Northstar's First Kiss

I'm not sure how many of you picked up the 0.1 issue of the new Alpha Flight limited series that came out last week. I wasn't sure if our favorite northern Nancy was going to be gracing the pages since Northstar isn't officially on the team roster and he didn't appear in any of the solicits or preview pages released by Marvel. But Northstar was featured indeed. Canada is under attack by a series of super-powered terrorists attempting to disrupt the upcoming Canadian elections in which a new "Unity" party is gathering political force.

Northstar, who we last saw splitting his time between Montreal and Utopia in the Tim Fish short piece in Nation X, is shown spending some quality time with his main beau, Kyle, when he receives the distress signal. Joining Guardian, they attempt to combat Purple Girl... or Purple Woman (she's all grown up now) who amusingly forms a throng of mind-controlled Canadians into a Canadian Voltron. Unfortunately, Kyle, who was on the scene getting publicity shots of his boyfriend/client becomes enthralled by Purple Woman's powers and gets sucked up into the Canuck Voltron!

Long story short, Alpha Flight saves the day, but not before Northstar and Kyle share their first on-panel kiss. This is big news for Northstar fans. Northstar was the first openly gay super-hero in a mainstream comic book company's line-up. He came out over twenty years ago, but never in those twenty years have we seen our Speedster from the land of maple syrup and poutine pucker up with a fella'. Marvel broke ground when Rictor and Shatterstar had their first same-sex kiss in mainstream comics (if you don't count DC's Wildstorm imprint... also interestingly enough, had Marvel run their original story for Anole where he eventually committed suicide after coming out, Karma would have taken the title of first same-sex kiss in mainstream comics. But then, we would have been without Anole, so we should be glad of that).

So congrats to Jean-Paul and Kyle for their momentous smooch. We've all been waiting for it. Plus, it brings me extra pleasure that Greg Pak was the person writing this comic. Loyal readers will know I have more than a passing crush on Mr. Pak...