When a hero gets married it can lead to a dead end…creatively. Marvel even wiped out Peter Parker’s marraige to Mary Jane. Northstar gets hitched in Astonishing X-Men #51. After the headlines and hype over a gay wedding in a comic book what happens next for Jean-Paul and Kyle?
Writer Marjorie Liu tells Comics Newsarama how Northstar’s married life will fit into the series and the difference of telling a story with a married versus single hero.
“This is just the beginning. By getting married a whole new direction has opened up, story-wise, for them both. Marriage isn’t the end-point of a relationship. It’s just a stepping stone, one aspect of a long-term evolution between two people who have, for whatever reason, decided to take a leap of faith and say, “Well, hey, this is a person who I want to *try* with for the rest of my life.” Which is not a guarantee of perfection — far from it.
Certainly, the stresses haven’t changed. Kyle is still a human man who has to watch his husband leave at a moment’s notice to save the world, and who can’t be at his side, or help protect him. In some ways he’s a liability — in danger, because of his husband’s “profession” as super hero. For Northstar, he has to deal with the fact that he’s part of a team, a family, that will always understand what he’s going through in ways that Kyle never will — and that can be very lonely when he goes home.”
Northstar was Marvel’s first openly gay hero. Marjorie Liu was asked about the importance of Jean-Paul to Marvel and to fans.
“Northstar is certainly important as a representative of the gay community within the Marvel Universe. But his value as a character is also grounded on something more than just his sexual orientation (as would be the case in real life). He’s vain, arrogant, but also a man who risks his life without a thought in order to help others. You can count on his loyalty — and his quick temper — and he’s been portrayed, again and again, as someone who lives life to the absolute fullest, without regrets or second-guesses. He loves, and acts on that love; he gets angry, and then acts on that anger. Northstar is no fake.”
As a long-time fan of X-Men and Alpha Flight – I’m thrilled to see Aurora and rest of Jean-Paul’s Canadian team in the big wedding issue.
For the entire story and more preview art here’s the Comics Newsarama link.
By Editor