I’ll apologize for this beforehand, but I’m going to get somewhat personal.
I would say that my first real experience with Marvel comics was the original “Infinity Gauntlet” event. I didn’t know half of what the hell was going on, but that didn’t really matter. Because here was a crazy, bizarre, cosmic, philosophical battles against the mad titan. And despite how insane it was, the characters gave it real weight.
It would take several years for me to discover how much more there was. I was aware, obviously that there were a lot of marvel comics out there. But the Internet really cracked it all open, and it was those exploratory times where I discovered the Annihilation Wave run. What’s really striking about the sort of mid-to-late 2000s cosmic space stuff that Marvel had going on was how despite the fact that a universe ending threat seemed to pop up every other day, it all felt meaningful, non-trivial. Again, the character work had a lot to do with it. Nevertheless, it had a vibe markedly different from the other marvel properties that were there.
In this, I discovered Phyla and Moondragon. Now I was dimly aware that there were probably queer characters and comics by the time I got my grubby mitts on them. But to see them as a loving, stubborn, headstrong couple was sort of revelatory for me. Time had passed since the original event finished, but even by the time I had read it, there weren’t exactly a lot of gay characters in media of any sort. And to see that threw me off guard in a good way. Something about that relationship just kind of stuck itself to the back of my formative mind, though I would not perceive that because after a couple years I eventually fell out of interest with marvel comics.
Recently, the new X-Men runs have been fantastic enough to Remind me why I like Marvel comics to begin with. And so the past couple months has been very much a rediscovery of all that has happened, good bad and ugly within canon, as well as a return to a lot of old rhymes that I haven’t touched in quite a while.
Out of nowhere a couple days ago I stumbled across an image of Moondragon and Phyla, One clearly from a more contemporary run. And I got very excited, because that a little bit of them that’d stuck in the back of my mind made itself known again.
What I found wasn’t entirely satisfactory. I’m not one for uncritical nostalgia for past franchises, and the fact that I’m more excited now about X-Men than I ever have been is proof that newness is not necessarily a mark of low quality. But even as it was nice to see that the pair had been brought back, I was unfulfilled. These new, smirky, self-assured versions just did not resonate the same way their past counterparts did. To satisfy mysef I immediately went on a kick of all of the older comics that they appeared in up until Phyla’s unceremonious death.
Finally, I get to the reason why I love this piece so much. Because honestly what it feels like is you’ve written a (literal) confrontation, a meeting between the old character-driven, cosmic space battle Marvel and the new. And it really comes off as a love letter to the former, One that can’t help but resonate with me. And it makes me feel like I am a kid again, the juvenile shock and wonder (and a little bit of longing, but if the colors on my icon tell you anything, that would take a while to sort out!) at seeing a Phyla and Heather call each other “love.” And I’m supremely happy to discover that something like this has been written. It’s comforting to know that my feelings towards this are shared by someone else.
To conclude, away from what is definitely my too-personal oversharing, you’ve created a well-written and honestly touching tribute to a criminally underrated relationship. And if I’m being honest with myself, you’ve made me dislike the new versions a little less than I did. Time goes on, characters die and come back, new writers take over. It’s just what happens. But at least there’s this wonderful piece to memorialize what once was. Excellent work.
I'm often hesitant to express just how foundational Phyla-Vell and Heather Douglas were to my understanding of myself - as you say, they weren't the first characters ever to do it, but they WERE the first characters I ever encountered that openly, unreservedly and undeniably loved a character in a way that wasn't heteronormative. Phyla and Heather gave me some of the tools that I needed to understand myself, so I'm ecstatic that I was able to write something that evokes positive feelings in someone who shared that experience with me! We certainly also seem to share feelings on the contemporary state of Earth-616 - I love the marvel universe, and I love huge swathes of what is happening in it nowadays, especially the Krakoan era of the X-Men. Marvel can clearly do wonderfully interesting things by remixing older stories and characters, and putting them into new contexts. The Captain Marvel and Moodragon of Earth-18897 are different characters, and interesting characters at that - I'm excited to see what happens to them in the Genis-Vell ongoing.
But I loved Phyla-Vell and Heather Douglas, and I needed somewhere to put that love.
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The_Fanfic_Bolshevik Sat 24 Sep 2022 09:00PM UTC
Last Edited Sun 25 Sep 2022 11:42PM UTC
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GoldenLadybug Mon 26 Sep 2022 11:19AM UTC
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