Obviously this is a queston for John Byrne....

okay... I hate Northstar most of the time and I am annoyed reading the character because.... he is an asshole.

I have absolutely no opinion, attitude, emotion, or feeling regarding gay characters or havinge gay characters.  That's my preface.

But is there a reason  that comics' first gay dude had to be such an asshole?  Honestly....

It creates an annoying potential problem as an ideologue and sometime demogogue because everytime I make a fanboy rant on the internet expressing annoyance that the character is suddenly appearing in a comic I was goign to read regardless I have to preface, defensively, that I hate the character for one reason but not another.  I mean I've left massive non-subtle clues to the my own ideologies so people make automatic assumptions and that curtails and delays actual rational logical debates.

Now I've read the Alpha Flight issues and I know why in the plot the guy was a jerk.  But it does mean that Marvel's two primary protagonists with super-speed powers are jerks.  So the "I'm a jerk because I'm impatient" got old with me.

So I guess the question really is.... did you come up with Northstar's personality based on the plot (the whole Olympic competitor skier deal and all that stuff, of which it was a logical outgrowth) or did you come up with the personality first and then you created a plot that would cause it?


A second question is.... do you consider Bill Mantlo's unfortunate changing of Northstar and Aurora's origin to them being demi-elves, and not mutants, as a "reveal", or a retcon?

I never cared for the elf origin itself but Mantlo did set it up with clues along the way so it wasn't forced all at once.  I also thought it was good that we had two less mutants in the Marvel Universe.  There was just something about the AF title having less mutants that made it more of its own comic and less another X-title.... which some fans still apparently identified it as such.

And I know that everyone has ignored Mantlo's elf origin.

Why anyone would ask Northstar to join the X-Men is beyond me....

CJA

Edited the subject title of this thread.  No need for that kind of language in any subject heading~Matt

I always thought the characterization of Northstar worked really well. Here was a guy who was member of not one, but two of the most hated groups of minorities on Earth, homosexuals and mutants.   I don't blame him for having a bit of a chip on his shoulders.   

Take a walk through Chelsea or Hell's Kitchen someday.  Attitude wise, Northstar would fit right in.

Yes, I went there.

From what I have read, Northstar was not "comics' first gay dude" anyways. Not even Marvel's first gay dude.