Single Issue Showcase: All-New X-Men #40 – "Utopians"

The cover of All-New X-Men #40

In a year that was full of works of artistic genius and infamous missteps for the comics medium, All-New X-Men #40 was perhaps the most famous single issue comic of the past year. It is the issue Iceman is outed as gay and was released way back in April. Much has been written on it, and it has been celebrated as much as it has been derided. It’s taken a while for me to gather my thoughts on it because I didn’t want to react blindly. Also, there were other comics about which I wanted to write that I felt were more deserving of attention. I realized, though, that I wanted to share my thoughts and close out my first year with a Single Issue Showcase that could also serve as a retrospective of sorts.

It would be superfluous for me to write about Brian Michael Bendis’s writing for this issue or Mahmud Asrar’s art, though both have plenty of merit. In all honesty, I haven’t read a mainstream comic since 2012, the last time an event like this took place, when gay comics fans were treated to the Big Two celebrating Pride month with the double feature of Northstar marrying his boyfriend in Astonishing X-Men #51 and Alan Scott being outed in an alternate universe in Earth 2 #2. I barely recognized any of the characters in All-New X-Men #40, including ones I should have known since childhood. I still bought the issue, and the next one, and Uncanny X-Men #600. The significance of Iceman coming out cannot be overstated, but not necessarily for the reasons being touted by the fans, detractors, or press agents.

The most famous page of the issue

Northstar is largely credited as the first openly gay mainstream superhero, though he’s always been a third-tier character at best. He came out in Alpha Flight #106 in 1992. I was thirteen years old at the time, already devoted to comics as an art form but still largely unaware of my own sexuality. When my father heard about this storyline thanks to reactionary local news coverage, he chastised me for reading such “garbage” (even though I wasn’t even an Alpha Flight fan, and barely knew what he was talking about). He then asked me with deep incredulity and too much volume (as was his wont), “You think it’s good for kids to read about that stuff?”

Iceman is one of the original five X-Men created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963. Everyone knows the character, even people who have never read a comic book. Does the storyline have clunky parts? Sure. Is it guilty of bi-erasure? If you want. Could it all be undone by the next team to tackle the characters? Frankly, I almost expect it.

On the day All-New X-Men #40 was released, a thirteen-year-old gay kid was bullied. Maybe he was ignored by friends and teachers, called a fag, or physically assaulted. But later that day he got to read about a famous character who was like him. Maybe he’d even thought Iceman was lame before, and still kind of does, but for reasons he couldn’t even fully articulate, he felt better about himself that day. No amount of retconning, editorial interference, or criticism can undo that.