Something pretty remarkable happened in comics a couple of months ago: two Marvel comics dudes… part of the X-Men franchise, no less, shared a kiss. A romantic kiss. Rictor and Shatterstar, the former debuting in the New Mutants, the latter first showing up in the 90’s Rob Leifield embarrassment, X-Force, shared a special, subtextual relationship briefly, just before the both disappeared into limbo around ten years ago. Rictor returned in the pages of Peter David’s X-Factor, one of my favorite superhero reads each month. There were some passing mentions of his possible relationship with Shatterstar, but nothing very distinct. David surprised me by bringing Shatterstar back into the comic recently, and stunned my by having Rictor and Shatterstar share a kiss at the end of a recent issue. There’s some pretty hefty significance to this, ,and I applaud the way it was casually slipped into a story without making a big deal out of it.
There’s more to the story, but I’ll let interested parties check it out over at the Daily Loaf. I’ll just leave you with the image, and the dubiously-named Strong Guy’s apt summation of the kiss.
