LGBT Character Of The Week: Freedom Ring
Ok, this one is complicated. Freedom Ring gets his powers from his, well, ring. This ring was created from a fragment of a cosmic cube, and allows the wearer to alter reality in a 15 foot radius around themself. Originally created for Mandarin, it was stolen by a villain named Ringmaster (who, despite the name, had nothing to do with rings, initially). After Ringmaster was defeated, Captain America attempted to bring it in to S.H.I.E.L.D., but lost it in a fight on the way.
Enter Curtis Doyle. He finds the ring and uses it to become a superhero, briefly. Curtis is inexperienced at the whole super-hero business (who isn't, when they start), and has some initial problems, followed by death. In a battle with villain Iron Maniac, Curtis is caught off guard, gets his finger sliced off, (losing the ring), and is pierced in the chest by several pieces of armor. In the process, however, he buys enough time for the Avengers to allow them to defeat the villain.
There was a bit of controversy over Freedom Rings death, with creator Robert Kirkman being accused of homophobia for killing a character that Joe Quesada was billing as Marvel's leading gay superhero. Kirkman commented on the issue several times at later dates:
"Freedom Ring was always planned as an inexperienced hero who would get beaten up constantly and probably die. I wanted to comment on the fact that most superheroes get their powers and are okay at it... and that's not how life works. During working on the book, I was also noticing that most gay characters... are all about being gay. Straight characters are well-rounded characters who like chicks. So I wanted to do a well-rounded character who just happened to like dudes. Then I decided to combine the two ideas. In hindsight, yeah, killing a gay character is no good when there are so few of them... but I really had only the best of intentions in mind."Kirkman later stated, "Frankly, with the SMALL amount of gay characters in comics in general, and how unfortunate the portrayals have been thus far, whether intentional or not--I completely understand the backlash on the death of Freedom Ring, regardless of my intentions. If I had it to do all over again... I wouldn't kill him. I regret it more and more as time goes on. I got rid of what? 20% of the gay characters at Marvel by killing off this ONE characters. I just never took that stuff into consideration while I was writing."
Unfortunate. I have been unable to further track exactly what happened to the ring after that run of Marvel Team-Ups, so maybe one day the hero will return with a new (and hopefully gay) character.
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Comics on 25 January 2008
· Comments (4)
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The ring ended up in the hands of his straight roommate/sidekick (who was actually a Skrull). Another bone of contention with Freedom Ring's death was the fact that the first thing said roommate did with said ring was conjure up two subservient Skrull ladies, giving the scene the unfortunate connotation of, "See? This one's STRAIGHT!"
That's odd, I thought skrulls were hermaphroditic, being shapeshifters and all.
Why do all gay characters seem to die? And not "comic book death".
It seems that Girlfriend in the Fridge Syndrome isn't just for girls anymore.
(I know Northstar's been brought back a couple of times after multiple writers have tried killing him off, but he seems to be the exception.)
I still don't think there have been enough gay characters for us to keep complaining they get killed off. For one, a goodly quarter of the Marvel ones first appeared in X-Statix, and that doesn't quite count since everyone dies in that series.
I'm curious what exactly happens with any further gay Marvel characters, since for the most part it seems like it'd be safer for them to only create characters that are LGBT, rather than revealing a long-term character has been. However, really the only avenue they have of introducing new characters would be if affiliated with the US military (and I really doubt any current writer intends on dealing with Don't Ask Don't Tell)