Funnybook Babylon

I think I speak for everyone on the site when I say this: historically, corporate comic book characters who aren’t straight white American males have gotten a pretty bum rap. I think things are improving, and there are reasons to be hopeful. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t call out dubious material when they see it; but manufacturing outrage does nothing to further anyone’s cause. I know that seems like a vague boilerplate, but I wanted to get it out of the way lest anyone think I am condemning the sentiment put forth by Perry Moore in his recent Newsarama interviews. I completely agree with his sentiments, my issue is the way he chooses to further his argument.

Moore is the author of Hero, a young adult novel featuring a gay teen protagonist who discovers he has super powers. He’s an outspoken critic of the way gay characters are treated in superhero books and has compiled an oft-cited list, “Who Cares about the Death of a Gay Superhero Anyway? A History of Gays in Comic Books?” It’s a list that is highly problematic: there are numerous factual errors and misleading descriptions, deliberately or accidentally skewed to inspire the maximum rage. To wit, the inspiration for the list was the following incident:

NORTHSTAR: 1st gay male hero to come out in the Marvel Comics Universe, thus making him their most prominent gay hero. Between February 16 and March 9, 2005, Northstar is killed in three different realities, during the most prominent of which, the X-Men’s most popular hero, Wolverine (star of the X-Men movies), impales him through the chest with his metal claws. Marvel’s most prominent gay hero is later resurrected as a murderous zombie assassin.

There’s nothing really untrue about this scenario; but the framing makes it sound like a systematic bashing of Northstar, if not gays in general. He’s killed three times! They send the most popular character they have to murder him! What a strong statement! They’re rounding up Northstars and executing them!

The thing is, two of the three killings took place in apocalyptic alternate-reality stories (X-Men: The End - Heroes & Martyrs, X-Men: New Age of Apocalypse). As those names imply, these were the sort of “What If?” stories where creators feel the need to kill off huge swaths of the Marvel Universe to sell how “important” the story is. To single out his death amongst the dozens of other recognizable-but-meaningless deaths is disingenuous; Gambit dies in both series, to use an example.

As for the “real” death in Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Mark Millar’s high concept pitch for EotS was to have beloved anti-hero Wolverine killed, resurrected and brainwashed into “murderous zombie assassin” by the Magical Evil Ninja Gang the Hand. The story follows him attempting to kill more heroes to convert them to The Hand’s “murderous zombie assassin” way. Northstar is one of his victims. Wolverine is pretty successful in general, though:

And eventually, both Wolverine and Northstar (Zombie Assassin Version) are defeated by the good guys and de-programmed. Both are current members of the X-Men. If anything, this seems to be treating Wolverine and Northstar pretty equitably.

But Moore seems unconvinced:

When I read things like Freedom Ring or Wolverine killing Northstar, and when you still read about hate crimes committed towards gays…you wonder if those comic books don’t add to that tapestry of hate.

I suppose that’s it possible that someone out there took a brainwashed Wolverine trying to kill pretty much every hero in the Marvel Universe, and succeeding in killing some (including Northstar) and decided “this is a good idea, I’d like to do this!” But the scene as written shows the whole thing as a pretty despicable event, one that rallies the whole Popular Marvel Character community together, culminating in Captain America pounding Wolverine down with his shield. It doesn’t glorify Wolverine, it doesn’t promote hate crimes against anyone. The brainwashed assassin who murders a gay man (amongst many other presumably straight non-hate-crime-victims) is subject to a righteous beatdown and is deprogrammed. Northstar’s sexuality isn’t even a plotpoint in the comic. The only way this seems like part of a “tapestry of hate” is if you put it in a big list on the internet.

I don’t want go through every nitpicky example of how Moore’s list is misleading, but I wanted to give a little context to my reaction to Moore’s latest statement, to demonstrate how this isn’t an isolated incident. Another character on Moore’s list is Freedom Ring, the Robert Kirkman creation from the most recent Marvel Team-Up series:

Yeah, well, Freedom Ring [from Marvel Team-Up] – take a look at him. That was terrific. (laughs) I talk to Robert Kirkman a lot – I used to talk to him more, because he was optioning out The Walking Dead, and I wanted to do something with it as a producer and then that [Freedom Ring’s death] happened. And I called him up, and I went, “What are you doing?! Don’t you understand?!” He was cool about it! He blamed his editors, and he said it was the worst mistake he ever made, and it was horrific, it was unbelievable. I can’t believe Marvel never came out and said, “We’re sorry” or anything like that. That’s really awful.

I obviously don’t know what Kirkman said to Moore at the time, but when the controversy first hit the Internet, Kirkman was apologetic, but seemed to take full responsibility:

Freedom Ring was always planned as an inexperienced hero who would get beaten up constantly and probably die. I wanted to comment on the fact that most superheroes get thier powers and are okay at it… and that’s not how life works.
During working on the book, I was also noticing that most gay characters… are all about being gay. Straight characters are well-rounded characters who like chicks. So I wanted to do a well-rounded character who just happened to like dudes. Then I decided to combine the two ideas.
In hindsight, yeah, killing a gay character is no good when there are so few of them… but I really had only the best of intentions in mind.

While I’m not personally convinced Kirkman has anything to apologize for, other than being sympathetic to the concerns of his readers, Moore (and the public) got an apology from the guy who wrote the book:

I completely understand the backlash on the death of Freedom Ring, regardless of my intensions. If I had it to do all over again… I wouldn’t kill him. I regret it more and more as time goes on. [..] I think you and anyone else who complained had every right to be angry. I just want you to understand that none of this was done with ill intent and it’s all just an unfortunate string of events. As a Marvel insider (kinda–I’ve been to thier offices, do a lot of work for them, and know a lot of people within the company) I can say that I’ve never gotten so much as a hint of homophobia from ANYONE at Marvel.

But what about Marvel proper? They’re the ones who made Kirkman kill off his gay creation, allegedly. Where’s their apology? The Gay League website interviewed Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada about the topic:

Freedom Ring is Robert Kirkman’s creation and he had the story arc planned from the very beginning. When Robert told us he was creating a gay lead for Marvel Team-Up all we said was, “sounds like it’ll make for a good story, have fun.” When he then told us that unfortunately part of Freedom Ring’s story arc was that he was going to die in the end, all we said was, “sounds like it’ll make for a good story, have fun.”

I am not omniscient, and I realize it is within the realm of possibility that Quesada is not being honest here. But like Kirkman’s statements, it certainly seems that the life and death of Freedom Ring was a Kirkman-generated loop. As for apologizing, Quesada’s statement was:

We don’t preach hatred or ignorance at Marvel, we never have. Our mandate has always been very simple, we tell the stories of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things under extraordinary circumstances and yes, most times they triumph, but sometimes even the villain has his day. So, as more and more gay characters enter the Marvel Universe, what I can assure you is that more and more stuff will happen to them as it does to all of our characters and isn’t that what we all want in then end?

To reiterate the boilerplate from the intro, I think that’s what everyone here at FBB want, and what I believe Perry Moore wants too. But Moore seems to think that the only way to call attention to this sort of thing is by manufacturing outrage, by convincing everyone listening that things right now are bad. REALLY BAD. I’ve seen this sort of attitude in plenty of good, well-intentioned activists of all stripes; it’s as if admitting there is something positive happening means that you’re accepting the status quo as is. I don’t agree.

It seems as if the only time people want to talk about how Apollo and Midnighter (or Northstar/Phat/Vivisector/Asgardian/Hulkling/Karolina Dean/Xavin/Renee Montoya/Batwoman/etc. etc. etc.) are gay is when they’re killed or beaten up or something. If Marvel puts out several years worth of Runaways with positive and entertaining stories about a group of teenagers with varying sexual preferences, that’s not a news story. It’s only a news story when something “bad” happens, which further “proves” that Marvel and DC can’t handle LGBT characters.

This is harmful in two ways: it seems like a disincentive for Marvel or DC to ever push characters from outside of the “comfort zone”, as the risk vs. reward starts too look pretty unappealing. There are already intolerant segments of our population who will fight against the portrayal of homosexuals in comics, or the “blackification” of books, or whatever other bigoted nonsense. It’s a small and hopefully diminishing demographic, but it’s one that companies like Marvel and DC are already defying by publishing these books.

I’m not trying to say “if you don’t like it, don’t speak out”; if anyone reads anything they don’t like, they ought to feel free to speak out on it. But something like Perry Moore’s “list” is obviously compiled by someone who hadn’t even read many of the books they are decrying, and forwarded articles of outrage, and a general attitude of “I don’t need to read this to have an opinion” make stories about racism, sexism and homophobia spread like wildfire amongst the scans_daily crew, the blogosphere and elsewhere. How many of the people who clucked their tongues at Wolverine killing Northstar in February 2005 bothered taking note at his ressurection a month later, or Mike Carey’s subsequent use of Northstar in X-Men a year later?

Long story short: Perry Moore, we love you and support your message. But you’re spending a lot of time cursing the darkness and pretending like no one else is lighting any candles. And you haven’t even read half of the candles.