My first superhero comic ever was Marvel 1602. I was obsessed with Neil Gaiman at the time, and though I'd heard of Sandman, I hadn't picked it up yet. I was visiting family in New York City, and found a copy in the amazingly named but now sadly defunct Gotham Books. So I read it all the way through in about a day. I still remember the exact panel I fell irrevocably in love with Steve Rogers, and the moment that made me a dyed-in-the-wool Marvel fan. And since Marvel 1602 was my first comic, that means my first gay comics character was Werner, the Angel of the 1602 Marvel universe. At the time I was more concerned with Werner's "If possible, always be shirtless" policy, but at twelve years old I was learning that comics could be- and should be- a LGBT medium.
I read Sandman, with its fallible but kick ass queer characters after that, and my introduction to the main Marvel universe was through Civil War (fun fact: when I first heard the name, I assumed it would be about Marvel superheroes literally traveling back in time and fighting in the historical Civil War). I started buying single issues once I'd gotten my hands on Runaways and Young Avengers trade paperbacks, and now I go for comics every Wednesday. I'm still almost exclusively a Marvel fan- especially when it comes to Captain America and Spunky Teen Superhero Teams- though I bought Blue Beetle devotedly, and reading Batwing and Static Shock has made me strongly considering dallying with DC.
Hello. This is Sophie speaking. I often describe myself by talking about maths, French, pansexuality and superheroes. Maths will probably never show up here; French will show up when my syntax is off, but I swear my English is getting better day after day; pansexuality will show up when pansexual characters are discussed; and superheroes will show up all the time for obvious reasons.
The first queer superheroes I read about that I remember were Hulkling (Teddy Altman) and Wiccan (Billy Kaplan). It was a planned encounter: I had picked up Young Avengers because I had been told it had a couple of gay teenagers. I would love to have some cool story to tell about how I randomly stumbled upon a queer superhero years ago and it was an amazing moment for me and blahblah... but, well, let's be honest here: there are not that many queer superheroes. I wanted to read about some, and the best way to reach my goal was to look for them. Waiting for them to appear would have taken a lot of time.
Like many, after reading Young Avengers, I eventually picked up Runaways, which added to the queer superheroes I had read about, and in general I read strictly Marvel for a while. Then, one day, I met the Batfamily, and I became nearly exclusively a DC for a good year. I have a thing for superheroes that keeps me in the Big Two 95% of the time. Now, I'm pretty much half and half, my main interests being with Ultimate Marvel and the Batfamily (still; probably forever).
Hi there! I'm Toast, a twenty-one year old Torontonian displaced into Detroit for dental school. I'm of Chinese descent, so you may see me ranting about PoCs in comics as well as LGBT heroes. Sometimes, when you're very lucky, I may even talk about a hero who manages to be both (truly a rare and wonderful occurrence).
I read my first superhero comic when I was about twelve (everything happened when I was around twelve). My cousin and I had run up to his room and he showed me the comic books he'd gotten (to this day I can't remember where -- maybe from a friend?). Either way, I ended up reading the first two issues of Eve of Destruction, where I was exposed to Jean-Paul Beaubier taking out a bigot who tried to shoot him at a book signing of his autobiography, and then punching out an "invulnerable" mutant who was being homophobic. Jean-Paul was Canadian, he was gay and he did not give a damn what anyone else thought of him. I fell in love immediately.
Unfortunately, this arc preceded the run of Chuck Austen in the X-titles, a run which most fans consider to be so bad that the simple mention of his name sets off groaning. So, after spending a couple months trying to make sense of Austen's run, I ended up dropping comic books... only to start digging into back issues, at which point I discovered X-Factor, Excalibur and Generation X.
From there, my fate as a comic-book fan was sealed. Even though I don't consistently kept up with "current" comic books (at the moment, my reading list consists of Daredevil, full stop, due to the fact that I only just manged to find a good LCBS), I guess you could say I'm a jack of all trades who has read just enough of most Marvel and DC series to have an opinion about them. I also have a soft spot in my heart for Vertigo's Hellblazer and Dark Horse Comics' Hellboy universe so who knows, maybe I'll talk about those too.
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