The Young Avenger You Never Got To See

Graeme McMillan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:00:00 PDT

One of Marvel Comics' most successful new creations on recent years has been Allen Heinberg's Young Avengers, a series that resonated with fans, critics, and those happy to see new gay superheroes in the forms of Hulking and Wiccan, two of the series' most popular characters. But Hulking wasn't exactly originally intended to be gay, according to author Perry Moore.

Moore, who's become an unexpected spokesman for the gay superhero fanbase following the release of his novel Hero - which centers around a

I remember when Northstar was killed, a friend of mine who writes for TV but used to write for comics, Alan Heinberg – I begged him to make two of those Young Avengers gay. Begged him. Begged him... [and t]hey did! They did. But originally, one of them wasn’t going to be a guy – the Hulkling. He wound up doing the couple and did a great job with it, but now he’s writing Gray’s Anatomy and other things. He’s a great writer and I’d like to see him do more comics, but he’s making more money doing writing in Hollywood.

NRAMA: I remember seeing the first pictures of the Young Avengers and thinking Hulkling was just a really butch female...

PM: He was, originally!

After-the-fact gender reassignment may not be entirely unheard of in superhero comics, but even though would've meant that Marvel would've been robbed of their two flagship gay characters - instead of Northstar, their previous solo gay character who had almost singlehandedly created the idea that the company was homophobic through many years of mistreatment, including a somewhat embarrassing "He isn't gay! He's actually a fairy! No, with wings and everything!" backtracking and being murdered twice - I personally wish that we'd seen the character stay with his original gender. Not because superhero comics need a non-femme superheroine, but because then we would've been spared a character having to be named "Teddy."

Perry Moore II: Looking At The Gay Landscape [Newsarama]

Marvel's Baby Boom Just Latest In Long Line

Graeme McMillan — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:30:00 PDT

If creator Chris Claremont gets his way, GeNext - Marvel's new series about the children of today's X-Men, which launched on Wednesday - is just the start of a new line of comics where we find out about the children of today's stars of four-color-page and screen. But after numerous previous attempts, is the world ready for another set of adamantium-diaper-filled comics?

Talking about the new series, Claremont explained the lure of writing a comic outside of usual continuity:

The advantage of a book like GeNext or Exiles is that I can pretty much define the realities we are playing in... my approach is not a solo-title it is a potential foundation for new line and perhaps if we are successful we can bring back GeNext for a second arc or try it out on a one-year basis or even as a potential ongoing—or even create a spin-off. It's almost like having the potential for a second line of "Ultimate-style" books.

The problem being that no-one seems to have told Chris that Marvel already has a line like that, called MC2. That decade-old line started with Spider-Girl (the daughter of Spider-Man), before expanding to include such characters as Stinger (Ant-Man's daughter), next-generation Captain America American Dream and Wild Thing, the off-spring of Wolverine and Elektra. Marvel also has Young Avengers, the teenaged non-sidekick versions of their flagship team, as well as the soon-playing-on-a-DVD-near-you Next Avengers, about the children of the original Avengers fighting robots in the future or something. And who can forget the X-Babies who were, I shit you not, pre-pubescent versions of the X-Men from the 1980s. You have to wonder exactly what's going on over at Marvel Comics to create such a variety of fruits of their characters' loins...

Chris Claremont on GeNext [Newsarama]

io9: young avengers

The Young Avenger You Never Got To See

Marvel's Baby Boom Just Latest In Long Line