"Unattended minor"?

"Slept with a man for food and shelter"?

The opinion writer is inferring a heck of a lot from JB's Alpha Flight run that I don't see.

It's kind of convoluted, so I may be missing some of the argument, but from what I can understand, I don't really disagree with her general thrust that post-JB writers and editorial really had no idea how to write a gay-coded character, and that the AIDS-coded storyline was poor judgment (to say the least). But where I do disagree is the idea that Jean-Paul was created by JB as stereotypical and inherently false because JB himself was straight. I'm 100% in agreement that more diverse creator voices are a boon for the medium - for ANY medium - but the idea that one cannot write a demographic unless one IS that demographic is antithetical to artistic creation.

If I recall correctly, an article in The Comics Journal from the early 90's written in response to Northstar finally coming out was also pretty cynical about Mantlo/Lobdell's approach. Though the take of that writer (himself gay) was more disappointment that the complex, lithe character that JB had written and drawn had been bulked up to Image-powerhouse size - the writer had really thought JB's Jean-Paul was a sensitive and sympathetic portrayal.

Catch that? A gay man, writing over thirty years ago, didn't take any major issue with JB's portrayal of a gay man, while a contemporary young female writer takes issue with it on the grounds of it being a product of the straight male gaze. This says more about contemporary literary theory than it does about Jean-Paul's legitimacy, but this approach is just one of those shibboleths that has to work its way through critical circles before it's thoroughly exhausted, I guess. 

I cannot for the life of me work out why she's making a deliberate point of eliding JB, and I also can't work out what the point of that elision is. I'd almost be tempted to view the deliberate omission of JB's name as some kind of wrinkle on 'the death of the author', but in naming Mantlo twice and clearly focusing on the identity aspect of the author, she's pretty clearly ALL about unpacking authorial intent.

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But the author's profile photo has her fingertip on her temple with a smirk that screams "Darla" from MTV. That means she MUST be a critical thinker!!

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The only reason why I would think otherwise is that I can't imagine this writer missing the opportunity to add the affront of the first gay character being created by a "raging homophobe".