Written and Illustrated by Various
Published by Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics has a lot of queer characters!
That’s the impression I got when looking at the opening pages showing off 43 different people.
If only I could tell you who they all are.
I recognize Iceman, Valkyrie (this one, Rúna, is entirely modeled after Tessa Thompson’s character in the Thor movies), Angela from Spawn, the OG gay hero Northstar, Mystique, Ayo and Aneka from Black Panther, America Chavez, that new gay Captain America that was in the news.
After that, I’ve got nothing.
So it feels like Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1 has to introduce many of these characters, as depicting right off the bat with “Introduction” by Luyciana Vecchio and Mike O’Sullivan.
The latter figure is credited with research, which the character Prodigy regurgitates in a “here’s a big chunk of LGBTQ+ characters in Marvel history.”
They go all the way back to a gay Stone Age caveman who received the Starbrand cosmic power.
I mean, go off, sis.
This is the part of the review where maybe I should lay some cards on the table?
I don’t know how confident I am in this label anymore, but I am a cisgender, heterosexual man who spends a lot of my free time with LGBTQ+ identified people, in LGBTQ+ spaces and culture.
Cribbing from Marvel lore, call me a Spectrum Surfer.
Queer communities are often where I feel at home as someone who has never felt comfortable in whatever we call traditional masculinity. There are so many different ways to human on this rock, and queerness taught me that lesson as strongly as being in the African diaspora has.
In other words, perhaps I’m someone Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1 is meant for, even if the content isn’t really made for “me” label-wise.
In reading and reviewing this book, I can’t help but think of the multiple audiences and objectives for it. They’re introducing these characters to folks to buy books while also presenting them as important for the culture. Two things can be true here.
Another objective of this 85-page special is drilling representation into every story and marketing these heroes to whoever picks up this book.
Therefore, you’d think this is the kind of book Marvel would want readers – regardless of placement on the sexuality/orientation/gender spectrums – to find and share with LGBTQ+ friends and family. Especially younger ones who live in a world where LGBTQ+ issues are in the mainstream as never before, right?
So why is the book rated Teen+, for crying out loud?
Is it the sex talk? Not that it’s all that different from any other soap opera stuff you’d see with the straight characters, in my opinion.
It’s odd given that Marvel seems especially well suited to depicting queerness. There are so many characters. Especially if you’re following the X-Men and mutants at all. And this special is chock full of X-Men and mutants.
The mutants are an evergreen metaphor for difference, acceptance and bigotry. So it makes sense that we’d see more people happy to break the rules of heteronormativity appear among people who break the rules of human genetics. Both mutants and LGBTQ+ people deal in closeting, visibility of identity, legislative attempts at erasure, and more.
So we get a hodgepodge of approaches here to fulfill these different objectives: part showcase of queer characters in the Marvel Universe and part marketing operation.
Marvel stories are well known for always referencing events that happened in other issues and giving you the asterisk with the editor’s note about the issue to find said event.
Here it feels like, “Oh, you missed these characters gaying it up? It’s this issue, go buy it for the culture!”
Not that this is any difference from other Marvel books, on its face. It just feels different with this one where the company wants to imbue this special with social good. I guess it’s a matter of whether you the reader buy it or not.
In some spots, this book provides moments for queer people and allies who spend considerable time in the community to clap along to their concerns being repeated in a bunch of comic book short stories. Messages of acceptance and teachable moments ring out amid the action.
For example: Elektra, who is currently Daredevil, says an offhanded quip to a trans woman during “Something New Every Day” (Lila Sturges & Derek Charm). The woman corrects her, and then Elektra takes her for a drink at the local queer bar to apologize.
See, she learned something new that day, get it? It’s fine.
In other spots, we get stories with queer characters just living their lives and letting the themes speak for themselves.
That’s where stories such as “You Deserve” (Vita Ayala, Joanna Estep & Brittney L. Williams), “Good Judy” (Terry Blas & Paulina Ganucheau) and “Colossus” (Kieron Giullen & Jen Hickman) succeed so well. They dig into the mindspace of queerness as I’ve often seen them play out and get away from some of the comic-booky stuff.
It’s an anxious mutant at the Hellfire Gala so deep in her head about her crush that she won’t even shoot her shot. Or a bisexual teen boy overanalyzing and inspecting his queerness and using others’ feelings to explore his own. Or living in a community that bills itself as fully inclusive but doesn’t feel that way to you because of your less-represented body type or presentation.
But sometimes we don’t need all of the concepts. Sometimes we get other slices of life by which these characters live openly and in safety.
A night such as in “Under the Stars” (Mariko Tamaki & Kris Anka) when one can light up with all the colors of the rainbow and float in the air with their love on a date night.
