Marvels X-Men comics are finally getting serious about diversity. The X-Men have traditionally been viewed as a metaphor for diversity; the campaign for mutant rights has been designed as a parallel to the battle for racial equality, and in the '90s, in particular, it was extended to serve as a metaphor for the LGBTQ+ movement.
In spite of that, the X-Men comics have been strangely slow to embrace true diversity. There are only a handful of LGBTQ+ characters, and their relationships have seldom been in the spotlight. The most high-profile is Northstar, a gay mutant who actually married in 2012's Astonishing X-Men #51 - but he's essentially been dropped to the background for the last seven years.
All this looks set to change. According to Polygon, Leah Williams and David Baldeón (Gwenpool Strikes Back!) have been placed in charge of a new X-Factor book. This team will investigate mutant missing person cases across the world, and Williams has put together a team that is the most diverse ever seen in an X-Men comic. The X-Factor group is headed by Northstar himself, and Williams intends to explore just how the relationship between a mutant and a baseline human works in the age of Krakoa. Wolverine's son Daken is on board as well, one of Marvel's few bisexual characters. Another team member is Rachel Grey, who legendary X-Men scribe Chris Claremont intended to portray as lesbian, and who has had occasional lesbian subtext in her stories.
The X-Men books have always hinted at representation and diversity, but they've seldom actually done it. That's been as true in the Hickman era as ever, with Hickman hinting at a polyamorous relationship between Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Wolverine, but keeping it low-key enough to be in the eye of the beholder. But Leah Williams has taken to Twitter to suggest that shouldn't be the case in her X-Factor run. "Me tweeting about it doesn't count until it shows up in the book," she observed. It's nice to see an X-Men writer who really gets that implications and Twitter comments aren't enough.
The relationships are intended to be central to X-Factor. Williams is particularly invested in the relationship between Northstar and his husband Kyle, who has moved to Krakoa and is a human living in a mutant world. That should prove especially interesting given one of Northstar's teammates is Polaris, who showed a surprising streak of anti-human prejudice in House of X #5. But, every team member's love life will come under the microscope, meaning mutants like Prodigy and Eye-Boy will get developed as well. According to Williams, she's been chatting a lot to Excalibur's Tini Howard, and these themes and ideas may cross over between the two comics. It sounds as though the X-Men books really are about to embrace the diversity they're supposed to symbolize.
Source: Polygon