Think of your favorite straight character. How do you know that they’re heterosexual?
My favorite thing to do in comic book discussions is say “okay, but what does the text actually say?” Because comic book readers are notorious for pulling one panel or one issue out of context and drawing all their conclusions from that. You can see in a few of these Venom-based posts how much I love to go back through decades worth of comics to pull together textual evidence for my thesis.
One of my takeaways from high school competitive literary criticism (because of course that’s a thing and of course I did it), is that when you’re making an analytical claim, it’s not really about being right or wrong so much as “supported by the text” or “unsupported.” Can you prove your thesis with the source material?
And you can get really nasty here with the literal words of the text vs authorial intent vs assumed authorial intent based on preconceived biases.
If a male character walks into a room with a female character and says “Hey, slut” you’re going to be drawing on your own experiences with gender-based relationships when you interpret that interaction. And that interpretation will probably change depending on whether the author’s a man or a woman.
Now we come back to your theoretically straight character.
Has this character ever actually had a moment where even off handedly they specifically say that they’re straight. Something like “I’m like any other red-blooded heterosexual male.” Or is it that they’ve just only even been in relationships with someone of the opposite sex, so you’ve assumed they’re straight.
Because in real life there are plenty of people who aren’t straight who’ve only been in relationships with people of the “opposite” sex through mere circumstance.
But if there’s a character who on page has never been in a relationship or shown interest in a relationship do you assume they’re straight or that they’re asexual? Most likely you’ve still assumed they’re straight they’re just inexperienced or not currently looking. It usually takes an additional little nudge for an asexual character to actually be read as asexual.
And this is because we have a straight bias when reading text. Characters are presumed straight until proven otherwise. Which means the bar for providing textual evidence that a character might actually be queer can be high. There’s this presumptive barrier you have to break through.
Since we’re talking comics, let’s look at a character like Johnny Storm.
Obviously he’s had a bunch of women and women-coded love interests. Then you see his interactions with Spider-Man, and you’re like hmmmmmmm. Then you see him with Daken, and you’re like HMMMMMMMM. But that’s really a bit more subjective. Your own little Johnny headcanon is going to paint your interpretation of their interactions. Even when one of the writers states they had intended sexual tension with Daken, that’s not the most stable pillar to lean on. Daken flirts with Ben more than Johnny in these same issues. That’s just Daken being Daken.
So what other textual evidence can we dig up?
In another universe, he’s married to Reed Richards (what’s that say about Reed, as well?!). Genders swap across universes all the time, so there’s no evidence that sexuality would be static. So you can’t necessarily apply an alt earth sexuality to the 616 main character.
But then we note that Johnny has been in relationships with at least two non-humanopid aliens, an unnamed Trill (a species with 18 genders) and Angelica of the Shore. And this is where speculative fiction let’s us ask the question “what sexuality is it if you’re attracted to things that are sentient but not human-shaped?” Because there’s a notch on the monster fucker spectrum where no matter the relative gender of the people involved it stops being straight.
So with the text provided, I think you could make a case for him having a more-than-plantonic affection for at least a couple of the men he’s known, but to get to bisexual as we understand it, you have to massage the text a little more and make some logical jumps with authorial intent. At the same time,you can still pretty comfortably declare “not totally straight” based on what we know about Johnny’s alien relationships.
What does this have to do with Frank Castle from the title?
I’ve seen people declare him asexual in the wake of the death of his wife or “gun-sexual” as a joke, but he’s had a combination of one-stand and genuine romantic relationships with women. He shows immediate interest in Electra, and they share some very dear moments. This is evidence of him being actively attracted to women to some degree.
There’s also a very interesting arc in 1987 where Frank infiltrates a Satanic cult. This is where he meets the Reverend Sammy Smith, and a very strong infatuation blossoms. Frank runs this inner monologue reflecting on the feel of Sammy’s hands touching him that has an undercurrent of yearning. At the same time, Sammy’s a cult leader who’s using some kind of preternatural ability to attract followers. This being the CCA era, you could make a case for a bit of queer-coding. Following the analogy would roughly equate queerness to a satanic cult, though, so maybe…you know…let that one go.
Because really all you need is Wolverine #186.
In it, Logan beats up Frank, a magazine of soft core gay porn falls out of Frank’s bag, and Logan accuses Frank of being gay with a “makes sense, though.” Frank denies it saying they’re “suspects,” but the narrative framing of Logan’s parting shot suggests that Frank is, in fact, gay, and in denial.
“…you keep tellin’ yerself that, sport.”
The rumor of additional authorial context goes that Frank Tieri was pissed off about how Garth Ennis treated Wolverine in one of his Punisher books, so Tieri’s “revenge” was to point and laugh at Frank with a very 2000s “haha, you’re gay.” It was using queerness as a humiliation ritual instead of an authentic exploration of identity, which genuinly sucks.
But it’s also canon.
These two pages of comic are strong textual evidence of Frank Castle being at least interested in men, even if he’s never acted on those interests. I could make the claim that Frank Castle is a closet bisexual, point to that comic, and the claim would be supported by the text.
And it’s funny because despite it being right there, no one actually…wants…this…
In the deluge of SpideyPool, Poolverine, Stony, Stucky, SpideyTorch, Katyana, Marvel-Rambeau, Scogan, Cherik, Jemma, SpideyDevil, only the Punisher/Daredevil shippers are really asking for a bisexual Frank Castle.
Yet it’s right there, and we could all be enjoying the juxtaposition right now if we wanted to.
Pixels and Pins Studio 