When I was a teenager, Captain America was probably my favorite comic book hero. Every month I’d eagerly look forward to the newest issue of Captain America and the Falcon. The Falcon, you ask? He was the red-white-and-blue Avenger’s African-American partner — “partner” as in crime-fighting teammate, not as in the fellow who, after a full day of busting bad guys with Cap, did things with him in the dark that would make most comic aficionados go, “Ewwwww.”
Yes, back in the mid/late 1970’s, “partner” still just meant … well, “partner”; nothing more salacious. But, of course, that semantic status quo couldn’t be allowed to endure — and the meaning of a once innocent word has significantly warped into something icky. As, alas, has occurred with such previously serviceable terms as “gay”, “queer” and “marriage” – the “homosexual rights” movement churns on like a lavender Pac Man, omnivorously gobbling up everything in it’s path.
Of course Captain America — that most heart-thumpingly patriotic of Marvel Universe good guys — has to succumb! And apparently, there are those wanting to take a run at that exact switcheroo.
The New York Times recently ran a piece examining the growing emergence of gay, lesbian and transgender themes in the doings of modern superheroes. In the early ’90s, Marvel character Northstar served as pioneer in this trend — “one of the first openly gay superheroes in American comic books” according to Wikipedia. The Canadian mutant entertained a crush on original X-Men member Iceman, although the latter left it unrequited. That frozen hero himself, however, finally “came out” at the end of 2015. Similarly, super-powered same-sex couple Wiccan and Hulkling revealed themselves a few years back; and a recent debate among comic-book fandom involved innuendo that Marvel’s longtime Olympian strongman Hercules had indulged a bisexual dalliance with the aforementioned Northstar.
On the DC comics side of the ledger, Wonder Woman recently officiated a lesbian “wedding”. Popular male crime-fighter Midnighter has a “husband” — the superhuman Apollo; and lately the folks behind Batgirl explored a plotline involving “transgenderism”.
Comics Alliance editor-in-chief Andrew Wheeler recently disclosed, “We need to get from some [homosexual characters] to enough. And really, we’ll know we’ve achieved success when Captain America can have a boyfriend, and Wonder Woman can have a girlfriend. For queer representation in superhero comics, that’s what success looks like.”