20 of the best LGBTQIA+ works of science fiction

Young Avengers (Cover image via Marvel)

17. Young Avengers

Marvel, like many other major comics company, has had trouble representing queer characters in the past. They’ve either skated around the issue or ignored it entirely, leaving generations of LGBTQIA+ comics readers without representation on the page. When it was addressed, queerness was all too often treated as something wracked with shame or the subject of A Very Special Issue.

While there’s arguably more progress to be made, modern comics are doing much better than their predecessors in presenting a nuanced cast of LGBTQIA+ characters. Even superhero comics, oftentimes a conservative bastion despite its mind-bending, spacefaring, tights-wearing ways, has stepped up to the plate (thanks to the right illustrators and writers).

For one especially good example, look to the modern miniseries run of Young Avengers. The fifteen-issue series, written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by a slate or artists, featured what may be one of the most recognizable, majority-queer superhero teams at Marvel.

First of all, there are Wiccan and Hulkling, two team members that are not only gay but in a developing relationship together. Prodigy comes out as bisexual, while the kind-of reincarnated trickster god Loki is open to practically anything. It’s worth remembering that Loki has previously changed between gendered bodies and shapeshifted to his heart’s content, and without much (if any) hand-wringing on his part.

Meanwhile, Marvel Boy, as a Kree alien, is more or less removed from human concerns about gender and relationships. “The Kree are efficient like that,” he concludes during one conversation.

And then there’s America Chavez, a.k.a. “Miss America”. She never comes out with a glitter sign and fireworks, but neither does she hide. Plus, she was raised by two mothers on the Utopian Parallel, a separate reality that sounds a bit like the magical queer commune of our dreams.