50 Greatest Super Heroes In Comic Book History

49. Northstar

(Write-up by Matt Conner, Bam Smack Pow Staff Writer)

Northstar is a great hero, not from who he is but for his representation of Marvel’s changing comfort with diversity. When he was created by Claremont and Byrne for Canada’s Alpha Flight team, he was an arrogant professional skier with an uncomfortable attachment to his dissociative twin sister, Aurora. He was fastidious and catty — like Namor with a sense of style — and he would rather be doing almost anything except use his powers (flying really fast) for good. For several years, he was just the difficult team member who could save the day but needed a strong leader to finesse him into it. But as the Alpha Flight title moved on, we met his special male friend, and he developed an unexplained cough, and for a few months, it really looked like Marvel was going to have their first HIV-positive superhero at a time when thousands of gay men were dying and could have used a little hope. Comic legend tells that editorial got cold feet, and what was going to be his public outing became an Asgardian storyline where Northstar and Aurora were revealed to be half-elves and suffering from some kind of Elf disease.

Years later, Scott Lobdell was able to publicly out Northstar as a gay man, again using the plot point of HIV. In this story, drunken Major Mapleleaf attacks a nursery because there’s an HIV-positive baby in it, and Northstar rescues the baby and explains that he did so because, in a double-page spread and all capital letters and jagged 90’s lines, “I AM GAY!!” It was over-the-top, ridiculous, and it suggested that only homosexuals could have the human decency to care for the infection of an innocent human life, but it was a landmark. And it wasn’t mentioned again for years.

Most recently, in Astonishing X-Men 50, Northstar married his partner, Kyle, and the couple remains together today. This time around, Marvel promoted the event for months via house ads and wedding invitations. Much like American culture at large, Marvel’s comfort with the LGBT community has gone from dismissive to provocative to accepting, and they managed to do this with a flawed, funny, realistic character. Thank you, Marvel, for Northstar. A great hero that allows thousands of people to look at a mainstream comic and say, “That’s me!”

Next: No. 48: A hero who truly beat the odds