We've already seen the wrap-around cover for the forthcoming Astonishing X-Men #51 featuring the wedding of gay hero Northstar to his boyfriend, Kyle. Now Marvel's ramping up the PR machine by releasing a variant cover.
Meanwhile, Andrew Wheeler at Comics Alliance, explains why he does not support Marvel's decision to marry Northstar off:
This is clearly going to be one of the most heavily publicized weddings in superhero comic history, up there with the wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane in 1996 and the wedding of Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson in 1987. But look at how those marriages turned out. One was erased from history when three timelines were merged together; the other was wiped out because Spider-Man made a deal with the devil. I think that the way those weddings were annulled was sloppy, but I also think that letting those characters get married in the first place was a bigger mistake, because the writers and editors at those companies found those marriages limiting. That is why I don't want Northstar to get married.
Weddings force endings on characters who aren't meant to have endings. It ties up love stories and limits interactions. Marriage does create some new story ideas of its own, but perhaps not enough to balance out the story opportunities that are lost.
But, as a reader pointed out last week, Northstar still has unresolved feelings for the at-times sexually ambiguous Iceman (seen on the right in the image above), so perhaps the marriage is only the beginning of the X-drama, rather than the end?
Take a look at the full variant cover AFTER THE JUMP.
