fail or knows he has a secret. It may have been something vague, but I seem recall a movement from some fans starting at that point that he should be revealed to be gay. I disagree that Iceman lost all interest in relationships with women. His relationships didn't get a lot of attention at certain points, but that's basically a function of his level of prominence in team books. It's not as if the Beast had more focus on his relationship in the Silver Age than Bobby did. Zelda & Bobby were pretty much treated the same as Vera & Hank. Bobby didn't lose interest in Opal. I'm torn on this issue. On one hand, because characters stick around for decades, it hard to replace uniformity with realistic diversity unless you "transform" existing character (like having a character come out or having a non-white character take up the mantle of a white character). On the hand, I feel like existed characters are selected to be gay in ways that reinforce stereotypes. If a male character diverges too much from an alpha male norm, if a female character isn't flirtatious enough, well they must be gay. For instance, making Willow gay on BtVS felt disappointing to me. Here was a different kind of girl: smart, shy, funny. Wouldn't it be interesting to see that straight people don't have to force themselves into gender stereotypes? There are introspective straight males and gay alpha males out there. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 24, 2015 5:46:38 GMT -5
Or as a culture we are more willing to accept a woman may be passing or bisexual than we are that a man might be. There is is a huge double standard there where a two woman relationship is seen as having a mystique or tantalizing, but two men is almost always been taboo. It's changing, but the vestiges of that double standard still influence a lot of reactions to discovering a person (or character) is gay depending open whether they are male or female. -M Interesting choice of phrasing here on the bold portion, as Mystique's relationship with Destiny was pretty much out in the open and no one seemed to take too much issue with it, at least to my admittedly-limited knowledge. As for the OT, I'm torn on my feelings for this. I have no problem with GLBTQ characters in comics, provided it is one aspect of their total being and not their sole existence for being; tokenism doesn't do that community any favors, as it either comes across as disingenuous pandering to that demographic or a publicity stunt to make the publisher money. Some of the articles and comments I've read at our former home over the years keep calling for more GLBTQ characters for the sake of having more GLBTQ characters, not because they will add anything to the stories, which I think is the wrong way to go about it. In this case, while there may have been vague hints over the years about Bobby, those dots are so few and far between that connecting them to put the picture of his homosexuality together seems like a total stretch. It doesn't feel organic to me and maybe I'm in the minority on this, but I'm not a fan of the "here's something shocking about a legacy character that you never knew" moments. When Marvel revealed that Julie Power was a lesbian, it seemed reasonable, as we were introduced to her as a young child with no reveal about her sexuality, so it didn't seem to come from out of nowhere when they had her turn out to be gay. With Bobby, we were introduced to him as a teenager and saw him have girlfriends and go on dates and establish, at least outwardly, his heterosexuality, so by going back and making readers squint at the "signs" that he actually was closeted, it reeks of Marvel putting something there that was never intended to be there for the sake of generating publicity. It almost seems like they've decided that Bobby is the least-interesting or least-discussed (I hate to say "liked", because there are a lot of people who despise Scott) of the original X-Men and given him something that will get people talking about him. I couldn't possibly agree more with that last paragraph. As for the people who despise Scott... I disagree with them! |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2015 8:51:24 GMT -5
Or as a culture we are more willing to accept a woman may be passing or bisexual than we are that a man might be. There is is a huge double standard there where a two woman relationship is seen as having a mystique or tantalizing, but two men is almost always been taboo. It's changing, but the vestiges of that double standard still influence a lot of reactions to discovering a person (or character) is gay depending open whether they are male or female. -M Interesting choice of phrasing here on the bold portion, as Mystique's relationship with Destiny was pretty much out in the open and no one seemed to take too much issue with it, at least to my admittedly-limited knowledge. As for the OT, I'm torn on my feelings for this. I have no problem with GLBTQ characters in comics, provided it is one aspect of their total being and not their sole existence for being; tokenism doesn't do that community any favors, as it either comes across as disingenuous pandering to that demographic or a publicity stunt to make the publisher money. Some of the articles and comments I've read at our former home over the years keep calling for more GLBTQ characters for the sake of having more GLBTQ characters, not because they will add anything to the stories, which I think is the wrong way to go about it. In this case, while there may have been vague hints over the years about Bobby, those dots are so few and far between that connecting them to put the picture of his homosexuality together seems like a total stretch. It doesn't feel organic to me and maybe I'm in the minority on this, but I'm not a fan of the "here's something shocking about a legacy character that you never knew" moments. When Marvel revealed that Julie Power was a lesbian, it seemed reasonable, as we were introduced to her as a young child with no reveal about her sexuality, so it didn't seem to come from out of nowhere when they had her turn out to be gay. With Bobby, we were introduced to him as a teenager and saw him have girlfriends and go on dates and establish, at least outwardly, his heterosexuality, so by going back and making readers squint at the "signs" that he actually was closeted, it reeks of Marvel putting something there that was never intended to be there for the sake of generating publicity. It almost seems like they've decided that Bobby is the least-interesting or least-discussed (I hate to say "liked", because there are a lot of people who despise Scott) of the original X-Men and given him something that will get people talking about him. oh, you are magical. To be able to word what a lot of us are probably thinking/feeling about this decision. Thank you.  |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Apr 24, 2015 15:41:27 GMT -5
I am really offended by this affront to X-men continuity.
Their was some prior evidence that Iceman was gay. This is unaceptable. X-men character development should be 100% writer fiat that completely ignores past characterization, ala Chris Claremont's Magneto. Having a character change in a way that is slightly defensible based on past continuity violates X-men continuity, and is unacceptable.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2015 17:19:03 GMT -5
I am really offended by this affront to X-men continuity. Their was some prior evidence that Iceman was gay. This is unaceptable. X-men character development should be 100% writer fiat that completely ignores past characterization, ala Chris Claremont's Magneto. Having a character change in a way that is slightly defensible based on past continuity violates X-men continuity, and is unacceptable. But shouldn't characters and stories have SOME kind of continuity? I mean, if they did not, then characters could be anything, anyone, at any time. They might as well be a brand new character everytime someone new writes them (well, hell, why limit it to that even??). I mean, my panties aren't all bunched over this Iceman thing, but it's gimmicky as Hell, and it's...Bendis. And that last part is the part I cannot really stand. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Apr 24, 2015 18:40:12 GMT -5
I'm mostly joking, but there have been a couple of X-men-centric examples where prior characterization was completely disregarded and it improved the character/stories/milleu immensely - smart beast and Magneto. (I'm sure I could come up more if I knew more about the X-men.  In general, my approach to continuity is "follow what other people have done, unless you have a better idea. Then change it. If you can come up with a good explanation for the change, explain. If not, don't." You can certainly make a based-in-continuity argument for gay Iceman. (Apparently. I haven't read 80% of the books featured.) If Bendis' thought process was anything like the above, I'd see this as a pretty good piece of continuity writing. Not, of course, that I've read the book in question. I'm probably going to pick up the Bendis X-men in the near future, as soon as the library has a semi-full-run all in at the same time. I did end up quite liking the last couple years of his Avengers run. Although I REALLY wish he'd finish Scarlet, which is one of my five or six favorite Marvel/DC comics of the decade. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 24, 2015 22:06:48 GMT -5
Got the issue and read it today... I had grabbed the last couple to see how Bendis ends his run. The Utopians thing is even worse that the Iceman is gay thing. Apparently, a group of mutants is still on Utopia (even though it got moved not too long ago, no one noticed... now it's back). A couple of them make sense (Box, Random, and Masque).. they haven't really done much since Second Coming. Then there's Karma, who's a teacher at the Jean Grey school, and was shown there in the back ground VERY recently. Elixir apparently got nearly killed in Wolverines, but here he is, fine, and participating in terrorizing humans even though he hates violence. Some people think it might really be Cypher, which actually would make a small amount of sense. Worst of all, front and center, is Boom Boom.. the last character in the world who would be living in a bunker. As usual, no continuity.  |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2015 6:17:04 GMT -5
This is why I have an issue with this decision. This is one example. Bendis obviously trolls, and it's gross. This was tacky as hell, imo.  |
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Post by Rob Allen on May 1, 2015 14:58:27 GMT -5
Is the Rawhide Kid still gay? There was a similar controversy about that, but it was a miniseries, self-contained and not necessarily intended to be part of decades-old continuity. But still, people objected to a sudden, drastic change in a character they thought they knew.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2015 9:21:45 GMT -5
Is the Rawhide Kid still gay? There was a similar controversy about that, but it was a miniseries, self-contained and not necessarily intended to be part of decades-old continuity. But still, people objected to a sudden, drastic change in a character they thought they knew. That's true. It was an amusing new take on the character, but it was pretty much its own thing. Whether that's the way the Kid will be interpreted in eventual new stories is really up to the PTB, I suppose. Wasn't there a western miniseries in which Marvel's gunfighting heroes were all dirty and hairy, gritty and shabbily dressed? Was Rawhide kid part of that lot? |
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Post by Honeystinger on Jun 3, 2015 12:33:40 GMT -5
I know that back on CBR we had a lot of discussion on Iceman being possible gay (going back to at least the early 2000s), so it's not really that surprising. @rr: He has shown interest in women, but so have many gay man over their lives, mostly because in society that was what was expected of them. It's noticeable that of the early X-Men Iceman showed no interest in Jean in the first issue of X-Men and over the years (until his relationship with Kitty), Iceman pursued girls and women, but once he was in a relationship, he immediately lost all interest in them. And then there was his relationship with Cloud way back in Defenders (Cloud had both a male and female form, something which turned Iceman off at first, but he later confessed to Cloud that he didn't care.) I thought that was attributed to his immaturity, he being younger than the other 05. Could young Bobby be going through a phase of bi-curiosity? I can't speak from personal experience, but I've read that this sometimes happens with adolescent boys. It would give Marvel an out if they want adult Bobby to be straight. |
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 23, 2015 1:52:00 GMT -5
Isn't ignoring decades of continuity just what Bendis does? |
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 23, 2015 1:56:39 GMT -5
I'm mostly joking, but there have been a couple of X-men-centric examples where prior characterization was completely disregarded and it improved the character/stories/milleu immensely - smart beast Beast has always been smart... |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 23, 2015 6:02:14 GMT -5
Isn't ignoring decades of continuity just what Bendis does? Yeah, pretty much... Even in his best stories. I don't blame him as much as the editors, whose job it should be to make sure that succeeding writers keep any title more or less consistent. |
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In general, my approach to continuity is "follow what other people have done, unless you have a better idea. Then change it. If you can come up with a good explanation for the change, explain. If not, don't." 
