MPQ Pride Month Events (6/1-7/1)

Scammy

Daniel2121 said:

Wasn't Azazel Nightcrawler's dad?

Under current canon, yes. But that's my point. 

Originally it was Mystique who was intended to have fathered Nightcrawler. That never made it into the published comics, but it's a good indicator that at the beginning Mystique was both bisexual and gender fluid. So could it actually be considered a retcon when these aspects of her character first appeared in the comics many years later? And if none of her behavior prior to that contradicted her LGBT identity, can it even be considered a change to her character, or was she simply always these things?

Bringing that back to Black Cat, if none of her earlier behavior contradicted her later-revealed bisexuality, then how could anyone say she had been closeted or was retconned? Best you could say was that it may not have been an aspect of her character that her creator had in mind, but then we'd be going into a whole "death of the author" philosophical discussion that I'd rather not get into.

DAZ0273

MegaBee said:

Scammy said:

Would you consider Mystique's bisexuality and gender fluidity to be a retcon? Her creator is on record as having originally intended her and Destiny to be Nightcrawler's biological parents, but Marvel editorial at the time prevented that from becoming canon. So for decades she passed as straight.

Marvel editorial did similar with Northstar.

Sort of. Marvel Editorial was at the time handicapped by the Comics Code Authority which until 1989 considered characterisation of LGBTQ+ to be contrary to its very archaic rules. However it is also true that Jim Shooter pushed back against portraying Northstar as gay after John Byrne announced that was his intention. That said and whether with Shooter's approval or not, there is very strong evidence that Marvel allowed, without specifically stating anything, the strong idea that Northstar was a gay man as early as the publication of Alpha Flight #7. That was in 1983. A quote from that comic book when we are introduced to and then subsequently learn of the murder of Northstar's old acquaintance Raymonde:

“And Raymonde had led him out of that dark fear, into the bright clear light of self-acceptance.”

I guess Marvel's editors really could have been tone deaf.

There was also the character Arnie Roth from JM DeMattheis Captain America run (very good it was too although the ending was spoiled by ahem, a certain Mr. Shooter) who was fairly obviously not Heterosexual (and strongly hinted as being gay). Again this either slipped past Shooter if he was hell bent on no LGBTQ+ content or he turned a blind eye.

Looking back (and I don't know if anything has been revealed since) I can see other characters who if they are not Bisexual as depicted without stating it outright it is impossible to understand how not. Selene, the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, Yukio are two who come to mind.

What makes Marvel in my opinion pretty poor on this topic was that over in the pages of X-Men they had no issue with accomodating Claremont's obvious deeply held interest in alternative worlds of sex where Claremont frequently dealt with mind control, bondage, bizarre and uncalled for naked characters (including the New Mutants!), fetish uniforms and the fluidity of sexual freedom/hedonism that was the Hellfire Club. There was an issue where Prof X gets mugged, he is saved by the Morlocks and he wakes up dressed like this:

There is no explanation given. I was still a child reading all this but apparently it was A-OK with the Comics Code Authority that Professor X wakes up in what I can only assume is Callisto's sex dungeon.

Claremont even wrote Storm in a very sexualised outfit in the Heroes for Hope Famine Special! Talk about a weird place to put that! We are trying to raise funds for starving African children and oh wait cut to Storm in sexy lingerie and then in a studded BDSM outfit! I guess maybe that might raise sales...

Do we want to go and visit the Colossus/Kitty relationship?  Perhaps correctly given the fact that Kitty was a child, Shooter also squashed that in the pages of Secret Wars. How was that OK with the Comics Code Authority but god forbid we have openly LGBTQ+ content?

In 1992 Northstar got his day but before then? Double standards. Appalling inequality. Just look at that scene above and tell me how children of the day reading that thought "Oh that is totally normal, sex dungeon!" but Northstar going on a date would destroy their world.

Daniel2121

Scammy said:

Daniel2121 said:

Wasn't Azazel Nightcrawler's dad?

Under current canon, yes. But that's my point. 

Originally it was Mystique who was intended to have fathered Nightcrawler. That never made it into the published comics, but it's a good indicator that at the beginning Mystique was both bisexual and gender fluid. So could it actually be considered a retcon when these aspects of her character first appeared in the comics many years later? And if none of her behavior prior to that contradicted her LGBT identity, can it even be considered a change to her character, or was she simply always these things?

Bringing that back to Black Cat, if none of her earlier behavior contradicted her later-revealed bisexuality, then how could anyone say she had been closeted or was retconned? Best you could say was that it may not have been an aspect of her character that her creator had in mind, but then we'd be going into a whole "death of the author" philosophical discussion that I'd rather not get into.

I see why it's hard to say. In the end, even though the character in question has only one, or maybe two co-creators at most, in the end the traits of the character were decided by a bunch of people. But my question stands, was this character originally conceived as being LGBT by its original author? Black Cat behaved like a straight, heterosexual girl at first, then became bisexual so now she comes off as "closeted". But what was her author's original intent?

I'm also aware that a good portion of the LGBT were not always "closeted", they just were 100% straight until the day they decided they would be gays, lesbians, bisexuals or something else. Yeah, I know of at least one case of that (irl I mean). But I'm not too sure if writers can do this with a fictional character, or how would they devise such a way for the character to have a changing sexuality like that. So, sometimes art imitates life, but not deliberately.