Gayscape: Northstar- The Pride of Canada

Ask any comic fanboy the question “name a gay super hero” and chances are that fanboy will either struggle to come up with one, or just go for the standard stock answer: Northstar. Northstar (alias Jean Paul Baubier) is a former member of Marvel Comics’ Canadian super team Alpha Flight and later a member of the X-Men. His real significance, of course, is that he was pretty much comic’s first openly gay superhero. To be honest, other than being the first gay hero for a major publisher, there isn’t that much special about him. His powers are super strength, flight, and energy flashes. I mean, who doesn’t have those powers?? The only other unique thing about him is that he’s maybe the only other hero who is also a French Canadian skier. Jean Paul and his twin sister Aurora were vaguely elfin in appearance, kind of a riff on TV’s Wonder Twins from Superfriends. She and her brother had matching costumes, and were clearly meant to always go together like Zan and Jayna or Wily Kit and Wily Kat from Thundercats. Once Northstar’s sexuality became an issue though, Aurora became kind of the comic book version of Solange Knowles or Ali Lohan, totally in the shadow of her more famous sibling.

Being the first gay super hero has afforded Northstar something of a reputation as a punchline for comic books fans. Toyfare Magazine used Northstar constantly to make gay jokes in the back of their magazine in their “Twisted Mego Theater” section. (Some jokes were kinda funny, most were lame.) And then there’s internet viral sensation The Real World Metropolis, where they had Northstar cast in the role as the token gay housemate. Another Youtube example is Super Hero Birthday Party, which has Northstar chasing around Namor the Submariner at a pool party while they are cooking oversized hotdogs together on the grill. I admit this one was pretty funny, or maybe I’m just partial to it because the guy they got to play Northstar was pretty cute and only wore swim trunks for most of it.

Although Northstar was always intended to be gay by his creator, legendary comic artist John Byrne, Marvel Editorial of the early 80’s forbid Byrne from outing him. In fact, Jim Shooter had a policy, while Editor in Chief at Marvel, that decreed there were to be no gay characters in the Marvel universe; he often successfully prevented writers from having their characters be gay. Byrne might be able to subtly imply that Northstar was gay, but could never state it explicitly. (In Marvel’s defense, at the time the Comics Code would never have allowed it anyway.) Northstar actually first appeared in the 120th issue of Uncanny X-Men in 1979, as one of several members of Canada’s first super team Alpha Flight. In that story, Wolverine was said to have  been a member of Alpha Flight while working for the Canadian government, and Alpha Flight is sent to retrieve him and force him back on the team. Neither Northstar (nor his twin sister Aurora) were given much to do or say in that issue or in much of their subsequent appearances, until Alpha Flight recieved their own comic in 1983.

Now with their own series, Byrne knew the team members’ backstories and personalities would need to be fleshed out. “One of the things that popped immediately into my head was to make one of them gay,” says Byrne. “I thought, it seemed like it was time for a gay superhero, and since I was being ‘forced’ to make Alpha Flight a real series, I might as well make one of them gay. I settled on Jean-Paul, and the moment I did I realized it was already there. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have been considering making him gay before I ‘decided’ to do so. Of course, the temper of the times, the Powers That Were and, naturally, the Comics Code would not let me come right out and state that Jean-Paul was homosexual, but I managed to ‘get the word out’ even with those barriers.” By getting the word out, Byrne more or less meant he might say that Northstar was gay to a fan at a convention, or in a comic fan magazine, but just never in any actual story about the character. Northstar was instantly the most famous gay hero that everyone knew was gay but never actually said it. He was like the Anderson Cooper of the super hero world.

Writer Bill Mantlo took over for John Byrne as Alpha Flight writer, and wrote a story where Northstar became infected with a sudden strange illness. Apparently, Mantlo intended to reveal that the illness was AIDS and to then kill off the character in Alpha Flight #50. Maybe Mantlo was trying to be topical, but to have the only known gay character (acknowleged officially or not) suddenly die of AIDS would have just been insulting, and a terrible message to any and all gay kids reading about that character:  “No matter what you do kids, if you’re gay you will get AIDS and die, that’s the only story we have about people like you.’Nuff said True Believer!” Thankfully, wiser heads at Marvel prevailed, and Northstar was not killed off, and his weird illness was revealed to be magical in nature, and it was even revealed that Northstar was not a mutant, but in fact….he was a fairy. (Ok, maybe killing him off would have been less insulting.) In any event, Northstar’s new “fairy” status was shortlived and retconned out, and he went back to being a mutant pretty damn quick.

Northstar would finally be allowed by Marvel to come out in issue #106 of Alpha Flight in 1992. Series writer Scott Lobdell was given permission to allow Northstar to finally say out loud the words “I am gay”, way before Ellen got to do so on the cover of Time Magazine. This whole stunt made the mainstream media of course, and the issue sold out almost instantly and went into several printings. I never, ever read Alpha Flight (I don’t know anyone who did, really), but even I bought that issue. It’s a rather badly written and drawn story, very typical early 90’s Marvel. It involved Northstar saving an AIDS baby from a dumpster and his attempts to adopt her. (Even at age 17 I rolled my eyes.)  It reads like one of those “Very Special” episodes of The Facts of Life or Punky Brewster. But at least Marvel had their heart in the right place this time. Still, despite the fanfare, almost no mention was made of his sexual orientation for the rest of the first Alpha Flight series, which ended two years later.

Because of this fact, though, Northstar was now the most famous member of Alpha Flight, and by the early 2000’s Marvel decided to use his notieriety and have him become the only member of that now defunct team to officially join the X-Men. And let’s not pretend it was any other reason than his status as Marvel’s token queer that he was allowed onto the X-Men; for being a multi cultural team, the X-Men have always been lacking an actual gay member, despite being a huge gay rights metaphor. No one else at Marvel could really fill that slot but Jean Paul. It certainly wasn’t his unique powers. The X-Men had the “I’m strong and can fly and shoot energy” powers pretty well-covered. Northstar’s time on the team was short lived, as he was dropped during one of what seemed to be their annual roster changes, but it was still nice to see a gay hero make it onto the big leagues.

The most controversial thing that Northstar did next was to die. (it’s ok guys, he got better really fast) A brainwashed Wolverine skewered Northstar with his claws in fact. Film producer and novelist Perry Moore was so pissed off the Marvel’s most popular super hero had just killed off what was their only important gay character, that he ended up writing the novel for younger readers called Hero (about a young gay teenage superhero) as an effort to have some kind of positive gay super hero for younger kids, since it seemed Marvel was now killing them off. The book went on to be a bestseller, and is now about to be made into a Showtime series  with none other than Stan Lee as executive producer. So while Northstar himself might be seen as a one note character, or worse, just a punchline, his very existence is what made any other gay super hero even possible today.