Its interesting you bring up Iceman because that is a perfect example of how not to do a gay character: take a character who was straight for sixty years, who has had relationships with women, who has openly talked sexually about women, who we can actively see their thoughts through bubbles and narrator text as having never thought that way about men at all - and have him turn out to be gay after Jean Grey looked into his mind and outed him (which led to many readers genuinely and in my opinion to reasonably believe that she had ''reprogrammed'' him in some way).CmdrKing wrote: ↑Mon Aug 12, 2019 9:19 pm The interesting thing about Harle and Pam is the very not-subtle indication that being together makes them substantially better people. Still amoral and selfish with occasional bouts of villainy, but not "someone who will start a'killin' as soon as they're not in Arkham" supervillains.
I mean the foundation for both characters involves a toxic relation to men: Poison Ivy's biggest crimes usually start with her manipulating and controlling men to further her ends, and before the Joker Harle was an everyday cheat at her worst, not a time bomb of crazy waiting to happen.
I certainly dispute the assertion there hasn't been a gay lead in the Marvel movies, but sure, they could actually come out and say it instead of reading like the "censored for Chinese markets" version of the movie.
The comics... they've done approximately *one* full blown gay character where it was someone with name value that people knew and cared about (Bobby Drake/Iceman), and I just had to check to make sure they hadn't retconned or killed him since then. I mean, Loki exists, but since their last solo comic ended they've stuck consistently to masculine presentation which kills the fun of actually playing up Loki's mythological queerness. There's a goodly number of supporting characters in some quirkier books (Koi Boi is trans for instance) but they're also the sort of characters that'll just... stop existing once those books end their run.
And if that wasn't bad enough, Marvel decided to completely rewrite his character from then on. He wasn't ''bisexual Bobby'' which would have neatly explained everything I pointed out in the previous paragraph, nor was he ''the Bobby we've always known who just happens to like guys now'', he was ''flaming Bobby'' whose whole character was now ''he's gay''. Seriously, every story from then on was ''Iceman's first gay crush'' or ''Iceman's first gay date'' or ''Iceman's first gay vacation''. They essentially took an established, beloved character and completely changed his personality. Do not believe anyone who tells you that his series got cancelled through homophobia; it got cancelled because no one was reading it because it was crap.
As a side point ''forgetting that bisexuals exist'' is a real common problem. I will never forget what Whedon did to Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who went from a girl with several confirmed crushes on men and at least two boyfriends, to someone who was such a hardcore lesbian that when under the influence of a jacket worn by a guy that made him irresistible to women, her first act was to try and find a spell to swap his sex. In hindsight, that show was nowhere near as LGBT friendly as presented at the time.
