What about the line -- "...the winning is all that really matters..."   That seems to scream to me that Jean-Paul was a member of the Klu Klux Klan....

the whole thing is reaching.....it's like reading a horoscope -- it's "true" but only if you can relate something to it.   Reading all this for the FIRST time in 1982 NO ONE would have guessed anything except - Jean-Paul is a self-centered ego maniac, hell bent on winning, totally about the competition, the battle.  Gay?  I still don't see it.     But, if you work the homosexual aspect backwards into it, like a horoscope fortune, well, yeah, obviously Jean-Paul is gay, Heather is a horny little minx with a fetish for older guys, Jeanie-Marie is a lesbian, Aurora is into beastiality, Mac is a genius with no social skills, and Walter is just a dumb-ass..... - Pat

Pat, the character was absolutely intended by JB to be gay from the very beginning of the series. He has said as much in black and white several times and these were very concious and intentional clues on his part intended to get that point across at a time when you couldn't just come right out and say it in a Code Approved Marvel Comic. No one is reading anything into it. That was the intention and nobody is just working backwards to rationalize it.

Now, since it wasn't  stated in black and white back then, ie: Northstar telling Puck, "I'm gay, you know," or being shown in bed with another man, then yes, any subsequent creative team after JB left the book could have simply ignored these very intentional clues and given Northstar a girlfriend. If they had, I wouldn't have called it an outright contradiction of the published continuity but it still would have subverted JB's original intention.

It's all there, Pat. To deny it is to ignore what is on the page. Nobody's jumping through mental hoops to justify it. 

The Super Skrull was a Skrull soldier who was sujected to a proccess that allowed him to mimic the powers of each member of the Fantastic Four. These powers were combined with the natural Skrull ability of shapeshifting. Any Skrull can turn into things like animals, monsters, exact duplicates of humans, but only the Super Skrull could turn invisible, throw fireballs, punch the Hulk in the face, etc.

Although Stan and Jack did establish that all Skrulls have (presumably limited) stretching ability akin to that of Mr. Fantastic.

Sure it can be explained away, just like I mentioned above. Jean Grey's death was explained away, too, but that's not the way it was originally intended.

Northstar didn't look directly at the camera and say "I like men"

Is that the only thing that would've counted?

It is there. Nobody who noticed the clues back then was bending over bacwards to read somrthing into it and nobody now is making crap up to make themselves look clever by going "I KNEW IT!" in the time since he's been outed.

Like I said, there was always a "back door" if Marvel wanted to ease away from the idea, but it's not as if the intention was "Maybe he is maybe he isn't."

OK, too many posts in a row from the same person, but...

Actually, I wouldn't even say that this "back door" was intentional, either. I don't feel (and as always, JB can correct me if I'm way off base) that this character trait was written as ambiguously as it was so that they could go back on it later. I get the feeling, rather, that the character's homosexuality might've been more at the forefront and not so carefully hidden if that had been permitted in a Code Approved Marvel comic back then. I don't think that JB was trying to have it both ways on the issue. Again, only he knows for sure, but I don't think he was straddling the fence, I think he was just speaking in code.

QUOTE: Northstar didn't look directly at the camera and say "I like men" Is that the only thing that would've counted?

Thanks David.

OK, that's my point, Pat. Are you saying that Northstar wasn't gay until this panel?

JB didn't write that panel- Pat Dillon

Jeez. Real funny.

No he did not. You know full well that has nothing to do with it. My point was- and you know it- that according to your logic, everything that had gone before, no matter who wrote it, does not go one inch toward proving that Northstar was gay untill Northstar said "I'm gay."

edited because I was typing rather... energetically