As a gay fanboy, I obviously appreciate what Tynion and Jiménez are trying to do here. Although it's a little heavy-handed in delivery, using Nightcrawler and Northstar to tell Anole that it's OK to be different, physically and sexually, delivers the sort of message that a 14-year-old version of me would've barely been able to process. Back then, any interpretation of mutants as analogues for homosexuals wasn't explicitly discussed; you had to read between the lines. I applaud Marvel for making it so obvious here.
My complaint, such as it is, is nuanced. The boy that Anole likes is a stereotypical twink, to use the appropriate slang. On some level, I get why the creators went with that, since you don't want to imply that Anole could only get ugly boys. If Kurt is right in telling Anole that he can be like him and use his charm to get the person that he loves to love him back (even if it's his step-sister...), then you want to believe that it'll work with the beautiful people. I get it.
My problem is that it still feels like we're putting the gays in the same box where we seem to find ourselves all the time, as bleached-blond gym rats living the good life in gay ghettoes like Chelsea. Anole could've met a handsome brown-haired geek in Westchester and we would've gotten the same story here. If we're sending a message to teenagers about how they should process their looks and their sexuality as part of a larger whole, I'm not sure if we should be reinforcing stereotypes that the beautiful people look the same as they always have. What does it say about Anole that he wants people to want him regardless of how he looks, but only wants to date the beautiful people?
Again, this complaint is a minor one, because I really, really do want to applaud Tynion and Jiménez for this story. Gay characters in comics are still the sort of thing that CNN covers as news, after all. But, as they become more mainstreamed, we need to think about the way that we present them, similar to the discussions related to Milo Manara's cover of "Spider-Woman" #1 and how comics portray women. Otherwise, at some point, like with the Manara cover, you're undermining the progress that you think that you're making.
*** (three of five stars)
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