Was Anole Meant to Commit Suicide?
This week's Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed asks "The writers of New Mutants had to re-write a finished comic book at the last moment because Marvel decided not to publish the original story, which involved a gay student killing himself.", which is shown to be true. What follows is the original plot for the comic and how everything behind the scenes played out. I can see it being a trigger to some; so be wary.
In 2003, Nunzio Defilippis and Christina Weir debuted their new Marvel series, New Mutants, which introduced brand new teenage mutant students of Xavier's, while using the slightly older original members of the New Mutants (primarily Dani Moonstar) as their mentors.Another of the New Mutants, Xi'an "Shan" Coy Manh, was also an instructor at Xavier's, and in a plot designed for issue #8, parents of students at Xavier's would complain when Shan is seen kissing another woman during Parent's Day.
One of the students, Victor Borkowski (Anole) would protest his parents' outrage by revealing that he was, in fact, gay himself!
His parents would not react kindly to this, and when he turned to his two best friends (Josh and Julian) for support, they would shun him as well, leading to him killing himself in the next issue.
More after the jump!
I would definitely recommend reading the entire thing, it's VERY interesting to see Marvel's view on gay characters in action; or at least, an "unnamed" Marvel editor's view. Here's a taste of it:
So ideas are sent to us for ways to soft-pedal this story. Can we eliminate the lesbian kiss that sets off the parents? (The answer there is no, because without it, the story has no starting point) Can we not show the kiss, maybe have it happen off panel? (we tell them that's a cop-out, so they opt to show it in silhouette only) Can Northstar never mention he's gay? (This one threw us off, because he's been out of the closet for a decade). Eventually we seem to defuse the situation (by silhouetting the kiss - the other stuff didn't happen, thankfully), and go about our business.
I find it amazing that someone wanted Northstar back in the closet; note I said "amazing" but not "surprising". Especially considering Northstar was killed (again) by Wolverine a year or two later; then turned evil by the Hand.
I'm also not thrilled either that the original story was to kill off a gay character to further a straight character's development to a "better human being" (and send another fully to the dark side, apparently). I get that they were intending it to be kind of a "look what doing this can do", but it's just a bit overused.
Elf Girl
Posted to on 12 October 2008
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: anole, marvel, northstar
I swear, some folks seriously have their heads up too far up their own asses. This isn't the 70s, guys! We don't have to pretend being a normal gay person is too touchy a subject to touch. Stop patronizing your readers with pseudo-bleeding heart dribble. Go for the gusto, or pass the job along to someone else.
Don't forget that right after giving Anole further character development, he ran away and is now absent from the comics.
FU2, Marvel.
"he ran away and is now absent from the comics."
He's back in Young X-Men right now and he had a short story with Northstar in X-Men: Divided We Stand #1 (I think that's it anyway).
To be more precise, just as he was outed to the team, the whole team got disbanded and Anole (and to be fair almost everyone else from the NXM) was turned into a mentally unstable loon.
He jumps and strangles his father for dropping a coffeemug and practically reduces Northstar's lower jaw to jello.
This kind of BS post-traumatic stress syndrome never happened to any of the other X-generations, but suddenly out of nowhere an entire team suffers from it?
Marvel has treated a very beloved team like crap and completely objectively I believe that the put Victor through the most nonsense. It's even worse than Julien suddenly wanting to go evil.
I haven't read the latest issue of YXM (mainly because I'm not liking it), but I hope Marvel is going to treat the PTSS as if it never happened. I know I will.
And I hope Anole moves to another team, because he deserves better than to be mentored by the likes of the old New Mutants.
My two cents.
What the hell is with Marvel killing Gay characters.
Why is this always their first reaction?
I knew about the Northstar story (where Vic goes unstable and punches Jean-Paul), but I didn't know that he was back in Young X-Men. I'll have to check it out. :)