Archive for the ‘LGBT Characters’ Category

Black Cat

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

Art by Ron Frenz

Contributed by Ronald Byrd

The daughter of infamous cat burglar Walter Hardy, Felicia Hardy decided to follow in his footsteps and trained herself to become an expert combatant and thief, the Black Cat. Early in her career, she became attracted to the super-hero Spider-Man, and she eventually joined him as a lover and a fellow crime-fighter, earning amnesty for her past misdeeds. However, their relationship had several problems; Felicia was more enamored of Spider-Man’s costumed persona than she was of his true identity, Peter Parker, while Spider-Man felt that costumed crime-fighting was too dangerous for a non-superhuman. To compensate, Felicia acquired super-powers from a mysterious source who turned out to be the Kingpin of Crime, one of Spider-Man’s deadliest enemies, a revelation which further complicated matters, as did the revelation that Felicia’s new bad-luck power might eventually kill anyone in her vicinity, including Spider-Man. Felicia intended to end her relationship with Spider-Man to save his life but, unaware of this, Spider-Man himself broke off the relationship due to their personal differences.

Following the breakup, the thrill-seeking Felicia returned to crime but took to donating her ill-gotten gains to others. Meanwhile, Spider-Man underwent a string of misfortunes as a delayed effect of his association with her; sorcerer Doctor Strange cured Spider-Man by altering Felicia’s powers, removing her bad-luck power but giving her additional abilities in return. Felicia renewed her relationship/partnership with Spider-Man on an irregular basis but finally departed for Paris, France; when she returned some time later, she learned that, as Peter Parker, Spider-Man had married another of his long-time girlfriends, Mary Jane Watson. Felicia began dating one of Parker’s friends, Eugene “Flash” Thompson, as a way of ingratiating herself into Parker’s life and eventually wrecking his marriage, but she developed a true affection for Thompson and abandoned her scheme. She was also robbed of her remaining super-powers by a device of the criminal Chameleon, but, undaunted, she began a career as a private investigator, at times finding herself on both sides of the law, as it seems she wanted all along.

By about fourteen years in the future (or on a present-day alternate Earth where time has proceeded differently and everyone is thus some fourteen years older than on Marvel-Earth, accounts vary), Felicia’s detective agency has achieved worldwide success, and it is known that during the intervening years she married Eugene Thompson (currently a coach at Midtown High School) and bore him two children, Gene and Felicity. However, she has also divorced him, apparently because she fell in love with Diana, formerly a contract operative for her agency. Felicity disapproves of the relationship, possibly because she regards Diana as an opportunist out for Felicia’s wealth; it is not known how her son reacted. Felicia apparently maintained the costumed identity of the Black Cat at least until her divorce and gave it up not long after, but no further details of her later career are known; her abandonment of her costumed identity is another sore point with her daughter.

As of the timeframe of “Spider-Girl,” Felicia and Diana have known each other for nearly six years, although it is not known how long their relationship has been a romantic one. Felicia, Diana, and Felicity move from Paris to Forest Hills, a suburb of New York which is also the home of Peter Parker, who in this timeline remains married to Mary Jane Watson and has a daughter, May, who herself has superhuman powers and fights crime as Spider-Girl; Felicity also adopts a costumed identity, the Scarlet Spider, and attempts to convince Spider-Girl to accept her as a crime-fighting partner, thus furthering the connections between the two families.

For a time, the Black Cat possessed two separate sets of super-powers; the treatments given to her by the Kingpin augmented her strength and agility and enabled her to, either consciously or subconsciously, psionically alter probability fields so that those around her experienced bad luck. After Doctor Strange removed the latter power, her abilities mutated further to grant her even greater strength and agility, as well as the ability to form her hands and feet into claws. In the mainstream Marvel universe she lost this second set of abilities some years ago and again became a non-powered human; whether or not she might have regained or retained these powers in the alternate timeline of “Spider-Girl” remains to be seen.

In her prime the Black Cat was, even without super powers, a highly trained athlete, martial artist, and thief; she usually traveled via a grappling hook swing-line which could also serve as a tightrope or a wall-scaling device. Whether or not she has retained these talents in her late thirties/early forties is unclear, although as the head of her detective agency she presumably remains a skilled investigator.

Felicia Hardy/ Black Cat first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #194. Though Felicia’s bi-sexuality has been primarily established in the alternate timeline of Spider-Girl (Spider-Girl #45 & #47), there was a scene in the Spiderman/Black Cat mini in which she said, “It’s been so long since I’ve had a boyfriend … or a girlfriend”. Director of a private investigation firm; formerly cat burglar, adventurer, private investigator. Felicia lives in Forest Hills, New York.

© and ® Marvel Comics. All rights reserved.

Tara Algren & Bethany Flynn

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

Art by Bart Sears

Contributed by Ronald Byrd

Tara and Bethany, a interracial lesbian couple who are both writers for the Midnight Sun tabloid, are turned into vampires by the recently resurrected Dracula. Oddly, when Dracula clashes with the vampire hunter Blade and vampiric challenger Aaron Thorne, the two women do not join the fray and, in fact, apparently slip away unnoticed. It is not known what became of them.

Tara and Bethany possess superhuman strength, the ability to change shape into bats or mist, invulnerability to most forms of physical attack, and other such abilities common to the vampires of the Marvel Universe.

The women are shown to be lesbians in Blade the Vampire Hunter #2

© and ® Marvel Comics. All rights reserved.

Willy Pete

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

Contributed by Mike McDermott

Willy Pete is a self-described fire elemental, who takes his name from the military slang term for white phosphorus.  His body is constantly flaming and super-heated, and he is stuck in a state of constant horniness.  In order to satisfy these urges, he forces himself on any available victim.  Due to his super-heated state this rape is always fatal for the victim, and Willy Pete sodomizes his victim’s eye sockets, since that is the part of the human body that is able to endure his super-heated manhood long enough for him to satisfy himself.  His super-heated body not only kills his victims, but also cooks them–and he then eats the corpses once he has finished.

Willy Pete doesn’t seem to have any particular preference in terms of the gender of his victims, since it isn’t about love or attraction–its just about satisfying his physical urges.  In fact, Willy Pete has commented “I’m all about th’ diversity when it comes t’ th’ folks I **** to death”.  However he has been known to comment on finding some of his victims sexy or attractive–but given that he is in a constant state of arousal, it is impossible to say for certain what preferences (if any) he truly has.  He does have a preference for superhuman victims though, since their bodies are usually more durable and therefore allow him to satisfy his urges longer before they give out.

The earliest known incident with Willy Pete was a number of years ago involving the Witless Minions, a group that served as the flunkies of various supervillains but would ultimately betray them and steal their high-tech equipment or weapons and sell them.  However Willy Pete caught on to their scam and took his revenge, raping the men to death.  Only the groups leader, Thugboy, managed to escape by temporarily immobilizing Willy Pete with a stolen freeze-ray.  Ever since then Thugboy has been haunted by nightmares of Willy Pete, who in the the dreams vows to hunt him down and finish what he started.  Years later Thugboy became romantically involved with associate Super-Homeys member Empowered, who encouraged her teammates to apprehend the villain.  The Super-Homeys sent a 10 member squad to ambush Willy Pete, but despite Thugboy’s warnings they seriously under-estimated him and the encounter lead to the deaths of 8 superheroes as well as the destruction of their orbital space station.

Little is known about Willy Pete’s origins or the extent of his powers, but he is extremely powerful.  The limit of how much heat he can generate is unknown, but in one attack the heat output of his blasts was recorded in the 6-digit range.  The telepath Mindf*ck sensed that Willy Pete has a “kludge mind” made up of personality fragments, and declared that he is an artifical personality.  It has been speculated that he has the ability to teleport since he seems to just appear without anyone seeing him approach, but that ability is unconfirmed.  It is also possible that he possesses some form of psychic or telepathic ability, since he seemed to have prior knowledge of the Super-Homey’s attempted ambush (possibly a link through Thugboy’s nightmares of him).

Willy Pete first appears in Empowered Vol 1.

© and ® Adam Warren. All rights reserved.

Sistah Spooky

Friday, November 5th, 2010

Contributed by Mike McDermott

Sistah Spooky is a powerful witch, who serves as one of the senior members of the Super-Homeys team.

As a high school student, Theresa was made made to feel unattractive and worthless as a physically underdeveloped black girl among a class filled with beautiful blonde girls.  She made a deal with a demon, selling her soul in exchange for magically-enhanced beauty (and learned that most of her classmates had already made the same deal).  Her Infernal Service Provider made a mistake when he completed her paperwork though, and accidentally gave her far too much power.  Theresa refused to give back the extra power and used it to become the mystical superhero Sistah Spooky, despite the objections of the demon who begged her not to use it so his superiors wouldn’t discover the mistake.  Sistah Spooky quickly became one of the most feared and respected members of the Super-Homeys.

Spooky’s experiences in school left her with a permanent bias towards blondes, which has impacted her relationships with a few of her teammates.  She ended up developing a secret romance with telepathic teammate Mindf*ck, despite the fact that Mindf*ck is a beautiful blonde, but the relationship was ultimately torn apart by Spooky’s insecurities.  Besides her hatred of blondes, Spooky also has such low self-esteem that she couldn’t believe that anyone could truly love her, so she pushed Mindf*ck away and broke up with her.

Spooky has also taken her blonde-bias out on associate member Empowered (Emp, for short).  Emp is disrespected by most of her collegues for her unreliable powers and tendency to get captured and tied up, but Spooky has gone out of her way to be particularily cruel to her.  She even went so far as to sleep with the man who would ultimately be the love of Emp’s life a month before he meets Emp (thanks to one of her divination spells revealing the upcoming relationship to her) in a petty attempt to sabotage Emp’s happiness.  Spooky’s relationship with Emp has started to improve thanks to Mindf*ck though–she befriended Emp, and told Spooky that Emp is nothing like Spooky’s former schoolmates.  The recent death of Mindf*ck has brought Spooky and Emp a bit closer as well; Emp was the only one Spooky could talk to about her grief since she was the only other Super-Homey that knew she and Mindf*ck had been a couple.

After Mindf*ck’s death Spooky has retreated into herself, not participating in Super-Homey activities, and sitting by herself for hours on end.  She has discovered that Mindf*ck left a telepathic echo of herself programmed into Spooky’s memories, so Spooky spends her days  interacting with the personality fragment of her late lover.

Spooky was recently contacted by her demonic Infernal Service Provider, who tormented her with the claim that Mindf*ck’s soul was now trapped in hell with him.  He indicated that he might be able to release Mindf*ck from hell if Spooky would renegotiate her contract and give up her extra mystic powers.  What Spooky will do about this situation remains to be seen.

Sistah Spooky first appeared in Empowered vol 1 and is outed in vol 4.

© and ® Adam Warren. All rights reserved.

Mindf*ck

Friday, November 5th, 2010

Contributed by Mike McDermott

Mindf*ck was a very powerful telepath who was a member of the Super-Homeys superhero team.  Due to the discomfort caused to her by the “background noise” of too many minds in close proximity, Mindf*ck lived on Joint Superteam Space Station #3, known as the “D10″, supervising access to the teleportation portal network.

When she was younger, Mindf*ck was victimized by her psychotic older brother, who was also a telepath.  He mind-controlled her into gouging out her own eyes and cutting out her own tongue, so that she would be forced to rely more heavily on her telepathic abilities.  In his own twisted way, her brother was doing this out of “love” for her, to make her a stronger telepath.  She was saved and her brother was stopped before she was forced to mutilate herself any further.  Mindf*ck was given a special visor that allows her to see, and in the event that it is damaged, she could “piggyback” on other people’s senses in order to see–this is also how she experienced tastes, since she no longer has a tongue.

Terrified of becoming like her brother, Mindf*ck used her powers on herself, editing her own personality in order to make herself more noble and selfless, and deleting any personality traits that could lead to her turning into a sociopath.Mindf*ck developed a romantic relationship with fellow Super-Homey, Sistah Spooky, which they kept hidden from their teammates.  In fact many of their trysts took place in telepathic mindscapes, as opposed to real physical encounters, to help maintain their secrecy.  The relationship eventually ended due to Spooky’s insecurities, as well as her irrational hatred of beautiful blondes due to childhood traumas.  Despite the break-up the two women still cared about each other very much, and maintained a friendship which Mindf*ck hoped would eventually turn back into a romance.

Mindf*ck was one of the few Super-Homeys to befriend the often-abused associate member Emp, and treated her with respect unlike most of their teammates.  Emp was the only person she confided in about her relationship with Spooky–which did not go over well with Spooky, since she was one of Emp’s main detractors (another victim of Spooky’s anti-blonde issues).

Mindf*ck met her tragic end when the evil fire elemental Willy Pete destroyed the D10 space station during a failed Super-Homey attempt to capture the villain.  Mindf*ck and Emp were stuck aboard the D10 when Willy Pete caused catostrophic damage, destroying communications and the primary teleportation system, and knocking the station out of orbit so that it was starting to burn up in the atmosphere.  The emergency back-up teleportation escape portal only had enough power for one person, so Mindf*ck sacrificed herself to save Emp; she telepathically took control over Emp’s motor functions and forced her to use the portal.  Once Emp was back on Earth she alerted Spooky of Mindf*ck’s peril, but Spooky arrived 3 seconds too late to save her.  Mindf*ck died while in telepathic contact with Spooky, telling Spooky that she loved her, and not to blame herself for Mindf*ck’s death.

Even beyond the grave Mindf*ck’s impact continues to be felt; an inspirational “posthumumessage” she pre-recorded for her monument in the Super-Homey cemetary gave Emp an idea on how to defeat a supervillain.  A part of her also lives on in the form of a telepathic echo of herself that she wove into Spooky’s memories months before she died.  This memory-fragment recreation of herself can interact with Spooky, but is unaware of anything that happened after Mindf*ck programmed her…including her own death.

Mindf*ck first appeared in Empowered vol 4. Please note the character’s name is censored by Warren, so the style is followed here.

© and ® Adam Warren. All rights reserved.

Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

PRESS RELEASE:

This is your chance to see the GRANT MORRISON: TALKING WITH GODS documentary live with other fans! If you’re near any of these cities, make it your mission to buy a ticket to see this exciting doc:

San Francisco – October 8th through October 13th at the Roxie

NYC – October 9th at Cinema Village (scroll down) with Director / Producer Q&A

Philadelphia – October 15th at the Johnsville Centrifuge with Director / Producer Q&A

Boston – October 17th at the Magic Room with Director / Producer Q&A

LA – October 21st at Meltdown Comics with Director / Producer / Special Guest Q&A

Can’t make those shows? Preorder the DVD on Amazon.

TALKING WITH GODS examines Morrison’s 30-year career and the real-life events that inspired his stories. Featuring extensive interviews with Morrison himself, the film delves into his early days growing up in Scotland, the start of his career in comics, the crazy years of the ’90s as his life and his comics became enmeshed, and his recent attempts to turn social darkness and personal troubles into compelling comics. The film also gives insight into his creative process, including a look into his vaunted idea notebooks. Complementing Morrison’s own words are interviews with many of his collaborators and colleagues, including Frank Quitely, Warren Ellis, Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez, Mark Waid, Cameron Stewart, Douglas Rushkoff, Frazer Irving, Jill Thompson, Dan DiDio, and more.

Kennedy

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Contributed by Mike McDermott

Kennedy was one of the first Potential Slayers that was gathered into Sunnydale by Giles when the servants of the First Evil started killing the Potentials before they could become Slayers.  Kennedy was one of the few Potentials who had already received extensive training from her Watcher before coming to Sunnydale, so she quickly rose into a position of authority, acting as a drill instructor for the newer trainees.

Coming from a wealthy family, Kennedy can be rather spoiled and is used to getting her own way.  Combined with her forceful personality, this has sometimes made her a bit obnoxious, and she was one of the most outspoken voices questioning Buffy’s decisions and challenging her authority during the war against the First Evil.

Kennedy was immediately attracted to Willow, but Willow was initially resistant to Kennedy’s advances since she was still grieving the recent death of her lover Tara.  However the two women did eventually become a couple, once Willow was able to set aside her guilt over moving on with her life.

Kennedy became a full-fledged Vampire Slayer when Willow cast a spell to “activate” all Slayers worldwide.  Since then

Kennedy has been in a leadership role in the “Slayer army”, supervising the training of the newer recruits.  Recently she was assigned to evaluate Satsu’s performance as a new squad leader.

Under unrevealed circumstances Kennedy was killed, butit was a “mystical death” and only lasted for a month.  Still feeling guilty over what happened to Tara, Willow tried to keep Kennedy away from Buffy for several months in order to protect her, but eventually Kennedy ended up reintegrated into the core of the Scooby Gang, and continues to be a valued member of Buffy’s team.

Kennedy first appeared in the Buffy TV series in the “Bring On The Night” episode from season 7. In comics her first appearance is Buffy Season 8 issue #10.

© and ® 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

Heavy Artillery

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Art by Adam Warren

Contributed by Mike McDermott

Heavy Artillery is a member of the Super-Homies, an elite superhero team (the Empowered-universe’s version of the Avengers).  He has a large cannon in place of his head.  He appears to be a reserve member of the team, or at least not one of their more prominent members–so far he has appeared mostly as a background character in large group meetings or social functions, and we have yet to see him in action in a field mission.

Heavy Artillery outed himself to the audience when the Super Homies were examining some YAOI slash fan-fiction comics about the team, commenting that the stories were definately written by women *for* women: “‘Cause speaking as a gay male, this yaoi crap does nothing for me”.  Although Emp was surprised by Heavy Artillery’s sexuality, none of the other Super Homies made any comment–so presumably none of them have any issue with him (despite several of the male Super-Homies being sexist jerks, so it would not be a surprise for them to be homophobic too).

Heavy Artillery is one of the few Super Homies not shown to treat Emp poorly for being relatively ineffective as a superhero. However they have barely interacted at all on-panel, so it is unclear if he actually treats her better than most of her other teammates, or if we simply haven’t seen any examples of him treating her badly.

Heavy Artillery first appeared in Empowered vol 1 and is outed in Empowered vol 3.

Heavy Artillery is © Adam Warren. All rights reserved.

Adam Keith

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Contributed by Mike McDermott

Adam Keith is a lawyer who was employed by the Hanover Modeling Agency to defend model Millie Collins when she was falsely accused of murder.  Mr. Keith had his hands full defending Millie not only from the charges, but also from the harassment by police captain North Norrell who was handling the case.  When Millie and her friends discovered the identity of the real killer, the charges were dropped.

Keith first appeared and is shown to be gay in Models Inc. #2.

© and ® Marvel Comics. All rights reserved.

Dexedrine C. Parios

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Art by Matthew Southworth

Dexedrine (AKA Dex) Parios is the owner and sole employee of Stumptown Investigations based in Portland, OR. Dex is cocky, self-assured, kind-hearted yet cynical and brash, “no bullshit” bullshitter with a penchant for her ’64 Mustang convertible and bad habit of gambling, or at least lacking the good sense to know when to quit. The true love of her life is her younger brother Ansel whom she appears to be raising by herself, sometimes relying on the help of a young man named Grey who’s clearly infatuated with her, though she keeps him at a distance romantically. Dex appears to be of Native American descent.

In old parlance, Dex is quite a “card”. While it seems she has most people wrapped around her finger, one person with a strong dislike for her is Police Captain Volk. From dialog it’s implied that Dex had an affair with Volk’s wife which resulted in the end of his marriage. While Dex is on the receiving end of sexual advances from another woman in the first story arc and enjoys them, she also makes passes at a male doctor who tends to her after being abducted and shot (she was wearing a kevlar vest).

Rucka’s affinity for crime themed work and strong female characters is well known. Despite significant differences between Dex and Renée Montoya, I can’t help but wonder if this direction might have been applied to Montoya if the character hadn’t been transformed in to the Question.

© and ® Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth. All rights reserved. Published by Oni Press.