Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: LGBTQ, marvel, Matt Baker, new mutants, Proide., supertrans, trans

The Marvel Universe Has A Queer Youth Center Named After Matt Baker

The publication of today's Marvel's Voices: Pride 2022 #1 establishes the Matt Baker House as an LGBTQIA+ Youth Centre, located in Queens, New York. Matt Baker was a Golden Age comic book creator, working in the forties and fifties on comic boo strips such as Phantom Lady. One of the first African-American artists to find success in comics, his friends and colleagues are quoted as stating he was a gay man, though closeted to his family. He also co-created the very first graphic novel in 1950, It Rhymes With Lust.

If that's not enough, he created the early black comics character, jungle hero Voodah published by McCombs in Crown Comics #3 in 1945, though subsequent appearances saw the comic character coloured as if he were a white man. His link to Marvel was working for Atlas Comics, forerunner to Marvel, including Western comics with Stan Lee, including titles such as Western Outlaws, Quick Trigger Action, Frontier Western, Wild Western, Love Romances, My Own Romance, Strange Tales, World of Fantasy, and Tales to Astonish. Matt Baker died tragically young of a heart attack in 1959, aged 37, and his legacy had to be unearthed retrospectively. But now immortalised in the Marvel Universe

In a story in today's Marvel's Voices: Pride 2022 #1 by Grace Freud, Scott B Henderson, Lee Townsend and Brittany Peer has the Matt Baker House host a support group for superpowered trans teenagers, Supertrans, run by Dennis Dunphy – D-Man.

And introducing four new trans characters to the Marvel Universe, Pity Girl, Aphelion, Good Arson and Faceshopper.

Naturally, because this is a Marvel comic book, the meeting is interrupted by violence, as a Spider-Man fight spills over into the Matt Baker House. As Aphelion attempts a catchphrase and a team name to deal with the occasion.

And even Elaine Coll, Scorpia of the Sinister Syndicate realises she may have gone too far with this one.

Ginger's is a real-life lesbian bar in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighbourhood, and the borough's last remaining lesbian bar following the closure of… oh boy, Excelsior. A missed opportunity there. Later in the anthology, a fifth new trans character Shela Sexton, Escapade, makes her debut as a supervillain trans character in Marvel Voices: Pride 2022 #1 pops by the Supertrans support group at the Matt Baker House in her own story, by Charlie Jane Anders, Ro Stein, Ted Brandt, Tamra Bonvillain, and Naseem Jamina.

Two creative teams, two stories, one location, The Matt Baker House. That's as good as established in Marvel Universe canon. And plans for Escapade for New Mutants in October as well.

MARVELS VOICES PRIDE #1
MARVEL COMICS
APR220866
(W) Alyssa Wong (A) Stephen Byrne (CA) Nick Robles
Hot off a GLAAD Award nomination for 2021's anthology, MARVEL'S VOICES: PRIDE returns for a jam-packed celebration of LGBTQI+ characters and creators! New York Times-bestselling, multi-award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders introduces a new hero to the Marvel Universe – and it won't be the last you see of them. Get in on the ground floor here! IRON MAN scribe and lauded TV showrunner Christopher Cantwell takes on Moondragon's complex legacy for a heart-bending story across space and time. Shuster and Eisner-winning writer Andrew Wheeler makes his Marvel debut with the MU's real god of love – Hercules! Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus-award winner Alyssa Wong reunites the Young Avengers in a story guaranteed to please fans new and old! And that's just the first slice of the rainbow. MARVEL'S VOICES continues its groundbreaking anthology series with another swoon-worthy glimpse of the world outside your window! RATED T+In Shops: Jun 22, 2022 SRP: $9.99

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