Northstar defuses Major Mapleleaf’s anger by announcing that he, too, is gay. The Major’s fury, it turns out, is fueled by memories of his son’s death from AIDS complications, a death ignored by the media because it happened to a gay man (making him hate HIV-positive babies who get better treatment in the media). When he decides to care for it, the positive media coverage angers a retired Canadian superhero, Major Mapleleaf, into attacking Alpha Flight. The comic stars with Northstar’s team, Alpha Flight, finding a baby infected with HIV. Most importantly, the story fully falls into so-bad-it’s-good territory. It was an important moment in terms of gay visibility, but it had so many downsides. The coming out of Northstar was a mixed bag.
Three years later, the series ignited more controversy when Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada mentioned in an interview that, due to the Rawhide Kid furor, any title starring a gay character would have to have a “Mature Readers” warning - a comment that left some worried (since Marvel wasn’t publishing Mature Readers titles anymore) that gay characters were being specifically excluded at the publisher.
One popular (and politically conservative) writer, Chuck Dixon, even accused Marvel of tricking The Rawhide Kid’s artist into working on the gay-themed comic. The title got plenty of media coverage thanks to controversy from anti-gay media activists who think of comics as a medium belonging strictly for children. Worse, there was little meriting the “Explicit Content” warning aside from the acknowledgment that the character was gay, suggesting a double-standard. Unfortunately, many readers were disappointed to find that the comic was fueled by stereotypes and innuendo-based humor.
In 2003, Marvel drew media controversy over a mini-series that saw Western comic icon The Rawhide Kid as gay. When Marvel introduced its short-lived Max line of comics aimed for Mature Readers, that included a number of titles that mixed familiar concepts with “mature” amounts of violence and sexuality (which, sadly, did not include a promising Buffy-inspired revamp of romance comic Night Nurse). The title would later go on to be one of the few Marvel titles to win a GLAAD media award, which frequently goes to independent or DC titles. However, Billy and Ted’s attempt at coming out was mistaken for a more typical kind of coming out. Soon after the relationship between the two young men became clear, the team decided they had to let their parents know about their superhero activities. Part of the confusion came because superhero comic readers still aren’t used to seeing same-sex couples written the same as an opposite-sex couple, so when a couple of gay characters were introduced without fanfare it was still surprising. Their banter sounded a lot like a superhero couple, but since the early issues of Young Avengers didn’t show the team’s downtime, there was plenty of room for debate (including speculation that Hulkling would turn out to be an young woman drawn to look sexually ambiguous) if they really were a gay couple.
A lot of the buzz on the early issues of Young Avengers focused on the relationship between Hulkling and Asgardian.