The Performative Horniness of Dawn of X

December 6, 2019 11:38 PM

Adjoining bedrooms. That was all it took for the X-Men’s most infamous love triangle to suddenly become a canon poly triad in the minds of fans everywhere. Elsewhere in the same issue, we bore witness to Corsair’s partner hitting on Rachel Summers, his granddaughter, another character generally accepted as queer despite only the most subtextual information.

Nola Pfau examines the latest X-Men miniseries and what it says about mutant sex lives and who is and isn't allowed to be horny on page.
posted by MartinWisse (16 comments total)

"X-Men's most infamous love triangle"? That would be Wolverine, Cyclops, and Jean Grey, wouldn't it?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:00 AM on December 7, 2019 [20 favorites]

I read the whole article to try to figure out who she’s talking about - are we supposed to tell purely from the picture at the top with the room diagram over it? I can see Wolverine but can’t tell who the other people are.
posted by brilliantine at 4:29 AM on December 7, 2019

Yes, that's Jean Grey (in her Marvel Girl costume), and Cyclops (Astonishing X-Men era).
posted by explosion at 4:46 AM on December 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

The prequel series that set up this stuff with the X-Men and their island did a fair bit of storytelling through diagrams presented in the flow of the story. Readers who'd been following along were primed to read the diagram of Cyclops' family house, with bedroom for Wolverine connected directly to Jean's, as an implication of a poly relationship.
posted by Merus at 5:23 AM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

One point that may not be clear on this version of the diagram: the three bedrooms have openings into each other without doors.

None of the other bedrooms in the house have openings or even doorways to anywhere except the common area, if I recall correctly.
posted by Four Ds at 6:06 AM on December 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

Have Wolverine and Jean ever actually had any sort of relationship in the comics other than occasional smoldering looks and him making suggestive comments? Hasn't Jean pretty much always been with Scott or cosmically aloof from humanity or dead?
posted by straight at 9:14 AM on December 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

Perhaps it's not Jean that wolverine is banging?
posted by biffa at 9:53 AM on December 7, 2019 [9 favorites]

The first couple X-Men movies it seemed that the triangle was imbalanced because Famke Jansen (Jean) had far more chemistry with Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) than she ever did with James Marsden (Cyclops).
posted by Ber at 10:00 AM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

Wolverine has always struck me as a power-bottom personally.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:43 AM on December 7, 2019 [3 favorites]

> "X-Men’s most infamous love triangle ... a canon poly triad"

I don't buy it. No matter how many sparks fly between Meggan and Nightcrawler, Captain Britain is *not* going to be able to handle a poly relationship.
posted by kyrademon at 11:46 AM on December 7, 2019 [10 favorites]

Cyclops is into danger. If he's also into fisting then Wolverine is his ideal partner.
posted by biffa at 1:58 PM on December 7, 2019 [5 favorites]

"...Famke Jansen (Jean) had far more chemistry with Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) than she ever did with James Marsden (Cyclops)..."

It *IS* Cyclops, and I don't care how good your acting chops are, that's gonna be damn near impossible to pull off. Sure, in COMIC land it works, but IRL? Cyclops? HAHAHA
posted by symbioid at 2:14 PM on December 7, 2019

Cyclops PUNCHES PEOPLE WITH HIS EYES, which is probably the raddest superpower and most blatantly disregarding the laws of physics. His insignia should be a middle finger superimposed on Newton's Third Law.

Wolverine cuts people with knives.
posted by straight at 2:31 PM on December 7, 2019 [9 favorites]

OK - OK - sorry i derailed, uh. They can have their Triad so long as their happy.
posted by symbioid at 2:36 PM on December 7, 2019

Performative horniness has been a staple of the X-Men since at least the Claremont/Byrne era.
posted by davros42 at 7:07 PM on December 7, 2019 [3 favorites]

Right? This is Marvel deciding to promote the X-Men again after some years of not-so-benign neglect of the sub-franchise because Marvel Studios didn't have film rights to it, lately reversed because of buying out Fox and the coincidental failure of the Inhumans project. I mean, Claremont and Byrne had Emma Frost and Jean Grey in bondage outfits (courtesy of the Hellfire Club) in the late seventies. But then, this is Jonathan Hickman, former purveyor of the "new" Secret Wars, which was a lot like the old one from the eighties crossed with DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths, and now thinks that he's invented the Sex-Men.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:56 PM on December 7, 2019 [1 favorite]