by the fans for the fans

In these days of polarization, quick judgements and unrestrained reactions, what I''m about to adress might be interpretated in different ways that I inteted, so please reead my entire post before responding.

See, every once in a while, the entertainment industry tries to jump on a trend, just to cash in on populair culture. For instance, during the seventies, 'balcksploitation movies, kung fu movies and disco misuc became populair - and big surprise, Marvel created characters Power Man, Iron Fist and Dazzler.

Lots of eighties cartoons suddenly had character with Southern accents - even when they were supposed to be aliens.

Big question with adding one coloured person to a further all-white cast, or a gay character among all-straight personae, is wether it is actually acceptation or simply marketing and/or avoiding accusations of being non-PR.

No in-continuity reasons were ever given for Charles Xavier and reed Richards no longer smoking pipes, either.

In the 80's, then editor-in-chief of Marvel, Jim Shooter, vetood homosexual characters (the reason why Northstar, despite John Byrne intending him to be gay, remained in the closet and why the relationship between Mystique and Destiny was never openly mentioned)

During the '00s, it apparently became ok - except the outed characters were always C-characters that had been in Marvel Limbo for years. The exception being two Young Avengers.
But to me, that series always seemed... I found it implausible that
a) those kids could know so much about the Avengers before offically joining them and
b) they aspired to be their junior versions.
The relationship between Wiccan and Hulkling was the only original take and I always suspected that was the real reason for writing it in.
Not actual acceptance, but a way to get publicity.

My cynicism comes from the late 90s/early 2000, when out of the blue a lot of actrsses and female singers suddenly declared themselves bisexual and several series aiming for adolescents (Xena, Buffy) had characters who turned straight to gay in just one episode.
Keep in mind: lots of MALE adolescents get turned on by watching girls having sex.

Not having followed X-men comics for at least a decade, I just read somewhere Iceman became gay.
Okay, finally an established male character.

Except:
a ) always shown to be interested in the ladies.
Which makes him just as unbelievable as Willow back in 'Buffy'

b ) He was the one original X-men that had never been given a personality. Not in the sixties, not even by Claremont,
Despite being an unique visual character (body covered with ice, icebridge, freezing his opponents), he never became more than comic relieve.
Which makes chosing him for being gay just another variant of 'okay, we need a gay - which character haven't we used in a long while?'

PS Jack in 'Dawson's Creek' - one of the few gay characters who wasn't written in 'to have a gay on the series', but an actual flesh and blood person who happened to be gay.

I don't care about sexual preference - it's the hipocricy I'm fed up with.

You can thank the SJW's for that bullshit. They are on a mission to ruin everything.

Mass Effect: Andromeda featured a transgender doctor who, the moment you met her, went off on a longwinded tirade telling you her entire life story and what led to her decision to become a woman. It was such blatant pandering to the LGBTWEJTOWMCGMKJBKLWTFBBQLOL community that members of such called horseshit, saying that no real trans person would introduce themselves in such a manner, and Bioware rewrote the character.

AB, nice to see you posting again!

Granted, people having other things to do than posting on the internet is usually a good sign , but you went from responding to everything posted here to complete radio silence from one day to the next. Started to become a bit worried.

See, if I hadn't visited uncannyxmen.net yesterday - which I tend to do just once every few months - I wouldn't have been aware of this recent development. They just happened to have posted something on it. Had I visited another week, I wouldn't have even noticed. So I was also a bit mad at myself...

See, I still love X-men. But just as I have reluctantly accepted that 'Sentinels' is never going to be finished, I grudgingly consider the X-franchise as something that was fun for thirty years and try to ignore everything since the infamous 'Age of Apocalyps'.

But with this....
1) total disrespect for story continuity AND character development.

X-men started in 1963. If a character has been presented with one and the same sexual preference for more than fiftty years, changing preference just becomes ridiculous.

(this point is not just with comics. In these days of Wikipedia, social media and fansites, following what happened earlier is easier than ever. You no longer have to be a devoted fan of a series, you can simply look it up on the web.

Yet the entertainment industry, despite using social media for promotion purposes, seems to pay less and less attention to continuity, and to consistency in personality. They just go from season finale to 'gamechanging event'.
Gets annoying)

2) when Marvel decided to add homosexuality to its universe in the 00s, they did not create characters that were just as interesting as the older ones and happened to be gay. They picked a few long forgotten characters and stated they were gay.

Compare Iceman to the other four original X-men, or any other X-men created in the 60s or 70s.
The only ones whose character were less developed are Thunderbird and Sunfire.
First one got killed off second appearance, second one never became a team member.

My first introduction, aged nine, to superheroes was 'Spider-Man and his amazing friends' (Iceman and Firestar).
Those thirty or so episodes of an early eighties cartoon gave him more dept and development than 55 years of comic book continuity.

3) Halfway 00s, I noticed three things writers fall back to when they have run out of ideas:
- a female gets stalked
- a female gets raped
- a female becomes lesbian (without having shown any interest whatsoever in her own sex before)

Wanna know if a series has jumped the shark?
Watch the women!

Okay, so now it's actually a guy.
Doesn't change the fact that Marvel in general and the X-books in particular have turned a dead end a long time ago.

Just the X-books: reality changed thrice (twice by the same character); Jean Grey no longer the only character having returned from the dead - about half the 60s and 70s characters have done that; several characters besides Jean and Rachel having possessed the Phoenix Force and just how many X-men have been temporarily turned into Apocalypse's Horsemen already?

In the old days, they actually had foes with other interests than wanting to kill all mutants or all mutants or both, you know...

Sole exception: Louise Simonson making him very attentive to the young charges of X-factor. He knew how it felt being treated as a baby because you're younger.
Something forgotten the moment after most X-terminators joined the New Mutants. The otherwise admired Chris Claremont actually made him appear an immature youngster again in Uncanny X-men #273 (X-tinction Agenda epilogue)