One of my favorite comic books as a kid was John Byrne’s Alpha Flight. I like the fact that he drew his own stories. I was a tad sad when he left the book when I was in 6th grade. He transferred to Incredible Hulk and, while his art looked great, I wasn’t too fond of the comic because it wasn’t a team book. Anyway, to update my previous post on Northstar, I checked out Mr. Byrne’s site, byrnerobotics.com. I enjoyed reading the FAQ section. He wanted to make the characters resonant, and interestingly, he meant for Northstar to be gay all along:
One of the things that popped immediately into my head was to make one of them Gay. I had recently read an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN on what was then (the early 80s) fairly radical new thinking on just what processes caused a person to be homosexual, and the evidence was pointing increasingly to it being genetic and not environmental factors. So, 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.
From there, it was a process of elimination. I didn't want the homosexual character to be one of the girls, since that was something people tended to associate (rightly or wrongly) with
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. (
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