Alpha Flight: Huge Stereotypes or not?

[suzene]

Imagine the stereotype that Northstar would have become had Mantlo been given the go-ahead with his AIDS story...Ugh (again). Suzene, where did Heather make such a joke? I find that disturbing and I don't recall where it took place (maybe I blocked it out?).

AF #42. When Northstar says that he feels raped due to Kara's violation of his will, Heather cracks back "And by a woman! No wonder you're upset!" I'd either forgotten or it went over my head the first time I read it, but when I did a close re-read of the series a couple of years back, it leapt out at me. As a woman, I don't find rape dismissal and/or jokes funny. As a queer woman, the added homophobic undertone made that a serious "Oh, **** you, Mantlo" moment.

BTW: Didn't Marvel "establish" in the X-books that Mutants can't get HIV or AIDS?

Yeah, Chuck Austen had Husk say that during his X-Men run, but the writers haven't touched on it since. I can't say that I'm sorry about that; there's a lot about that guy's writing I'd prefer be forgotten. I guess it all depends on where your personal canon stands regarding the Mantlo story -- since it was established that Loki was a lying liar who lied about the Beabuier twins' ancestry, one way to read it is that Northstar did have AIDS, Aurora cured him, and Austen is full of it. Not that Austen seemed to do a lot of research on the characters he was using -- this is the guy that decided to make Nightcrawler the son of the devil and gave twice-orphaned Northstar an after-school special homophobic zombie dad.