Zillions of years ago, I was a big fan of the Marvel comic X-Force. The book featured a bunch of characters who had been in New Mutants, plus a slew of new(er) mutants including my favorite character, Shatterstar.
Shatterstar was one of those characters who started out terrible but ended up really neat. In his original incarnation, he was a weird, pouch-covered Liefeldian gladiator from the Mojoverse. But the character grew, and became an interesting study in contrasts. He was a badass warrior who didn't understand anything about human life or culture, and learned most of it from watching television. Oh, and from hanging out with his best friend and fellow teammate, Rictor (real name: Julio Richter, which is kind of hilarious). Shatterstar even learned Spanish (from telenovelas) so that he could converse with Rictor in private. For years, the two of them had an Ambiguously Gay Duo vibe about them. Definitely enough there if you wanted to ship them, but nothing canon. Mostly, I just enjoyed reading their exploits, loved their friendship, and wanted them to be Bestest Pals and live Happily Ever After, either as a couple or as heterosexual life partners in the vein of Jay and Silent Bob (or Holmes and Watson, if you want a more literary reference).
Unfortunately, as always happens, the comic started going off the rails in terms of story, and it wasn't long after the whole Shatterstar/Ben Russell body-switching mess that I abandoned reading it altogether. The book got canceled, and the characters were scattered to the winds, popping up here and there in various X titles. Occasionally, I'd have a fit of nostalgia and check the Wikipedia page for Shatterstar or Rictor to see what they were up to. Not much, and not much of it worth reading.
So I suppose it makes sense that I missed Shatterstar and Rictor's
BIG KISS last year.
It was a real kiss, too. Not a dream sequence, not a what-if, not a somebody-was-mind-controlled-and-takes-it-back (Shatterstar had, in fact, just snapped out of mind control, which does generally put one in the mood for smooches). Good on you, Peter David, for writing it, and good on Marvel for publishing it. So many times, LGBT characters get a wink-wink-nod treatment, oblique references, or just end up as token hooray-for-diversity statements or embarrassing caricatures. It's really cool to see two fully-realized characters get together.
Plus, I've been reading their exploits since I was in middle school. I feel like I know them so well, I should send them a present. Or post a long, rambling DA journal about them. You know, if I were inclined to do such a thing.
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