Work Text
(Alpha Flight #1 (v.1) - John Byrne, 1983) Good morning friends and gentlefolk. I thought I’d start doing light dissections of the various allusions to Jean-Paul Beaubier’s homosexuality, because that’s the kind of thing that I do when my adoration for a character outstrips my ability to mind-control editors into giving him a solo series. Let’s start from the top, shall we?Jeanne-Marie, on being caught having Jean-Paul up to her room for tea, tries to explain why the rule about men in the nuns’ living quarters don’t apply to him. Her first approach is to deny that Jean-Paul is a man, then to say that he’s her brother. This could just be a stuttering redundancy on Jeanne-Marie’s part, but it’s also possible that her first instinct was to deny that her companion could have interest in any woman before realizing that 1) telling the nun that Jean-Paul is queer won’t go over any better than his being a potential lover and 2) framing her brother’s sexuality in terms of his not being a complete man probably isn’t a statement she wants to finish when he’s standing right there. Hence switching gears and revealing that they’re family. (And, really, given some of the attitude she and Aurora display toward Jean-Paul’s sexuality later, I’m guessing more the former than the latter.)Credit where credit is due, this isn’t a reading I latched onto myself. I was clued into this one by Ben Bolling, a UNC professor who penned “The US HIV/AIDS Crisis and the Negotiation of Queer Identity in Superhero Comics, or, Is Northstar Still a Fairy” (full text available in this volume). I’m really very fond of this interpretation because I like the layers it gives the conversation. The twins have only known about each other for a relatively short time at this point, less than two years, and they still wind up hurting each other on a regular basis, even when they’re sincerely trying to be supportive. So Jeanne-Marie being so unused to having family that it’s not the first explanation she goes for and Jean-Paul undercutting her unintentional insult by showing he’s man enough to get a nun twitterpated, merci very much, is both in-character and, from my POV, a lot more fun of a read. Plus it’s a decent explanation for Jean-Paul’s transition in attitude from when he arrives, all tolerance and autograph signings, to just after, where he’s in a considerably worse mood.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #7 (v.1) - John Byrne, 1984 In case anyone is wondering, I’m ordering these by original publishing date. It just seems easier than trying to figure out the internal chronology, since I’ll be bringing non-Alpha Flight books into this later.The twins were absent for a couple of issues while other characters got their spotlight stories in, but here we are at Alpha Flight #7, where we get hints at some of Jean-Paul’s past and some more veiled references to his sexuality. The panel I’m putting front and center is the one with most direct reference to Jean-Paul himself being gay, but a lot of what we’re gleaning about Jean-Paul’s identity involves taking a look at the man who had so much formative influence on him, Raymonde Belmonde.Let’s not mince words: Raymonde is coded as queer as a $3 bill. He’s presented as a well-dressed dandy whose full nature Jean-Paul keeps hidden from his sister, despite having trusted her enough to reveal his own homosexuality. His name variates from the traditional spelling by the addition of the feminizing French “e” at the end. He fathered a child at some point and was involved in raising her, but though he apparently still had warm feelings toward her and her mother, he had in some manner so estranged them both that his daughter only came back into his life as an adult after the death of her mother (and even then only because she was planning to defraud and murder him). And despite the fact that Jean-Paul knows Raymonde very well, the idea that Raymonde could possibly have a daughter completely blindsides him. He seems to struggle to get his head around the very possibility, even after Danielle confirms Raymonde’s story. So what we have implied in these few panels is that Raymonde was closeted, came out later in life, was cut out of the lives of his wife and daughter when he did so, and did his best to put that part of his life completely behind him.There are quite a few theories out there regarding the nature of Raymonde and Jean-Paul’s relationship. Some speculate that Raymonde was Jean-Paul’s lover. Given Byrne’s wording in the panel above and some of his past depictions of age differences in couples (most infamously, Sue Storm and Reed Richards), others go so far as to suggest Raymonde was a predator taking advantage of a young Jean-Paul. Like every other hint toward Jean-Paul’s sexuality in this era, the wording concerning everything from the true nature of the relationship to Jean-Paul’s actual age is ambiguous. Raymonde being a positive influence on Jean-Paul is very clear, however, so it seems unlikely Byrne intended anything untoward. Additionally, later writers would explicitly present the relationship as similar to a father-son dynamic (as seen here and here in Northstar #1) and put Raymonde in the role of the morally upright mentor figure (per X-Men Annual #1 2007). So whatever Byrne’s original intent, the current canonical standing is that the relationship was one of platonic mentorship between a child and adult.Going from there, the examples we have of Raymonde’s influence on Jean-Paul all involve Raymonde pushing the importance of self-acceptance and self-determination. That ties in very well both with Raymonde’s implied past and with what we’ve seen of Jean-Paul’s personality as an adult. Living a lie cost Raymonde tremendously, and he was apparently determined that Jean-Paul wouldn’t learn the same harsh lesson. Sadly, Jean-Paul did pay a similar price when briefly hiding his powers instead of stopping Raymonde’s abduction resulted in Raymonde’s death, but Raymonde’s lessons still seem to have taken root. Jean-Paul has rarely lacked for confidence. Neither his sexuality nor the fact that he’s a mutant have ever been sources of self-loathing (though he has occasionally wrestled with how his mutant abilities have affected his professional life). He didn’t start literally shouting his orientation in the streets until 1992, but through his appearances leading up to the big coming out issue, it seemed that anyone at all close to Jean-Paul, including the teammates he never actually liked very much, knew he was gay. (Mostly because they kept making snotty references to his sexuality, but I digress…) For all the other bullshit in his life, Jean-Paul was always shown as comfortable with that aspect of himself, and it seems Raymonde is largely to thank for that.But despite the fact that this is one of the few explicit instances of queer mentorship in comics (and an overall positive one at that!), it’s hard to be that pleased with it because Raymonde’s tale is ultimately yet another tragic queer death. He made the decision to come out, lost his family in doing so, started a new life and found a surrogate family in taking in Jean-Paul, tried to ensure that his new charge wouldn’t follow the same path he did, and still wound up being murdered in front of his adopted family when his past sins came back to haunt him via his estranged daughter. Hurrah for another morality tale steeped in heterosexual perspective.But at least Jean-Paul knew there was at least one person in his life who gave a damn and accepted him for who and what he was while he was growing up. That’s more than can be said for poor Jeanne-Marie, who we’ll touch on next time.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #8 (1984) - John Byrne
Here we have another potential reference to Jean-Paul’s sexuality. This is the second time this we’ve seen the insinuation come from Jean-Paul’s sister, though in this case, it’s the Aurora aspect, not Jeanne-Marie, the core personality.On first read, it’s easy to take this as Aurora berating her brother simply for being a shit, except that she’s emphasizing that he’s a hypocrite specifically for looking down on her choice lovers. (“You of all people DARE to pass judgement on MY love life?!”) This is the first hint we’ve even gotten that Northstar has a love life at all, and for Aurora, a free-spirited flirt, to get her hackles up about her brother’s hypocrisy in this particular area implies a few possibilities:1) Jean-Paul has no room to judge her because he’s just as bad when it comes to romancing his way out of difficult situations. That one’s quite unlikely. We’ve seen that Jean-Paul can be charming, but by and large, his personality leans toward battering ram.2) Jean-Paul has no room to judge her because he’s just as loose with women as he claims she is with men. This gets shot down in Alpha Flight #10, when Hudson notes that Jean-Paul doesn’t seem to have any interest in his female groupies (more on that later).3) Jean-Paul has no room to judge her because whatever his love life is, it’s by nature more scandalous than hers could be. This is the strongest possibility we’ve got, if only because there’s nothing in Jean-Paul’s personality or the text that refutes it. And given that the first part of this story contained a bucket of queer subtext, there’s certainly a strong hint as to Aurora’s meaning.Something else I’d like to address about this panel is the amount of shit Aurora gets from readers because she lashes out at Northstar, while Northstar’s own poor behavior gets largely smoothed over. Yes, Northstar did have a rough time in this story. His father-figure was killed in front of him, and, for extra guilt, the death can partially be laid at Jean-Paul’s feet because he kept his speed under wraps in front of Danielle. His sister was kidnapped and he was powerless to stop it. He got concussed two times in ten pages when he tried to rescue her and didn’t even get to avenge Raymonde at the end of it all. So yes, my boy’s had a shitty day and probably needs a hug.But what about Aurora? She watched someone die and was kidnapped by his murderer, a man who could kill with a touch. She kept her head long enough to figure out what his scheme was, she kept him talking while she waited for back-up, and she kept him from killing Jean-Paul when said back-up charged in without a plan. She also figured out Danielle’s part in Raymonde’s murder and brought her to justice. And what does she get at the end of it all? Her brother calls her a slut.Sorry, but if Northstar gets a pass for his jealous slut-shaming due to the turmoil of the day, Aurora doesn’t deserve any less of one for hitting below the belt in turn.Next time: James MacDonald Hudson is a jerk!
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #10 - John Byrne (1984)Ah, yes. The Northstar origin short, AKA “James MacDonald Hudson and The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Sales Pitch”.The hint regarding Jean-Paul’s homosexuality this time around is pretty straight forward: he’s not interested in women. What I find more interesting is where that takes the scene when the exchange is read in-context. Just about everyone else in Alpha Flight has Mac come to them about joining the team or gets the offer on neutral ground, and it’s always framed in terms of there being some benefit to the recruit. The Beaubier twins are the exceptions. Aurora is brought in by Wolverine, but still always sees AF as a rescue from the drudgery and abuse of Madame DuPont’s. Jean-Paul, however, gets a summons to Parliament Hill, where he’s met by an underling. He’s then escorted to Mac’s office in the super-secret Dept H section below the building. Mac then brings up Jean-Paul’s recently-revealed heritage (note that despite “recently” being two months prior, the fact that JP has a sister has been withheld), questioning his choice to accept it so quickly. Basically, everything Mac does seems designed to make Jean-Paul feel at a disadvantage going in. (Bravo to the speedster for zero fucks given, tho’.) Then he reveals just how much digging he’s been doing into Jean-Paul’s past and pairs it with an offer that has no question mark in it – it’s an “I want” not “would you?”Essentially, Mac’s approach is to make it clear that he has all the power in this encounter, he lets Jean-Paul know he has the means to out him as a mutant and end his career, then he makes his pitch. Putting all that together, “…the women don’t seem to have interested you overmuch” comes across less as an idle observation and more as added pressure. Mac wouldn’t need to out Jean-Paul as both gay and a mutant, as either one would sink him, but given how Mac has been stacking the odds in his favor, he probably wouldn’t be above dropping a hint about just how thoroughly he’s done his research. So it’s a small wonder that Jean-Paul blows him off without evidencing the slightest bit of interest in Alpha Flight before Aurora comes into the picture. Why in the world would he want to work for someone who had just no-so-subtly threatened to out him on multiple fronts?Now, I don’t think that’s how Byrne intended this scene to be read. He thought that Mac was boring (hence killing him off within a year of the series’ launch), but seems to present him as the well-meaning heroic sort, and heroes don’t go in for blackmail. Northstar is probably intended to come off looking the worse of the two for being unpleasant and self-interested. But as a queer reader, I remember that my reaction after reading through this story a couple of times was, “JFC, did Hudson just threaten to out Northstar if he didn’t join up?! No wonder he has a chip on his shoulder.” So yeah, between that and Mac’s decisions about Aurora joining the team, I usually give Mac Hudson’s overall leadership capabilities some serious side-eye. ETA: Adding commentary from genuine Canadian @becausedragonage because cultural context:
Essentially, Mac’s approach is to make it clear that he has all the power in this encounter, he lets Jean-Paul know he has the means to out him as a mutant and end his career, then he makes his pitch
This is so right. There is an excellent possibility that Byrne did mean for that to come across though.
Byrne wrote this in the aftermath of the patriation and amending of our constitution where Quebec was (most likely) excluded from key negotiations that provided the final draft. The relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada was at the forefront of Canadian consciousness and that relationship had often been a shitty and oppressive one for Quebec. Since confederation, ‘proper’ Anglophone Protestant Canada had often viewed Roman Catholic Quebec with contempt and outright hate, and the province was often treated like a lesser partner.
So James summons the French-Canadian to Ottawa, denies him the dignity of a fair offer he gave all the English-speaking Canucks, gives him a lecture that belittles JPs accomplishments, and then makes it clear Jean-Paul needs to prove his worth to him and to Canada. Blech. It’s Canadian Anglo/Franco relations writ small.
So maybe Byrne intentionally reflected that dynamic?
Of course, Byrne could honestly been of the view that James WAS being well-meaning and heroic. But if that’s the case, it doesn’t mean any of the above is isn’t still a part of the scene as Byrne might have been subject to a lot of the same prejudices many anglophone Canadians have regarding Quebec and those from Quebec.
Not quite sure where I’m going with this except to say that you’re reading of James as dishing out threats is spot on. He’s an ass.
Such a shame he didn’t stay dead.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Marvel Team Up Annual #7 - (1984, Louise Simonson and Paul Neary)
Short one this time around, but we do get our first entry with the team as guest-stars in someone else’s book! The basic plot for this one is that Marrina has been grabbed by yet another weirdo who’s interested in her for her alien origins, and it’s up to the twins, Sasquatch, and Puck – oh yeah, and that Spider-Man guy – to save her. This takes place some time between Alpha Flight #12 and #17, since it’s after Mac Hudson’s death, but before Sasquatch experiments on Aurora.Here we get another instance of Northstar’s sexuality being used as an insult – “At least Walter, orange ape though he can become, mon frere – remains all man!" The old hat of gay men being inherently effeminate. Not that Northstar is doing any better by taking a jab at his sister’s mental issues. But I don’t suppose I need to go on again about Jean-Paul and Aurora’s tendency to knock chips out of each other. Oh those wacky Beaubier twins and their eternal garbage fire of a relationship! The rest of the story is just as bad, alas. One of the traits that made Alpha Flight stand out was that they weren’t a team that spent any more time together than they had to in order to save the day. There were no baseball games, no holidays celebrated as team. These characters each had their own lives to attend to, and some of them actively disliked each other. Unfortunately, when it came to guest appearances, that bickering streak occasionally got shown as level of dysfunction that made the team utterly ineffectual, and it’s dialed up to eleven in this issue. Not a great outing for the Flight.Potentially of interest: John Byrne’s been vocal about his envisioning Northstar as gay from early on, and also about how he did everything to get the word out about Jean-Paul’s sexuality but put it in print (which he was forbidden to do). There have been numerous anecdotes over the years about Byrne plainly stating that Northstar was gay at conventions (perhaps most infamously, his “Not the Indian or the queer” comment when asked who was going to die in AF#12), but other Marvel writers of the era dropping the sorts of hints that were previously only seen under Byrne’s pen would be one more bit of evidence to substantiate Byrne’s claims.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
(Alpha Flight #18 - John Byrne, January 1985)
Once Aurora tells him to take a hike, we don’t see that much of Jean-Paul with Alpha Flight for the rest of the Byrne run. Indeed, once Guardian was buried (and good riddance!), Jean-Paul was determined to terminate his association with Alpha Flight as an organization, and wasn’t shy about saying so, even to Mac’s grieving widow.This is the first look we get of Jean-Paul at home in the main series, and there’s nothing terribly exciting here. We see Jean-Paul relaxing in his pool, presumably with friends. Neither the fellow answering the phone for Jean-Paul nor the blonde by the pool are named.Where it gets a bit meatier is the next time we see Jean-Paul at home, over in in AF #22. Jeanne-Marie collapses on Jean-Paul’s doorstep in the middle of the night and we see that the same people are still present. The man, Maurice, is seen in the kitchen – same hairstyle, same coloring as AF #18. (The coloring is less muddy in Classic Alpha Flight v.3, but I’m not putting my trades on the flatbed.) We also see the woman, Rhonda, again… and apparently there’s no imposition with Aurora using the guest suite, despite Jean-Paul having company who appear to be staying the night.On the meta side of things, we also get a Word of God confirming that Maurice is Jean-Paul’s boyfriend over on the Byrne Robotics Forum (warning for a very clunky inquiry about transgender folks [source link]), and also an unexpected reveal about Clementine being “Northstar’s boyfriend’s girlfriend”. Who’s Clementine? An old friend from Jean-Paul’s past who also shows up in AF #22 and greets him with a kiss that’s, shall we say, extremely friendly.Going strictly by the text, there’s nothing conclusive here. Maurice and Rhonda could both be sharing Jean-Paul’s bed. They could also have just been good friends of Jean-Paul’s planning to stay the night, and those plans changed when Jeanne-Marie needed the guest room. And even the meta commentary by Byrne depends on how much weight you want to give remarks made 20+ years after the book was published and what tone they’re taken in. But there are certainly some interesting implications regarding Jean-Paul’s love life here, especially given Aurora’s earlier condemnation of said love life. Next time: Crystar!
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
(The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior #11 - Jo Duffy and Ricardo Villamonte, February 1985)The Saga of Crystar was a sword-and-sorcery comic that Marvel published back in the mid-80’s. Like Rom, Space Knight, it was a tie-in product to a toy line that didn’t do terribly well; unlike Rom, the comics never really took off either and the title was canceled after eleven issues. I still consider that a shame. Crystar really was a fun book in many respects, and Jo Duffy had the skill to pull off a story that felt epic without taking itself too seriously. Of course, I must also admit to some bias. Another reason I look back on this book fondly is because Duffy pulled in some of my favorite characters as guest-stars: Nightcrawler for issue #6, and Alpha Flight in #11 to help the heroes win the day over Moltar and the forces of Chaos.So far as hints toward Northstar’s orientation go: Shaman, Puck, and Northstar get pulled through a dimensional rift accidentally created by the wizard Ogeode, and wind up on the world of Crystalium. Northstar is ready to crack someone’s head open over this… until the sparkly, impossibly sculpted beefcake in the chainmail onesie shows up. Then we go from the lemon-face in the previous panels to this:
And suddenly he sees fit to help out.I haven’t been able to find any meta commentary as to Duffy’s intentions regarding this scene, but I’m totally willing to buy into the above reading just for the lulz. One of the reasons I do like young Northstar’s cranky ass is because he is rather self-interested, and I’m happy to go along with the idea that a chance to impress the cute guy while still getting to take out his frustrations on the opposing army is the deciding factor in getting Northstar to help out.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
(Alpha Flight #22 - John Byrne, May 1985)
In this issue, Northstar takes his sister to meet a heretofore unknown, but apparently very close friend, Clementine, and finds that the circus she’s running is being used as a front by espionage-savvy sideshow people who plan to nuke Canada’s PM and the President of the US in one fell swoop.Have I mentioned that this book is purest crack and I love it?Our oh-so-subtle subtext for this installment is Aurora’s complete and utter shock that Jean-Paul could – gasp! – be seen with a woman! Because, of course, being gay isn’t about being attracted to men, it’s about being repulsed by women! Women in any context!*sigh*Really, one of the most unfortunate things about this type of remark in-story is that it indicates Northstar was not only dealing with some fairly unenlightened attitudes on the part of his teammates, but just how little effort his own sister has put into getting to know anything about him, regardless of which personality was dominant. While he’s not an approachable fellow overall, nothing in Northstar’s character has ever suggested he relates particularly badly to women. Indeed, a good number of Northstar’s close friendships over the years have been with women: Rhonda, Clementine, Mariel, Rogue, Nurse Annie, and Dazzler.Out-of-story, we’re looking at some, generously put, puzzling choices on the part of the writers. Byrne and Claremont, for example, both use almost that exact same phrasing about Jean-Paul and women, presumably as an indicator of his homosexuality. And they both do it either immediately after or just before showing him in a close friendship with a woman. But I suppose Jeanne-Marie wasn’t the only one making assumptions about homosexuality.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
(Alpha Flight #24 - John Byrne, July 1985)
I’m not a fan of Bill Mantlo’s stint on Alpha Flight, but there’s one thing I absolutely respect him for when it comes to his time on the book: he didn’t drop the subtext. All references to Jean-Paul’s homosexuality could have easily ended with Byrne’s last issue of Alpha Flight, but Mantlo had enough respect for what had come before to take up what was essentially a thankless task and continue dropping hints (or anvils, as the case may be).One of Byrne’s underlying story threads that Mantlo made explicit concerned Northstar’s attraction to Sasquatch. Yeah, Byrne had even more soap opera going on than met the eye – both twins were conflicted about Sasquatch for different reasons. Jeanne-Marie was disgusted with him for using her body without permission, Aurora adored him as her lover. Jean-Paul despised him for intruding on his sister’s affections, but was attracted to him as a man. And we get the first real indications of the latter in AF #24.The lead up to this was that Walter “Stupidest Smart Guy in the MU” Langkowski – aka Sasquatch – had finally had his personality subsumed by the evil god Tanaraq, the actual the source of his superpowers, and Snowbird had to put him down. But his friends weren’t going to be so quick to give him up, so they decided to hike into the realm of the Great Beasts to get his soul back.Jean-Paul still wanted nothing to do with Alpha Flight at this point, but he didn’t have much choice: first Shaman’s daughter magically compelled him to show up for the field trip, then Snowbird mind-snared him when he told them to piss off and tried to leave. (Again, is it any wonder he was never enthusiastic about this team?) Once inside the spirit realm, Shaman revealed that part of the ritual to revive Walter required someone who loved Walter to participate, which would be Aurora, and also someone who hated him, which accounted for Jean-Paul’s presence.And then we get the panel above, where Jean-Paul starts sputtering and tripping over his denials.Further hints of his feelings for Langkowski are displayed when Alpha Flight believes that their mission has failed, and Walter is lost to them. Unnoticed by the rest of the team, Jean-Paul mourns in the background. This is unexpected given the blatant animosity between him and Walter and Jean-Paul’s general unwillingness to spare the feelings of those around him with polite pretense. And when there’s a chance to restore Walter to the world of the living by transferring his soul into Roger Boch’s advanced armor, Jean-Paul is the one who dashes forward, rushing to get Bochs clear so Shaman can perform the transfer.(Though I suppose that does raise the question: did things fall apart because of the nature of the Great Beasts’ realm, or because Shaman got the mix of love and hate wrong?)Mantlo all but confirms what Byrne hinted at later in AF #29, when the twins thought Walter had been killed for good, and then actually does confirm Jean-Paul’s attraction after Walter’s return as “Wanda” in AF #46.Jean-Paul’s confession in AF #46 is probably the closest we get to explicit assertion of his homosexuality prior to Lobdell penning his infamous coming-out scene some years later in AF #106. This is not particularly subtle writing on Mantlo’s part, so it’s a bit surprising that he was allowed to get away with either scene, especially the last bit. Of course, it’s also possible the difference between how blatant Mantlo was vs Byrne’s more subtle hints was less a matter of editorial interference - or oversight - than it was just a difference in writing style. But more thoughts on that later.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
X-Men/Alpha Flight: The Gift #1 & 2 (Chris Claremont and Paul Smith, December 1985/January 1986)
Alpha Flight #28 was Byrne’s last issue of the series, and there was no fond closing adventure as he departed the book. Byrne, in fact, left incoming writer Bill Mantlo to pick up the team’s adventures mid-story during a fight with the Hulk!The same month that saw Mantlo take the reins also marked the debut of Chris Claremont’s two-part X-Men/Alpha Flight mini-series. And since this is the last time for some time that several of these characters will be recognizable as the same ones we saw during Byrne’s tenure on the book, I’m going to bend my rules about publication order a bit so that we’ve got this story acting as the buffer between the Byrne and Mantlo runs.X-Men/Alpha Flight: The Gift is generally agreed to take place sometime between Alpha Flight #22 and #23, and likely between the panels of Uncanny X-Men #192, before Xavier is assaulted. It doesn’t line up perfectly (Storm’s still in Africa in the LS, but home in Uncanny), but it’s about as good as we’re going to get. So Jean-Paul is coping with the murder of Raymonde and Aurora’s rejection (and still wants fuck all to do with Alpha Flight), Alpha Flight is still trying to adjust to Guardian’s death, and the X-Men are dealing with the spike of anti-mutant sentiment in the States. Fun times all around.Our front-and-center hint regarding Northstar’s homosexuality comes from Heather Hudson, Guardian’s widow and not-quite-yet leader of Alpha Flight, in the panels above. I touched on this one back in Alpha Flight #22, as Heather’s sentiment here is almost identical to Aurora’s: Apparently, being a gay man means you can’t stand to be around women.As eye-rolling as that repeat of misogyny-fueled homophobia is, it’s still of interest due to what it implies about who knew what way back when. Meta wise, we’ve got Claremont dropping the same sort of hints seen in the pages of Byrne’s Alpha Flight, and it backs up Byrne’s assertions that he intended Northstar to be gay early on and wasn’t shy about letting others know. In-story, it again implies that Jean-Paul, while not publicly out, wasn’t keeping his sexual orientation completely secret, at least not among those whom he had any regular contact with. Heather’s remark barely even warrants a verbal shrug from Wolverine, who left the team very early on in the Alpha Flight’s formation. Northstar didn’t care much for most of Alpha Flight and certainly didn’t count them among his confidants, so it’s far more likely he just didn’t give a damn if those around him knew about his sexuality than he trusted them enough to tell them. (Given his recruiting tactics, it is also possible that James Hudson was enough of a dick to out Northstar to his teammates. I tend not to go for that particular explanation, however, if only because while Jean-Paul seemed unhappy with Hudson’s intrusion into his life, he didn’t appear to hate the guy to the extent that would come with an unwilling outing.)But since Wolvie brought Rogue into the conversation, let’s also talk about her relationship with Northstar in this series, because it’s considerably more interesting than Heather being gross.During the inter-team misunderstanding obligatory to superhero cross-over stories, Rachel Summers triggered Aurora’s MPD, forcing the base Jeanne-Marie personality into dominance. Since the twins seem to share an inconsistent awareness of each other over distance, Jeanne-Marie’s horror at finding herself far from home and in the middle of a superhero fight is likely what brought Northstar speeding to her defense, despite their recent falling out. So Northstar came in ready to tear a strip off the first hostile he saw, but, unfortunately for him, his choice of targets was Rogue, who wasn’t around the last time the X-Men and Alpha Flight scrapped with each other, and whose durability and powers made her ideally suited for taking down even a flight-capable speedster.When next we see them interacting (immediately after Heather and Wolverine’s convo above), Northstar lets down his defenses in front of Rogue, even confiding some of his doubts to her. This is highly unusual behavior for Jean-Paul, but at the same time, not out of character. It mostly comes down to context. Prior to this, Jean-Paul has has multiple instances where he’s demonstrated loyalty, steadfastness, and protectiveness. With the exception of Aurora, though, he almost never displays these positive traits toward anyone on the Alpha Flight roster, likely because he doesn’t consider these people his friends, just the interfering Anglophone assholes he can never fully eject from his life.Rogue is outside of all that. Despite the fact that Jean-Paul probably never would have opened up to a stranger willingly, thanks to Rogue’s powers, the two of them have a weird type of instant intimacy at a time when the people closest to Jean-Paul are either dead or not speaking to him. She makes it clear that she knows all about him, but passes no judgement on his homosexuality (which is more than can be said for Northstar’s own sister). In addition, Rogue has just made herself vulnerable to Jean-Paul as well by her admission: she’s all of eighteen years old, and since childhood she’s had to resign herself to the knowledge that she’s likely going to go the rest of her life without to ability to enjoy even the casual affection that other people take for granted, let alone anything like a normal relationship.Yeeeah, no way the isolated gay guy was going to be able to empathize with that last bit, nope.So maybe it shouldn’t be that much of a shock that, instead of telling her to fuck off, Jean-Paul lets down his guard, then immediately shifts into over-protective brother mode. When Rogue has a chance to see if her most desperately longed-for wish has come true, Jean-Paul offers himself up as a test subject solely for her benefit.Far from being an intolerable presence, Rogue turns out to be one of Jean-Paul’s few friendships we ever actually see developed on-page.And then there’s the matter of how Rogue relates to Jean-Paul, particularly where the “first dance” scene is concerned. Rogue is oddly insistent upon Jean-Paul being her partner for her first dance, despite the fact that any one of her male teammates would have been happy to oblige. (I mean, really, Nightcrawler turn down a waltz? Even if it was Magneto offering, he’d probably at least consider it.) And I suspect Jean-Paul’s sexuality plays a part there because Rogue knows he absolutely will not contemplate her as a romantic interest on any level.As I mentioned before, Rogue is 18 at this time, barely an adult. Her one experiment playing at childish romance ended in tragedy, and she’s been without even casual touch since she was about fourteen. So she she’s had to put an enormous distance between herself and anything like typical human contact, let alone any hopes for future romance. She can flirt, use a kiss as a surprise attack, or admire a handsome man, but it’s all play-acting; it could never go anywhere and she knows it.But suddenly, that’s all changed. Rogue has to rethink her entire way of interacting with the world, and that’s overwhelming enough without having to navigate male attention as well. And that last bit doesn’t go away just because she’s among friends: Brawler starts to pull a line on her as soon as she shows up in her new dress, Nightcrawler’s an incorrigible flirt, etc. But Jean-Paul won’t have that sort of interest in her, no matter what. She knows him intimately, he’s her first non-traumatic kiss, and there’s no chance of him introducing even a hint of complications she’s not ready to think on yet. He’s safe. She can just enjoy her dance as a dance and leave the rest of it to unravel later.(That’s not to say that Nightcrawler or Colossus would deliberately do anything to make Rogue uncomfortable, but this scene from UXM #192 is a good illustration of why she might be wary. [1, 2] Kurt stepped over Rogue’s boundaries twice in a matter of seconds, simply because the level of isolation she has to endure momentarily slipped his mind and all he saw was a pretty lady to flirt with. He obviously didn’t mean to and felt awful about it as soon as he realized what he’d done. But just because the hurt he inflicted wasn’t malicious didn’t make it any easier for Rogue in the moment.)Claremont is known for being the king of subtext, so it’s not all that surprising that he found a way to make these two outsiders interact in emotionally significant ways, but it’s still a damn good piece of work, especially considering that Northstar wasn’t even part of his regular roster. Alas, aside from some momentary interactions during the 2007 X-Men annual and Rogue showing up at Northstar’s wedding, Rogue and Northstar’s friendship has been all but forgotten by subsequent writers. We can always hope someone will bring it back, though.Next time: The end of an era. All 28 issues of it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #29 - Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola (December, 1985)
I spoke my praise for Bill Mantlo’s run on Alpha Flight a few installments back. Here’s the other side of it.Upon taking over the Alpha Flight title, Bill Mantlo seemed to be on a mission to dismantle everything that made the book unique. The book went from being largely a series of solo and paired adventures that allowed for deeper character development to the team operating as a unit more often than not. They went from each having their own distinct lives, of which the team just was a part, to having their lives largely center around Alpha Flight. The team went from being an independent operation back to being under government sponsorship, complete with the ubiquitous mansion HQ. Given how closely Mantlo reshaped Alpha Flight resemble two of Marvel’s better-known superhero teams, it’s little wonder that Alpha Flight became uncharitably known as the “Avengers North” and “X-Men Lite” in fandom circles after Byrne’s departure.Perhaps the most jolting transition, however, was Mantlo’s approach to characterization. Across the board, individual character traits were either exaggerated to the point that they bordered on caricature, or else appeared out of nowhere. The results were rarely flattering. Heather’s worry about her fitness to lead the team went from an occasional twinge to a crippling self-doubt that had her donning Mac’s suit a year after readers had seen her explicitly reject the very notion, and the confidence she’d gained from it was less in line with Byrne’s depiction than it was stock Strong Female Character. Puck went from being a roguish, larger-than-life explorer to being steeped in self-pity over his dwarfism. Roger Bochs similarly went from being a sweet-natured genius mech-pilot to alternate bouts of self-pity and obsession over Aurora, then was retconned into being mentally unstable, and then killed off so that newly-handsome Madison Jeffries could take over the Box armor. Aurora went from being something of a flirt to fickle, unfeeling, and willing to take up with any man who might have been remotely capable of looking her way. And so on.
Northstar was in no way exempt from this new characterization, and the hints about his sexuality became equally unsubtle. Where Byrne had taken an approach that often required close reading to pick up on indications of Jean-Paul’s homosexuality, Mantlo’s leaned toward blatant hints delivered as dialogue, sometimes clashing with previous characterizations. This approach drew mixed reactions, especially given that Jean-Paul’s sexuality had become something of an open secret among Marvel staff and dedicated readers. While some considered Mantlo’s take to be somewhat clunky and heavy-handed compared to Byrne’s, others appreciated Mantlo taking Jean-Paul’s sexuality from subtext to all but explicit admission.
“I think Byrne did more to hurt gays with Northstar, than help them,” said a gay comics writer speaking under condition of anonymity in a late 80’s interview with Andy Mangels (“Gays in Comics”, Amazing Heroes Magazine, 1988). “Northstar was never openly gay, he used his powers for his own ends and was involved in some illegal activities, and he had the most abrasive personality in Marvel Comics, with the exception of the Hulk.”
“At least Mantlo came out and said it,” said a Marvel staffer, also speaking anonymously in that same interview.
The interview also brings up a John Byrne remark from Amazing Heroes #76, regarding Mantlo’s handling of the character: “[Bill Mantlo is] trying to say the unsayable about Northstar.”
Unfortunately, this up-front approach came hand-in-hand with Northstar’s new exaggerated personality, and the combined effect often held more than a whiff of stereotype.
We get our first example of that in Mantlo’s first issue, Alpha Flight #29. Walter Langkowski attempt to find himself a new body for his soul (housed in the Box armor since AF #24) goes horribly wrong. (Par for the course regarding Langkowski’s brilliant ideas, really). He winds up bringing a very pissed-off Hulk through a portal. The Hulk quickly reduces Walter’s armor to scrap, releasing his soul into the great, wide nowhere. The Beaubier twins are so devastated by this that they sit down to weep for the rest of the fight, at which point Jean-Paul reveals to Aurora that he too had feelings for Walter (see above).
Now, this is out of character for both twins, but especially so for Northstar. Jean-Paul had previously been depicted as a scrapper. In the face of strong emotion, his inclination was to action. When he got angry with Walter, he would throw a punch. When his friend was murdered in front of him, he went looking for revenge. Even the last time he thought Walter had died, he snapped out of his grief the moment action was needed.
Not only is it out of character, but linking Jean-Paul’s sudden ineffectiveness in a fight with his affection for Walter was a particularly unwise choice. Among the persistent stereotypes surrounding gay men is their supposed effeminacy. This misogyny-filtered homophobia includes the idea that gay men display an overdramatic excess of emotion and aren’t any good in traditionally masculine pursuits, such as combat. Mantlo having Jean-Paul incapacitated by his heretofore unknown great love for Walter while the Hulk is ten feet away beating the tar out of the rest of Alpha Flight plays right into that tired stereotype for no other reason than Mantlo needing the twins out of the fight.
Mantlo never quite seemed to know just how he wanted to present Northstar. He tried to redeem the character’s image a bit by softening his time with Cell Combatre and walking back his claims of having used his powers to advance his skiing career. At the same time, however, he made Northstar even less likeable by making him even more petty and snappish toward his teammates than before, and full-on ableist toward Bochs. (Seriously, it seemed like every other comment Jean-Paul has to make about Roger during this era involved calling him a “cripple”.) And his handling of Jean-Paul’s homosexuality was largely in line with this unflattering portrayal right up until Northstar was written out of the book in Alpha Flight #50.
But we’ll get to that soon enough.
Next time: Our beloved Walter.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #32 - (Bill Mantlo and Jon Bogdanove, March 1986)
Just the smallest scrap of subtext this time.Aurora’s “our beloved Walter” can be read ambiguously, especially taken as a stand-alone. Even if the sentiment is a little strong, Walter had been a founding member of Alpha Flight, so the “our” could have referred to the team as a whole feeling his absence. But given the twins’ shared grief over Walter’s death a few issues back, it seems far more likely that Aurora means “our” as in her and Jean-Paul’s love for him. And really, it’s a very kind gesture on Aurora’s part to acknowledge the possibility of her brother’s loss being anywhere equal to her own, given what a hard time he gave her and Walter about their relationship previously.This scene takes place during a time when the twins couldn’t touch each other without their powers shorting out, more unforeseen side-effects of Walter Langkowski tinkering with Aurora’s genetic code back in AF #24. (Without her fully informed consent, remember. Because he was the worst fucking boyfriend.) This was one of the better ideas Mantlo had for the twins, as it added a new layer of delicious angst wrinkle to their relationship – driving them apart physically when they were finally at a place where they could begin to lean on each other for emotional support. Unfortunately, even that didn’t last long before the new direction for Aurora became complete self-absorption.Next time: My kingdom for a sonogram!
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #36 (Bill Mantlo and David Ross, July 1986)
Here we have Alpha Flight hovering over Snowbird, whose divine blood is causing complications with her pregnancy. I’m not going to go into much detail about this, but suffice to say, the whole thing goes about as well as pregnancy in comics usually does. (Which is to say, dreadfully.)Our hint toward Northstar’s homosexuality this time around is the immediate refutation of the idea that he could be the father of Snowbird’s child. It’s another line with double meaning. Obviously Jean-Paul can’t be the father because Snowbird’s human lover, Doug Thompson, did that deed. He also couldn’t have gotten anyone pregnant because he’s only interested in dudes. There are a couple of aspects of that last part that assume quite a bit, but, as mentioned before, we’re 1) dealing with the attitudes of the day 30 years ago and 2) even for that period, the writers were more than occasionally gross.The pregnancy plot would lead to the introduction of Pestilence, arguably the most memorable villain from Mantlo’s time with Alpha Flight. It was also the beginning of Byrne-era team’s exit, as the repercussions from this storyline would ultimately result in most of the original team being written out of the book.Mantlo’s goal early on was to shake up Alpha Flight, partially to boost sales, partially because he wasn’t interested in continuing Byrne’s approach with the book.“The team was never a team,” he explained in an interview (Amazing Heroes #76, August 1985). “What you had was a lot of individual stories about the individuals in the book, who almost never functioned as a team…They didn’t seem to have much reason to be together other than the fact that team books sell better than individual character books. So my first reaction was ‘Alpha Flight is a team book; it should be written as a team book.’”This approach, unfortunately, lead to an overcrowded book: Byrne’s roster (including the return of Sasquatch), Madison Jeffries (a Byrne creation given a larger role after Byrne’s departure), plus Mantlo introducing characters like Scramble, Purple Girl, and Manikin. Mantlo’s editors requested that he trim down the roster."It was decided that [the team] had grown too large and unwieldy,” Mantlo said in an 1987 interview with The Advocate. “And with John Byrne gone, we had the opportunity to recreate the team.”And, unfortunately, one of the casualties of the purge would be Northstar.Next time: Tell, don’t show.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #41 (Bill Mantlo and David Ross, December 1986)
So there’s actually more than one hint about Northstar’s sexuality in this issue, but they occur in such disparate circumstances that I’m not even going to try to put them in the same entry.So first, there’s this one. Aurora wants to design a costume for new Alpha Flight member, Madison Jeffries. Since Jean-Paul is nearby and breathing, snark breaks out, and Aurora takes a jab at her brother’s preferences.Aurora’s comment is a bit odd, given that… well, since when does Jean-Paul even seem to notice that there are attractively dressed men around? We’ve never seen him show the slightest bit of admiration for any fellow. Even around Walter, whom he’s ostensibly attracted to, Northstar was entirely abrasive. And, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not as if Aurora knows her own brother that well anyway.This is one of the downsides of Mantlo’s approach to Jean-Paul’s sexuality. While Byrne’s hints often required some extrapolation on the part of the reader, Mantlo’s approach was frequently a clunky “tell, don’t show”. But it’s hard to be too rough on Mantlo on that front. Considering that neither he nor Byrne were allowed to be explicit about Jean-Paul’s homosexuality, there was always going to be something that fell short.Next time: Wanna play Adam and Eve?
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #41 (Bill Mantlo & David Ross, December 1986)
Ah, yes. Alpha Flight #41, the sharp edge of the axe. This is the point where things start to turn a particularly ugly shade of messy for Northstar. The arrival of Kara Kilgrave introduces plot elements originally meant to culminate in Northstar dying of AIDS, and which did result in the half-elf nonsense. And then there’s Kara’s intro, which is troublesome just taken on its own.
Let’s have a look. To sum-up, thirteen year-old Kara discovers that she’s a mutant when she turns purple at a party. Her mother informs her that not only is she a mutant, her mom’s estranged husband/Kara’s father is the Purple Man, and Kara herself is the product of coercive rape. The news is delivered rather more gently than I’ve put it here, but, unsurprisingly, it hits the kid pretty hard. Horrified at her own origin, Kara steals her mom’s credit cards and runs away to see her crush, Jean-Paul Beaubier, at an exhibition skiing match. Her mind-control powers manifest and she accidentally compels a woman to fling herself off a cliff; Jean-Paul reveals his mutant powers in order to save her, earning the scorn of the crowd, who declare him a cheat. Kara follows Jean-Paul and winds up using her powers on him as well… at which point it starts getting creepy.
Okaaaay… so she’s gone from being distraught that her dad “forced” her mother in marriage, to being enamored of her power over Jean-Paul. Kara decides Alberta is boring and wishes to go somewhere more exotic, prompting Jean-Paul to spirit her away to a tropical island, where Kara continues to bleed off any accumulated sympathy.
Hoo boy…
Kara compels Jean-Paul to strip down to his underwear and go swimming with her, then to save her from a crocodile attack. Jean-Paul discovers that being submerged in water counters the effects of Kara’s pheromones. Which leads us to the scans heading into the write-up.
We have as our reference to Jean-Paul’s sexuality the “Even were it conceivable that I might return your affections…” line. We’ve got also got the bit about the “freak among freaks” line, that could conceivably be a second reference, but given context, I think it’s more likely to be referring to his mutancy. Jean-Paul hasn’t typically been down on his sexuality; it’s an aspect of his life that he’s been pretty comfortable with. The complications caused by his mutant powers, by contrast, are a main component of this issue, and, in the larger picture, the reason that James Hudson poked his nose into Jean-Paul’s life to begin with. But ymmv.
So first, this isn’t a great intro for Kara. Her attitude does improve as time goes on, and I think it’s important to note that 1) she wasn’t in a great headspace here and 2) Jean-Paul really needs to work on his soft skills. But still, her way of trying to get some control over her situation is to literally take control of another person who had nothing to do with it. She makes Jean-Paul’s upset over outing himself about this connection she thinks they have, which then moves on to coercion, kidnapping, and molestation. All of which she then tries to pass off as an accident, then attempts to justify to Northstar as the only way she’ll ever know love. And afterward, she continues to insist that the whole thing was an accident, that she couldn’t help it.
But there’s also some meta grossness here regarding Jean-Paul’s treatment that ties into what Kara did, how Alpha Flight responds, and how his sexuality is treated. And that we’ll cover next time, as well as dipping our toes into the first indications of the infamous AIDS story line.
Next time: No Wonder You’re So Upset!
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #42 - (Bill Mantlo and David Ross, January 1987)
So we get two terrible bits of writing this time around, one in full bloom and one just seeded.Let’s start with the immediate bullshit, Heather’s response to Northstar after he manages to shake off Kara’s conditioning again. So, as I’ve noted before, most of the early indications we have of Northstar’s sexuality are varying degrees of snark and homophobia from his teammates. And that’s a whole lot of not great. But this one is really beyond the pale. Northstar was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by the person they’re debating letting onto the team, and Heather completely dismisses it as a joke. Not only that, she does so even as she acknowledges that it would have been worse for Northstar because Kara was a woman - an indication that she knows that the assault would potentially be more traumatic for him as a gay man. And she just doesn’t care.That’s not just “quit the team” territory, that’s “quit the team and put your leader’s head through the wall on the way out”. Scenes like this are one more reason why I maintain that anyone who gives Northstar shit about his attitude toward Alpha Flight has never actually read Alpha Flight.Then there’s the more infamous element - the cough that marks the start of the aborted storyline that was supposed to culminate in Northstar dying of AIDS. To avoid redundancy, I’m not going to cover every panel that had Northstar sniffle, cough, and stagger his way to Alpha Flight #50, but since this is the issue where it first rears its head, I am going to give a general overview.So this goes all the way back to Bill Mantlo taking over the title. Mantlo, who was on The Incredible Hulk at the time, was enthusiastic about taking over the book when John Byrne offered to swap titles. As Mantlo told Amazing Heroes: “I was bowled over [when Byrne called], because this was John’s creation and I’ve had nothing but admiration for the way he’s been handling it. So I said ‘My God, yes!’ And that’s how we decided to switch.” (Amazing Heroes #76, 1985). This enthusiasm also seemed to include a plan to out Northstar. As John Byrne put it in that same interview: “[Bill] is going to try and say the unsayable about Northstar in no uncertain terms; I wish him luck.” Outside of that particular point, however, Mantlo seemed to have little interest in the Beaubier twins and had no real direction for them outside of Aurora’s fluctuating powers. From AH #76: “So far the least interesting to me are Aurora and Northstar. John played them up the most, and really went heavily into their origins, but he made so many changes to them that it’s almost impossible for me to say what the norm is any more. I’m just giving them a chance to relax and recuperate while I concentrate on the others.” Ultimately, Mantlo’s plans to out Northstar were blocked by editorial, and he found writing Jean-Paul under the same limitations Byrne had dealt with to be quite frustrating:“I always felt Northstar had possibilities if his background could be developed as a logical extension of his character. But I was prevented from doing that because of creative restrictions. Therefore, I had to look at the character as a viable superhero with the reality of his gayness kept largely in the dark. And as a character, his flying and running fast just didn’t make him and integral part of the team without his uniqueness - being gay.” (The Advocate #479, 1987) This lead to Mantlo’s decision to reveal Northstar as HIV+ and kill him off. From the same interview: “Northstar… could have been made to just vanish or even quit the team, but Mantlo wanted to be true to the character’s integrity. He decided, instead, that Northstar would die of AIDS. It seemed, [Mantlo] says, plausible given the fact that there had been allusions to numerous relationships during his years in the book. ‘It would give me the opportunity to deal with a frightening, sad, controversial topic in a comic book - which I had always understood Marvel was all about,’ he adds.”Alpha Flight’s editor, Carl Potts, was not on board with this. From the same interview with The Advocate: “We had never openly declared that Northstar was gay. Now we had the only fairly popular Marvel character generally acknowledged as being gay and he was dying of AIDS. You shouldn’t equate one with the other.”The two came to a compromise on the storyline, wherein Alpha Flight’s foe, Pestilence, would sicken Northstar by quickening the “corruption” in his body, with the disease remaining unnamed and the intent being that Northstar would never realize he had contracted HIV, even as his illness progressed.Said Mantlo: “It was really AIDS in another guise, and there were still complaints about it being too similar.”The storyline was ultimately resolved by Mantlo having Loki tell the Beaubier twins that their respective ailments (Jean-Paul’s wasting disease and Jeanne-Marie’s increasing mental instability) were the result of them being half-elves unsuited to life in the mortal realm. Jeanne-Marie used her powers to heal her brother, Jean-Paul got sent off to Asgard to live with the elves, and both were written out of the series for about two years worth of issues. (The twins were eventually brought back by other writers via the expedient explanation of Loki being a lying liar who lies.)Mantlo was displeased with the compromised ending:“It’s really a fallback position, since we were precluded from doing anything else… Quite honestly, I think it’s hypocritical and pointless, but that’s comics. You can’t do anything controversial, even if it has integrity, even if it’s honest, even if it’s an attempt to deal with a serious issue affecting thousands of people and likely to affect millions more.” (The Advocate #479, 1987)Though there were apparently plans to revisit the twins at some point, Mantlo left Alpha Flight before this came about.So, there’s a bit to unpack here, the biggest being Mantlo’s reasoning behind trying to kill Northstar off. This was a writer who was plainly frustrated by the limitations being imposed on him, but, at the same time, he also sounds very much like he’d limited himself by reducing Northstar’s character to the sum of his sexuality. Aside from a one-off story in Marvel Fanfare #28, it seemed Northstar’s jam-packed past of childhood trauma, circus life, professional disgrace, and political terrorism held no interest for Mantlo as something that could be used to open the character to wider exploration, nor did even his own ideas for Northstar and Aurora’s otherworldly origins. No, if Northstar couldn’t be outed, he had to die. And if he couldn’t die, he still had to leave the book.I’ve said before that I admire Mantlo’s integrity in not dropping the subtext related to Northstar’s sexuality, and I hold to that. As a writer, he could have saved himself a massive headache by simply making Northstar straight or immediately dropping him from the roster. So I do believe that Mantlo was in some part sincere in his desire to do something authentic and emotional with his planned storyline for Northstar; he’d stated that Jean-Paul’s sexuality was a unique quality in the comics landscape and seemed to want to make that an open part of the book by whatever means he could. There’s even a case to be made that, for better or for worse, linking Northstar to AIDS and the scrutiny that storyline brought made it that much more difficult to downplay the queer subtext surrounding the character, in turn making it easier for a later writer to make a case for making his homosexuality canon.However, I have a real hard time scraping up much patience for a straight writer who decided that portraying a semi-closeted character was just too hard, when that very life experience would have been authentic to any number of queer readers, particularly in the middle of the AIDS crisis. I’ve even less patience with the apparent conclusion that the way to remedy that frustration was to kill Northstar instead of finding more subtle ways to advance the character, as Byrne had managed, or even just having him leave the team. The notion that it would have been out of character for Northstar to leave Alpha Flight is absolutely absurd; this is a character who only ever stayed with the team for the sake of his sister. All that would have been required for Jean-Paul to plausibly leave would have been for the writer to stop torturing Jeanne-Marie for an issue or two, or to have her take a bad enough turn that he took her off the team for her own safety and that of others.Finally, I can’t say I have much faith that Mantlo would have been able to execute his plotline at all well, particularly given how little sympathy he seems to have had for Northstar as a character or how little interest he had in him beyond the controversy of his sexuality. Whatever Mantlo’s intent, it’s hard to believe that we’d have gotten any deathbed emotion that rang true to Northstar as a character or was particularly honest as commentary on society’s treatment of AIDS victims from the same writer who had Northstar’s teammates blow off sexual assault as delivery for a truly nasty homophobic joke and who thought a gay character possibly having had two romantic relationships in his life (I’m assuming this was in reference to Raymonde and Maurice) made him promiscuous and therefore made it plausible he’d have AIDS. And on top of that, regardless of other motivation, the decision to get rid of Northstar seems to have come as much from Mantlo’s frustration with his editors as any desire for meaningful character development. In conclusion, for whatever good I might be able to say about Mantlo, I’m not the least bit sorry that his plans were derailed. He seems to have been, at best, a writer with better intentions than capability when it came to the sensitive subject matter he’d decided to tackle, and it seems for the best that other writers were able to give Northstar the development he couldn’t.Next Time: The Man You Were
(Cross-posted from Tumblr.)
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #46 (Bill Mantlo and David Ross, May 1987)
To sum up the madness of the last few issues: Walter’s spirit returned from the void and possessed the corpse of former Alpha Flight member and demi-god Snowbird, who had been killed along with her son and mortal lover a few issues prior. Walter used Snowbird’s shape-shifting powers to take his Sasquatch shape again, defeated the threat du jour, and then shifted back to human form, only to find that joyriding around in Snowbird’s body also meant he was confined a female form upon transformation. And so we come to this, the arrival of Wanda Langkowski.Our “hint” this time around is Northstar’s admission that he preferred Wanda as her former identity, Walter. I’m using quotes here because, at this point, there’s only the thinnest veneer of subtext - paired with Northstar’s confession back in Alpha Flight #28, only the most deliberately obtuse could miss the meaning of this statement. Up until Northstar’s coming out issue, which was still several years down the line at this point, this was as close as Marvel came to canon confirmation of Northstar’s homosexuality.It’s likely no coincidence that this near-confirmation came as Northstar’s time with the team was near its intended end. If Mantlo was going to go for broke so far as outing Northstar as best he could, it was mostly likely a case of now or never, since he didn’t know if he’d ever revisit the character. And, given how things turned out, it was probably best he made his intent as clear as he could, given the restrictions he was working under.Next time: Special Friends
Cross-posted from Tumblr.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #48 (Bill Mantlo and Terry Shoemaker, July 1987)
After the overtness of last issue, we’re at a relative whisper in terms of hints, especially for Mantlo. This time around, it’s the mention of Northstar’s “special friends”, which probably wouldn’t even rate notice if not for every thing that had come before it.Worth noting: Despite the fact that Northstar was supposed to be oblivious to the nature of his affliction, between his certainly that he was “doomed” back in issue #46 and his sincere belief here that Scramble is his last hope, it becomes harder to credit that Mantlo’s “AIDS in another guise” was meant to be any guise at all. And that’s all she wrote for Mantlo, at least so far as the hints into Northstar’s sexuality go. It’s also very nearly as far as the queer subtext goes entirely. Bill Mantlo’s last issue of Alpha Flight was #62. Northstar was absent from the comics for about twenty issues beyond that, until new writer James Hudnall brought him back in issue #81, and had him rejoin the team a bit after that. But neither Hudnall nor Fabian Nicieza, the next writer on board, seemed to have any interest in continuing that particular thread.(In fairness, this may well have been down to nothing more than cast bloat. Concerns about the size of the team seemed to have been a thing of the past once Mantlo was let go, and more than one character got the short end of the stick in regards to characterization as Alpha Flight’s roster grew ever larger and eventually had to be split into two teams.)(Addendum (3/11/21): In March 2021, Fabian Nicieza revealed on episode 26 of the Cerebro podcast that he'd had plans to make Northstar's sexuality canon, but left the book before he was able to.)It wasn’t until Alpha Flight #105, written by Scott Lobdell, that we’d see another reference to Northstar’s sexuality.Next: Excuse Me A Moment...
Cross-posted to Tumblr.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alpha Flight #105 (Scott Lobdell and Tom Morgan, Feb. 1992)
Context: The dudes of Alpha Flight (this once again including Sasquatch) head out to a bar for Madison Jeffries’ bachelor party. While there, Northstar overhears a party at another table hurling homophobic abuse at two men on a date. He responds by using his superspeed to pants the jerks and leaves them strangling, their neckties tied to the overhead light fixtures. Our hint this time around is that Northstar takes especial offense at the presence of homophobes, presumably due to being gay himself. (And, once again, Alpha Flight winds up looking not so great in that it seems not to bother them at all.)Though we have yet another situation where the writer acknowledges the existence of homosexuality through casual homophobia, things do change up a little here. For once, Northstar isn’t the target. Even more noteworthy, we finally get the narrative reinforcement that hey, homophobia might be a bad thing, instead of having it come unchallenged from the book’s heroes. So hey, progress!The next issue is Alpha Flight #106, wherein Northstar’s sexuality goes from being subtext to being proper canon. An openly out superhero was practically unheard of at the time, and #106 became Alpha Flight’s best selling issue to date. As might be expected, of course, the move was controversial. This, combined with Lobdell being promoted from Alpha Flight to the X-Men books, meant that pretty much as soon Marvel outed Northstar, they swept his sexuality right back under the rug again. There was one direct mention of it in the series after (AF #114, with Jeanne-Marie being upset that her brother was gay), and no mention at all in Northstar’s own solo series in 1994, where things went right back to innuendo and, you guessed it, homophobic allusions. But the “secret” was finally out and there was no walking it back.Though Northstar’s been in a better place since around 2012 with Marjorie Liu’s Astonishing X-Men run, writers have historically been more interested in Northstar’s suffering as a queer character than in letting him triumph - the general hostility he had to face in Alpha Flight from recruitment to the team’s disbanding in the first run, the killing off of his queer-coded found family in Raymonde and Clementine, his unrequited longings for the affection of various straight characters, his near-deadly brush with AIDS, the death of his daughter in AF #106, his sudden, never-explained suicide attempt in AF v.2 and on and on.But despite this, and though he was conceived at a time when there was no way his sexuality would be openly acknowledged by Marvel, Northstar’s hung in there. Today, he exists alongside dozens of other queer characters in Marvel’s stable, and has gone from Alpha Flight’s resentful loner to a valued member of the X-Men and beloved husband of Kyle Jinadu-Beaubier. And so, there is a definite satisfaction in being able to look back at the origins of one of the few gay characters who has been present through decades of cultural change, who’s been through so much hardship and so many near-misses, both on the page and behind the scenes, and see that he’s made it through despite the odds.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Uncanny X-Men #120 & 121 - First appearances. Reprinted in many, many formats, but I'd personally recommend grabbing the X-Men: Alpha Flight collection. It’s relatively cheap used at this point (and even cheaper digitally!), and it has a fair chunk of early appearances in it.
Alpha Flight v.1 - The obvious. The entire Byrne run is collected in three volumes, but the first trade is OOP and stupidly expensive. As such, this is one where I suggest searching eBay and back-issue bins for single issues, or buying the first trade digitally. There’s also an omnibus of the entire Byrne run out, but it’s on the pricey side. The first run of Alpha Flight has it's ups and downs (*ahem* Mantlo!), but I'd generally recommend the whole thing. You can skip issues #51 - 80, though, as Northstar spends those two years written out of the series.
Crystar #11, Marvel Team-Up Annual #7, and Marvel Two-In-One #84 - Contain veiled references to Northstar's queerness (the one in the annual is barely veiled, but the other two require some squinting, IMHO).
Alpha Flight/X-Men - This is the one by Ben Raab and John Cassaday. It's pretty bad. Nothing at all noteworthy happens to anyone.
X-Men/Alpha Flight: The Gift - This is the one by Chris Claremont and Paul Smith and is generally excellent. Establishes Northstar and Rogue's friendship. Collected in the Asgardian Wars tpb, X-Men: The Gift, and the X-Men: Alpha Flight collection.
Marvel Fanfare #28 - Northstar's past with the FLQ-wannabes comes back to haunt him. More reasons why James Hudson should have stayed dead come to light. Uncollected.Marvel Comics Presents #92 - Starring Northstar, Joe Madureira’s baby-pictures, Northstar’s 90’s mullet, and a terrorist named after lube. Recommended for being utter crack. Not collected or reprinted, so if you want this one in dead-tree format, you’ll have to go checking the back-issue bins.
Northstar #1 - 4 - Uncollected. Limited series, mostly noteworthy for managing to avoid direct mention of Northstar's sexuality while being insulting about it at the same time.
Alpha Flight v. 2 #6, 8, 12, 13, 15, 17-20 - Uncollected. Northstar attempts suicide, pontificates at fishermen, chases Aurora, and does little of note for the rest of the series.
Uncanny X-Men: Eve of Destruction - This would be the collection in which Northstar is on his book tour and literally makes his would-be murderer eat his own gun. Bonus KO'ing of homophobic teammates included.
Uncanny X-Men: Hope, Dominant Species, Holy War, Day of the Atom - Chuck Austen. Starts off OK by the standards of early-2000′s queer rep, quickly devolves into a great-big pile of Do Not Want, as Northstar's main function seems to be playing BFF to the stand-in for Austen’s wife and briefly crushing on Iceman like a tongue-tied teenager. Don't you just love it when misogynistic straight guys write queer dudes?
New Mutants v2/Academy X: Choosing Sides, Haunted, and X-Posed - Northstar's stint as a teacher. Mostly background appearances and his funeral issue. Establishes his mentor role to Anole/Victor Borkowski. Collected in The Complete New Mutants: Back To School and New X-Men: Academy X: The Complete Collection.
Wolverine: Enemy of the State - Northstar as an angry gay zombie. *sigh*
X-Men: Supernovas - In which Northstar and Aurora get brainwashed again, given a powers upgrade, then returned to default settings.
X-Men: Divided We Stand - Anthology collection in which Northstar's relationship with Anole is pointlessly sacrificed on the alter of angst.
Uncanny X-Men: Sisterhood Arc thru Schism - Northstar rejoins the X-Men. Seen with a man later confirmed to be his boyfriend. Forms a completely unexplained BFF relationship with Dazzler. Mostly used as wallpaper, absolutely fuck-all in the way of character development.
Nation-X #2 - Northstar's boyfriend is finally given a name (Kyle). He visits Utopia (which apparently makes Northstar giddy as all hell). Two men are implied to have sex -- with each other! -- in a Marvel comic, and yet the world does not end. Collected in Nation X and Astonishing X-Men: Northstar.
X-Men: Hellbound - Team Gay goes to Hell. OK, OK, fine...Northstar goes to Limbo on a team mission. Brainwashed again, nothing much happens in terms of character, but there’s some half-decent snark. Collected in X-Men: Second Coming - Revelations.
Chaos War: Alpha Flight - The band gets back together. Kyle gets a mention. Last decent Alpha Flight story to date in which Northstar has any real presence. Collected in Chaos War: X-Men.
Alpha Flight v.4 #0.1 - 8 - For once, Northstar isn't the one who winds up mind-controlled; apparently, he dodged and his sister and boyfriend took the hit. Decent art, Kyle gets a last name (Jinadu), Northstar doesn't get jobbed wrt to his powers, and there are multiple PDAs between Northstar and Kyle. Unfortunately, that's all the good I can say about this misogynistic trainwreck of a nostalgia book. There were supposed to be two hardcover volumes, but sales tanked so badly on the first that the second was canceled. There's currently a softcover collection out for the whole run.
Astonishing X-Men #48 - 68 - Moves to New York with Kyle, joins up as part of a team with Karma, Wolverine, Gambit, Iceman, Warbird, and Celia Reyes. Lots of significant moments for Northstar and Kyle, the most publicized being the wedding that took place in issue #51. Collected in Northstar, Weaponized, X-Termination, and Unmasked. Northstar does not feature heavily in the latter part of the run.Amazing X-Men #1 - #19 - Aids in the search for Nightcrawler in the afterlife. All part of the wacky adventures that come with being part of the JGS staff. Collected in The Quest for Nightcrawler, World War Wendigo, and Once and Future Juggernaut. Alpha Flight guest-stars in World War Wendigo, issues #8 - 12. Northstar has a spotlight story with Anole and Nightcrawler in issue #13.Secret Wars Journal #4: Normally I don’t include AUs because Northstar never has anything to do in them but show up and die. But this one has a bit more substance, plus Kyle actually gets to have an action scene for once! Collected in trade.
Iceman #9: Northstar shows up at Iceman’s going-away party. Attempts to salvage his ego by insisting part of him “always knew”. No one is fooled. Available in trade.Uncanny X-Men (2018) #1 - 10: Wallpaper for ensemble fight scenes. Few lines, no character development. Collected here.Age of X-Man: The X-Tremists #1 - #5: Northstar is part of the dirty tricks squad that keeps Nate Grey’s mutant utopia running. Essentially, the X-Men version of Section 31, but with more sexual repression. Issue #4 is Northstar’s spotlight. Excellent character work, despite the manipulated setting. Collected in trade.X-Factor (v.4) - Northstar leads a Krakoan investigative team whose job is enforce the Resurrection Protocols by determining whether missing mutants have been killed or not. Brings back Leah Williams from The X-Tremists as writer, someone who’s previously shown an excellent grasp of Jean-Paul’s character. Currently collected in two trades.Trial of Magneto - Because Marvel is greedy and stupid, they abruptly cancelled X-Factor after deciding to bloat a pitched B-arc of Williams’ into a full-fledged mini which, despite the forcibly recycled title, actually focused on the murder of the Scarlett Witch. (Want to know why we can’t have nice things? Marketing departments.) Most of this mini is focused on Wanda and Magneto, but Jean-Paul’s adopted daughter, Joanne, who died in infancy, is revealed to have been a mutant and was added to the resurrection queue. Currently collected in trade.Alpha Flight (v.5) #1 - #5 - A very good showing for the old school Alpha Flight team, mutant members included. James Hudson in particular demonstrates a level of actual heroism we haven’t seen in decades.