Disney has positioned its Disney Plus streaming service as an integral part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although we will see the first episode of the MCU show in the fall of 2020. In the meantime, Marvel offers the spectators something down-to-earth: Marvel’s Hero Project.
Marvel’s documentary films in 20 episodes celebrate children who “dedicated their lives to unselfish acts of courage and kindness”. Each episode follows its theme on a big day – a presentation, a meeting, a fundraiser, a protest – and grabs its journey with interviews with family, friends, and community members. Only if you think you do not have enough tears in your eyes will the truly great child be presented with a Marvel comic that will be his victories and a great donation to his chosen cause.
Previously released episodes showed a disabled engineer, a blind athlete, and a boy who called his city against child maltreatment. The connection to Marvel Comics characters is not very difficult: Iron Man is a guy who has turned to engineering in the face of a medical disability. Daredevil and Hawkeye are superheroes who sometimes have trouble seeing and hearing. and the ability of Captain America to inspire the people around them is one of its most consistent, not exactly exact superpowers.
This week’s episode focuses on Rebekah, a transgender girl and an LGBTQ activist. The story is no less inspiring, but slightly clouded by the undeniable fact that the Marvel Comics universe has virtually no transgender superheroes.
Over the decades, Marvel has introduced superheroes of color, female superheroes and young superheroes in the Crusade, but certainly few LGBTQ superheroes and no superheroes with prominent gender-specific deviations. The list of gender queer characters found in Marvel comics consists of extraterrestrials, gods, and anthropomorphic beings with fundamentally different cultural norms than human society. Loki, the trickster god of Asgard, freely takes female form, if it suits him. Tong, the Moloidin, appeared to her brothers on the pages of Fantastic Four as a trans feminine. Xavin, a member of Skrull’s royalty appearing in Runaways, told her lesbian fiancée that it was no different for Skrulls to change sex from male to female than to change hair color. These are signs that may serve as identification points for persons who are unlawful, but do not represent the actual experience of trans persons.
Ken Shiga, AKA Koi Boi, a supporting actress in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, is currently the only human super hero in Marvel Comics. And even then, Ken’s transgender identity was never unpacked on the page, but confirmed by the artist Erica Henderson after the readers noticed that he was drawn with a file folder. Since the finale of Squirrel Girl it remains to be seen when Ken will reappear.
Marvel’s eternal competitor, DC Comics, is not feeling any better. Sir Ystin, the modern version of the superhero Shining Knight, is a medieval knight who identifies himself as male and female. However, you are not a regular performer of a recent comic. The same goes for Alysia Yeoh, Batgirl’s former roommate; or porcelain, a gender member of the Secret Six. In addition, the pool dives into gods and beings with the intersexual Greek goddess of love Atlantiades.
In the latest episode of Hero Project, Marvel campaigns for a transgender girl who convinces his state legislator to teach LGBTQ history in public schools, and ultimately donates ten thousand dollars for an LGBTQ thing. The real impact of these actions is fantastic and necessary. But Marvel has another superpower at a time when its backdrop is being used as the source material for the largest media franchise of the largest media conglomerate in history. And that should not be neglected.
