Green and Gay - Not in that order...

Marvel Comics have always pushed boundaries - from Stan Lee's controversial drug issue of Spider-Man in the 70's to literally anything Garth Ennis touches, their comics take the major social issues of the day and bring them direct to our minds utilising the slightly unorthodox method of delivery via men fighting in spandex.

So with that in mind, why has it taken so long for a Marvel title to feature a same sex wedding? I'm talking, of course, about the marriage between Northstar and his partner Kyle Jinadu (Astonishing X-Men issue 51, true believer!)

Northstar has been 'out' since way back in 1992 - it's fairly safe to say DC (or at least their Wildstorm imprint) beat them well and truly to the punch here when Authority team members Apollo and Midnighter got hitched way back in 2002...

DC aren't very well known for sticking their collective necks out when it comes to the issues although the 'will they, won't they?' storyline between Batman and Robin was pretty racey back in the day I guess... Although DC did have Vertigo which was an awesome collection of mature titles whilst Marvel fannyed about with the MAX line which seemed exist solely as a reason for Nick Fury to say 'cunt'...

Oh and for a shit computer generated War Machine title too. It was a shiny shiny sack of balls.

Anyways, the wedding storyline - awesome in parts. Oddly rushed in favour of mutants fucking each other up (for a change) but a nice do all the same. It's always nice to see superheroes doing normal stuff like attend weddings. There's a bunch of variants out too including a blank photo one for those lucky enough to encounter a Marvel artist wandering the streets and hawking his talent for change. If you don't get it doodled on though, it looks pretty shit.

I bought it, it was another cultural landmark from the house of ideas... Unlike Hulk which is pretty well paced, nicely drawn and a great read but for the love of all things sacred will Hulk PLEASE STOP SHAGGING?

So yeah, that's about all I have to say about that.

Exsel... Excel.. Exell... Sod it, it doesn't make sense anyway.

I Want To Have Mike Allred's Children - But I Haven't Got A Womb.

Ah the simple pleasures in life like ice-cream, fellatio and a Marvel reboot! And who doesn't like those things?

This Marvel Now! thing is looking pretty darn sweet - and not *cough* in any way designed to *cough cough* claw back some readers who went off to the shiny land that is the new DC 52... AT ALL.

Still there's some sick looking stuff on the horizon for next month including more Avengers titles (to go with the seventy three other Avengers titles we've seen over the last few years) and a brand new, awesome Thunderbolts line-up that made me do a little love wee.

Observe:

Holy shit look at the colour co-ordination there! Red Hulk, Electra, Deadpool, Punisher and a sweet looking Venom all in black and red. Good fucking times.

But what I'm happiest about is Marvel rediscovering Mike Allred - creator of some of the weirdest and most wonderful comics I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Titles like Madman, The Atomics and Marvels own X-Statix to name but a few. Oh how I love Mike Allred - let me count the ways...

1. The art is so clean and bright and fun it makes me think of a simpler time when I wasn't even born! 2. His writing is funny and has the oddest mix of innocence and out and out weirdness I've ever read before. With dialogue coming straight out of the 60's but never with that cloying faux hipness that Stan Lee used to write into Spider-Man back in the day. 3. OK, so I only have 2 ways but those are 2 pretty good ways.

So they let Mike Allred do an issue of Daredevil recently (issue 17 true believer) which boasted a truly beautiful cover. Have a butchers at this:

And there's more to come as he's also doing not one but a series of covers for FF. Covers like this one:

I don't care that this reboot seems on the whole to be a colossal waste of time - it's got Mike fucking Allred doing covers so until the Mad Thinker... erm... stops having mad thoughts, make mine Marvel (Now).