Your very last paragraph made complete sense to me, Del (not that I didn't agree totally with the rest of it, lol). Just speaking as a gay man who at one time didn't particularly care for comics, and for my best friend, who JUST got into reading comics because of Northstar and the ANADAF, it's nifty IN SOME WAYS that gay characters have become included into comics, because we can relate to certain aspects of the characters. I didn't like Chuck Austen's reasons for bringing Northstar into the X-Men, nor did I care for how he chose to use him once there, but I did like his attitude. It was realistic to me because I know men like that. He made me laugh, and I found myself rooting for him. I'd always liked him in Alpha Flight, but Austen gave him an even finer edge of sardonic, occasionally vitriolic wit, and I liked that. But I like to see characters that I can relate to, at least on some level, and I see a little bit of that in almost every character that I favor.