skilcoyne.com

“Have you tried not being a mutant?” Bobby Drake’s (Iceman) mother in the 2000 movie X-Men, when she learns that he and the other kids at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters have super powers.

According to some stories, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the X-Men as an allegory for racial injustice, with Professor X representing Martin Luther King and Magneto representing Malcom X. Other stories hold that Stan Lee wanted to explore how regular human parents would deal with a child who developed super powers with no explanation; they were just born different.

Whatever the original intent, the X-Men work very well as as an allegory for the LGBTQ community. Kids realizing they’re different when they hit puberty. Rejected by society for something they can’t control. Chosen families. Anti-mutant legislation. Even an ongoing story line about a “Legacy Virus” killing mutants.

The first openly gay mutant, Northstar, was introduced in 1979. Conceived as a gay character, he didn’t come out until 1992 because then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter wouldn’t allow gay characters in the Marvel universe (except for one story he wrote himself with two gay characters who were attempted rapists). He was still the first openly gay hero at Marvel, and the first gay character in mainstream comics to marry, in 2012.

Since Northstar’s coming out, Marvel has since introduced over 50 LGBTQ+ mutant characters and over 100 LGBTQ+ characters in total, including Iceman, whose mother wanted to know if he’d tried not being a mutant, who came out as gay in 2015.