Gay Kids Love X-Men or Why I'll Read Nearly Any Book That Has a Certain Letter in the Title

As I discussed in my last post, one of the earliest comics that got me into the medium was the first issued of little gem called "X-Men Adventures." While I had been familiarized with comics before that point, it wasn't until I met Marvel's merry mutants did I get fully hooked. They had the coolest characters, the brightest colors and had the biggest adventures. But the x-factor that kept my interest and sparked an obsession inside of me was the ideas of persecution and otherness that a young confused gay kid like me could relate with.

To this day, I still can't imagine how some gay men and women can go nearly half their lives before realizing who they really are. I feel lucky to have been wise enough to not only realize it at an early age, but to have the X-Men around to show me that, hey, being different isn't only okay, it's kind of cool too.

And during those days, I lived and breathed X-Men. I collected all the toys, including the characters I didn't even know anything about. I saved up money over the course of a summer so I could buy a Sega Genesis, solely because of the X-Men game that was released for the system. My playground days were spent with the "X-Men Club," pretending to fight Magneto and getting in trouble with authority when our play battles got too realistic. It's amazing to find out later on in life how a few of my fellow recess teammates ended up being gay themselves.

In recent years Marvel has only played up the whole gay analogy when it comes to the X-Men. When the first movie was being made, they tapped openly gay director Bryan Singer, who then brought in openly gay actor Ian McKellen. Gay characters have now been integrated into the cast in the forms of Northstar, Anole, Greymalkin and the Ultimate Universe version of Colossus. And let's not forget the AIDS anaology with the Legacy Virus from the 90s comics.

If you open up an X-Men comic today, you'll find the group has relocated to San Francisco, which has a history of being a gay friendly place. The pages are filled with the mutant characters being "out and proud," going shopping or clubbing and doling out the smackdown on anybody who tries to mess with their good time.

And it's that rebelness, that strength and conviction that has helped me to cope with growing up gay. I knew I'd face hard times, just like the X-Men had to face the intolerance and bigotry of the people they tried to protect. These were some real heroes to look up to and so to this day, I'll have to admit, I'm kind of still obsessed with them.