Posted on

Queer Comic Book Character: Mystique (Oct 25th)

Mystique may have made her first appearance in only 1978 (Ms. Marvel #16), but she’s a very popular villain and appears in many X-Men comic books. She’s a mutant with shape-shifting abilities. Luckily for her, Mystique’s shape-shifting rejuvenates her cells and stops her from aging. She’s also a highly trained terrorist and spy.

Mystique

Mystique
Mystique

Mystique has a long and sordid history fighting with various versions of Magento’s Brotherhood of Mutants against both anti-mutant human organizations and the X-Men. Though through everything she’s done, Mystique seems to believe that she’s doing it for the good of mutant kind. She wants them to survive as a species.

Mystique is portrayed as having male and female lovers. Continue reading “Queer Comic Book Character: Mystique (Oct 25th)”

Posted on

Queer Comic Characters: Pride High (Oct 28th)

Sometimes, you need to tell your own story about people who are like you, and that’s what writer Tommy Roddy did. He created a comic book called Pride High, which features Poseidon Preparatory Academy for Heroic Youth, a boarding school for super-powered teenagers, and stars a diverse group of young LGBT youth and their allies, enemies, mentors, and teachers.

In the comic’s first arc, the students divide themselves into teams and the teams compete against each other in battle simulations in the Inter-Squad Championship. The comics about one five-member team, based on a gay-straight alliance and formed by a group of close friends, that call themselves Pride High. Meet the members: Craig Newman (Mindsweeper), Jorge Ponce (Kid Mischief), Claire Aedhamair (Scotch Bonnet), Suravi Small, and Chippendale Chesterfield (Chip Cheetah).

Pride High: Scotch Bonnet, Chip, Mindsweeper, Suravi, & Kid Mischief

Pride High

Continue reading “Queer Comic Characters: Pride High (Oct 28th)”

Posted on

Queer Comic Characters: Northstar (Oct 23rd)

Jean-Paul Beaubier (Northstar) is technically the first openly gay character in the Marvel universe. Created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, Byrne says he always meant for Northstar to be gay; he just wasn’t allowed to say so due to Marvel editor Jim Shooter seeing an openly gay character as a “political position” and the Comics Code Authority.

Jean-Paul Beaubier (Northstar)

Northstar

If you’ve never heard of Northstar, that’s probably because you’ve never read Alpha Flight. Alpha Flight’s Canada’s premiere superhero team, government-run like all those socialist programs in Canada. 😉 And Northstar’s their requisite snobby French-Canadian champion skier turned superhero. Okay, you might’ve also heard of Northstar from this little title called X-Men where he also appears. Continue reading “Queer Comic Characters: Northstar (Oct 23rd)”