after that preview panel today (with the intertwined fingers), if they don’t explicitly/contextually confirm it as canon in issue #5, would you consider it queer-baiting?

shipperhipster:

ARGH this is an excellent questions, and one I’ve been thinking a LOT about.

I guess, it depends on your views of “gay-baiting” and whether its the creators’ intention, or the fact that they still benefit from it. 

Here’s what I mean:

My wife araniaart and I have had conversations with both the author and the artist for Planet Hulk and they have said things that imply to me that they are limited by what they can do with the Steve/Bucky relationship.  I don’t want to put words into their mouths, but it certainly seems to me that both of them would have gone “all the way” with the Steve/Bucky relationship if they had been allowed to.  This leads me to believe when you write Steve Rogers, there’s a “No homo” clause that comes with it from Marvel.  So, I don’t think Sam Humphries or Marc Laming are trying to “Gay bait” anyone – I personally think they are trying very hard to get away with what they can. 

But that being said, because the creators are crippled by Marvel’s insistence on reaffirming Steve Roger’s heterosexuality despite decades of homoerotic overtones, does that still count as gay-baiting?  I don’t think Marvel is naive enough to think that they don’t know exactly what they are doing; that while they seem adamant that Steve Rogers is 100% straight, they HAVE to be aware of their fanbase that thinks otherwise, right? 

So, they still get all the benefits of whipping the queer audience into a hopeful frenzy, while being able to have plausible deniability of there actually being any genital-touching between Steve and Bucky.

So, in that way, yeah it kind of is gay-baiting.

BUT AT THE SAME TIME… after Planet Hulk its going to be very hard to deny that there is a distinct sub-set of Captain America fans that FIRMLY believe Cap is queer, and they can (and should) use Planet Hulk as pretty form evidence that the creators are “in on it.”  I mean, the comics code didn’t allow any gay characters in comics in the 80s, but authors still managed to do a whole story arch about Steve’s childhood BFF Arnie who was gay and asked Steve to help save his lover.  They never SAID Arnie was gay, but it was so thinly veiled that no one can reasonably go back and read that arc and think it wasn’t intentional.

Its this glass closet that I think Planet Hulk is fated to live in.  I don’t think they will be able to actually SAY or SHOW them being a canon couple, but in a few years as queer and female audiences for comics continue to grow, I think everyone will look back to Planet Hulk with the assumption that this was the first time Bucky and Steve were WRITTEN as a couple.

I think Steve coming out as bisexual is only a matter of time.  3 years, 10 years, 20 years?  Who knows, but I think its going to happen eventually, even if its only in the AUs or alternate properties.  I think Planet Hulk and the upcoming Captain America: White will be the tip of that iceberg.