Baylen Bielitz: The kid version of the gay superhero Wiccan visits Oz and The Secret Garden, buddies with Jett Kyte, crushes on Spider-Man.

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I've been researching the actors who played Billy and Tommy, sons of the Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff in Marvel comics and tv shows.   They grow up to be superheroes Wiccan (gay) and Speed (bi), so did the casting agents make sure that the actors playing them were gay/bi, too?  

Teenagers: Joe Locke and Ruaridh Mollica (below).  Both gay.

Tweens: Julian Hillard and Jett Kyte (left). Both probably gay.

Kids: Baylen Bielitz (right) and Gavin Borders. 

(Ruaridh in action on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

I doubt that the casting agents were specifically looking for gay actors to play the preteen Billy and Tommy. They might not even be aware that LGBT kids exist.  But they if they were looking for resemblance to the older actors, they might ping on a gay vibe, or ask if Mom and Dad would object to their kid playing gay.  We'll start with Baylen Bielitz, five-year old Billy (the future Wiccan) on Wandavision.

Baylen was born in Southington, about 20 miles from Hartford, Connecticut, in May 2014.  He expressed an interest in acting and dancing when he was five years old, so his parents entered him into a local acting competition.  He won and got an agent, who started sending out video audition tapes (this was during the pandemic).  

 On his sixth birthday in May 2020, Baylen posts "It's my b-day, dance with me," noting that he always was inspired by Derek Hough.

Actor/dancer/choreographer Derek Hough, is straight, but he has played gay characters and fought for LGBT representation on Dancing with the Stars. He performed in the first male-male duo on the show, in December 2024.

A few days later, Bay got word that he had been cast as  Billy Maximoff.  Directly from kindergarten to the Marvel Cinematic Universe!  In the summer of 2020, he and his mom drove to Atlanta to film his scenes. 

I doubt that he knew the entire biography of Wiccan when he auditioned, but he does now.

Other on-screen roles came quickly.

2021:

He appears in The Gilmore Girls on stage and in several tv commercials.

Plus he gets to pose (or photoshop-pose) with Tom Holland's Spider-Man (n*de photo of Tom Holland on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

 2022:

He plays Younger Boy to Lucas Luchsinger's Older Boy in A Better Half (2022), a short about a man confronting his demons. 

Left: Lucas is now in college.  Most recently he starred in Antigone.

In an episode of Evil, about a team of Catholic exorcists, Bay and Robbie Crandall play brothers who are being bedeviled by a demon.  Or is it their mom, trying to push up the subscribers to her social media channel?  

The Noel Diary stars Justin Hartley as Jake Turner, a driven big city corporate type who returns to his small home town for Christmas and...well, it's the plot of every Christmas romcom ever.  Bay plays his younger brother in a flashback sequence.

More after the break. .

Jett Klyne: The future bisexual superhero spends his teen years bodybuilding and dating guys. With two twink d*cks and an Ecuadorian dude

  

Link to the n*de photos

In Wandavision (2021), the Scarlet Witch, memory-wiped and trapped in a sitcom world, has two sons, Billy and Tommy (Justin Hilliard, Jeff Klyne).  In Agatha All Along (2024), after being adopted by a Jewish family and losing and regaining his memory, Billy Maximoff becomes the gay Jewish superhero Wiccan.  So of course I had to do a profile of Justin.

But what about Tommy Maximoff (Jett Klyne)?  He grows up to become the superhero Speed, who is bisexual in the comics: he dated Kate Bishop in Young Avengers: The Children's Crusade (2010-12), and the male superhero Prodigy in Emperor Hulkling (2020).  He explains "I crushed on who I crushed on."   

Maybe I'd better do a profile of Jett, too.

Jett arguably has a more gay/femme affect.

And he has spent his teen years working out.  

I'll answer the standard two questions: has Jett appeared in any movies or tv shows of gay interest?; and is he gay in real life?

Gay-Themed Movies/TV Shows:

 In 2014, when Jett was seven years old, he was in Writing Kim: Aspiring writer Annie (Jett's Mom) heads off on a road trip seeking inspiration, and meets Kim, who has a husband and son (Jett) but also likes ladies. Kim inspires her to embrace her sexual fluidity (you mean she's bi?)  In 2020, it was selected for qFlix, the Philadelphia LGBTQ film festival.  

According to his IMDB biography, Jett's break-out role was in Z (2019).  So a one-word title was too long?  Joshua (Jett) has an "imaginary" friend, Z, who gets more and more disruptive, sabotaging his relationship with his real life friend Daniel and trying to hurt his father.  Finally we learn that Z is using Joshua to get to his mother. 

I haven't seen it, but the gay subtexts sort of jump out at you, don't they?

Left: Since Jett is 16 as of this writing, I won't be looking for n*de photos, so I put a random twink on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

He has a lot of pre-Wandavision guest appearances, mostly in movies that I never heard of: Devil in the Dark, Manny Dearest, The Humanity Bureau, Skyscraper.  Plus three significant post-Wanda movies:

The Boy in the Woods (2023). During World War II, as the Jewish population of Buczarc is being rounded up for the concentration camps, Max (Jett) is sent to live with Janko (Richard Armitage), a synpathetic non-Jewish farmer.  But Janko fears for his family's safety, so he kicks the boy out.  While hiding in the woods, Max forms a buddy-bond with the sensitive, artistic, gay-coded Yanek (David Kohlsmith, right); they discuss their future living together as artists in Paris, and try to adopt the baby of a dying woman. 

Yanek dies, but the baby grows up, and Max re-unites with her in old age, so symbolically the two had a family.  A definite gay subtext or text.

More after the break

Julian Hilliard: A gay superhero and two gay-subtext boyfriends, but is he gay in real life or just teasing? With some co-star d*cks

  

Link to the n*de photos

I decided to research Julian Hilliard based on this photo on the teen idol site.   He asks "Who is Craig?" and answers: "really goofy, friendly, funny." Obviously his boyfriend.

As of this writing, Julian is only 14.  Few guys have figured out that they're gay by that age, and even fewer have the guts to post about it openly in their social media.  

But maybe his coming out process was facilitated by playing a gay character: Billy Maximoff.

In the Marvel comics tv series Wandavision (2021), Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, is memory-erased and trapped in a series of sitcoms, along with her husband Vision (Wanda-Vision, get it?) and various residents of Westview, New Jersey.   Vision is dead in the real world, and their two sons, Billy (Julian, the one being licked) and Tommy (Jett Klyne), were created to maintain the illusion, so when Wanda learns the truth and releases the town from its curse, her husband and sons cease to exist.

Or do they?

In Agatha All Along (2024), the witch Agatha Harkness takes on a sort of apprentice, whom everyone  calls Teen because he  can't reveal his real name due to a sigil.  In a big reveal, we learn that he is Billy Maximoff, memory-wiped and moved into the body of Billy Kaplan, who died in an auto accident just as Wanda was releasing Westview from its curse. 

Teen (Joe Locke) is gay, with a boyfriend who appears in two episodes.

In the comics, Billy came out in 2013, and  joined the Young Avengers as the superhero Wiccan, Marvel's first gay Jewish superhero.  He dated and eventually married Hulking (no relation to the Incredible Hulk).

Did the producers know that Julian was gay when they cast him as Billy in 2021?  Was he already out at age ten?  Or did he figure it out during his research into the role?

To determine the answer, I'll check his other acting roles and social media.  Julian was born in Dallas in 2011, into a show biz family: Mom is an actress, Dad a producer/director.  I didn't find anything of immediate gay interest in their works.

His first starring role was in The Haunting of Hill House (2018): A family moves into Hill House in 1992, and is forced to leave due to the haunting.  26 years later, the grown-up children must return. Gulp.  

Julian plays Young Luke.

The adult Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, left) is a struggling drug addict, and the adult Steven (Michael Huisman, d*ck on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) is a writer whose book about the haunting became a best-seller, alienating his family.  Both are hetero, but their sister Theodora is a lesbian.  So some gay representation in Julian's first major acting gig.

More after the break

Nhut Le: Actor, model, potter, superhero. With a Thai guy bonus

   

Link to Thai guy bonus

Ten things you should know about Nhut Le:

1. The Vietnamese-American actor (pronounced "Nuh Lee") studied drama at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and honed his comedic skills in the Groundling.  

2, He has 15 credits on the IMDB, including several gay roles, such as Gay #2 on Los Feliz 90027.   

3. He is gay in real life.

4. He wrote, produced, and starred in Gey Gardens (2018), a gay parody of the tv soap Gray Gardens

5. He played the Judomaster on two seasons of the Superhero comedy Peacemaker.  Judomaster is a mean-tempered, spiteful supervillain who is trounced by John Cena's Peacemaker.  And he's gay!  On a TV series based on DC Comics!

6. Nhut is also a writer, a gamer, and a potter.  

7. The bestsellers on 3CirclePotter, on Etsy, are a sweetheart mug and a ghost face mug.

8. He came to the 2017 San Diego Comics Con as the Marvel Comics superhero Iceman.

9. Nhut is deeply involved in gay and Asian activism. In 2022, he presented on Diversity in Comics, TV, Film, and Games at Wondercon.

10.  He has never been n***de on screen, that I know of.  But there are lots of other n***de Asian guys out there.  And on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

See also:

Zev Andros: Tony's gym boyfriend, Phuket diver, ball player, bodybuilder, grandson of a Hollywood legend.   With some Thai guys

Peacemaker, Episode 3.7: In a fascist parallel Earth, Judomaster comes out, and Vigilante finds his soul mate. With bonus Vietnamese guys

Pretty Dudes: Gay Asian erasure, Spiderman, a car hookup, and hamburger stuff

Wandavision: More Sitcom than Science Fiction

 For months, Netflix has been a wasteland, mostly a lot of  "dead girl in a small town" cop shows and "poor boy and rich girl fall in love" Korean melodramas.  So we have pulled the plug and switched to Disney Plus, which allows us to finally see what all the fuss is about with Wandavision.

The series has been showing up on my Twitter and Facebook feeds a lot: "The staggering surprise of the last episode!": "Wasn't the last episode the best thing you ever saw?"; "Fifteen top theories about the new Disney Plus hit!"  But what was it?  I figured the video blog of Wanda from Corner Gas.

I started watching with only minimal research, enough to determine that Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olson) and Vision (Paul Bettany) are superheroes in the Marvel Universe who are dating or married to each other.  So, if she was dating The Incredible Hulk, would the show be called Wandahulk?

In the first two episodes, they seem to be the stars of an archetypal early 1960s black-and-white sitcom with a "my secret identity" premise: Vision is a robot, and Wanda has magical powers.  Plotlines are about what you'd expect from old sitcoms, although you'll have to grow up with them to get all the references.

Episode #1: The living room is from The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the kitchen from I Love Lucy.  Vision has a job at an amorphous company that doesn't produce or sell anything, like sitcom dads of the era.  There's a wacky next door neighbor.  The plot: Wanda thinks that the "special night" is their anniversary, but it's actually dinner with the boss and his wife.

Episode #2: The living-dining room, front yard, and opening credits are from Bewitched.  The plot: Wanda and Vision are set to perform at a talent show to benefit the local elementary school, but Vision is incapacitated by eating chewing gum (apparently he can't eat, although, as Isaac Asimov pointed out in I, Robot, food is a part of so many social occasions that any robot designed to interact with humans should have the capability).

Of course, Wandavision is not a complete clone of these shows.  The friends and neighbors are racially diverse without comment; for instance, Vision's coworker Norm is played by Asif Ali (below), and future episodes will feature Special Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park, left).  There were no black or Asian characters on early 1960s sitcoms, except for a very few episodes about them.  

There also seem to be more jokes about sex than appeared in the uptight sixties.    

And there  are occasional hints that something is wrong.  

1. Wanda and Vision don't want to say where they came from, how long they've lived in Westview, or how long they've been married.  I wasn't sure if they were trying to avoid being outed as superheroes, or they really didn't know.  Maybe they can't remember anything before the "series" began, like the residents of Storybrook in Once Upon a Time.

2. At dinner, the boss starts choking on a piece of food, and his wife laughs and tells him to "Stop it" over and over.  An inappropriate affect.

3. People keep announcing that the talent show is a benefit "for the children," and everyone repeats "for the children" in a robotic drone.

4. In the second episode, red objects occasionally appear in the black-and-white world, and then suddenly everything switches to color.

5. Wanda asks a new acquaintance her name, and she doesn't know.

I would prefer more hints.  Most of each episode's dialogue, characterization, and plot so closely matches early 1960s sitcoms that I wanted to turn it off and watch a real episode of I Love Lucy or Bewitched.  I want more evidence this is not actually a 1960s sitcom, it's a science fiction series about superheroes trapped in a sitcom world.

Beefcake: No.

Heterosexism: Wanda and Vision are a standard loving heterosexual couple.

Gay Characters: None specified yet, although I understand that the characters are all superheroes, and one of them is gay in other media.

Will I Keep Watching:  Sure.  I want to see their take on The Brady Bunch in the 1970s and the hip sitcoms of the 1980s.

The Top Ten Ways to Dispatch the Young Allies

We fight together through stormy weather.

We're out to lick both crooks and spies!
We won't be stopped and we can't be stopped.
We are the Young Allies!

The Young Allies first appeared as a backup feature in Captain America #8 (1941), and soon spun off into their own 20-issue title (1941-1946).  They were extraordinarily popular during World War II, also appearing in in Complete Comics #2 (1943), Kid Komics #2-#10 (1943-1944), Amazing Comics #1 (1944), and, after the War, in Marvel Mystery Comics #75-83 (1946-47).

The group consisted of Bucky and Toro, the teen sidekicks of Captain America and the Human Torch,  plus four heavily stereotyped non-superheroic teenagers: the working-class stiff Knuckles (Percival Aloysius O'Toole), the swishy rich kid Jeff (Jefferson Worthing Sandervilt), the tubby Tubby (Henry Tinkle), and the minstrel-show reject Whitewash Jones.

Although they were out to "lick both crooks and spies," they mostly fought Nazi and Japanese super-villains.  Almost every cover illustration depicted at least two of the four non-superheros tied up and awaiting a horrifying doom, while Bucky or Toro or both rushed in to save the day.

In their regular titles, Bucky and Toro were constantly being rescued by their adult chums, so I guess they wanted to be the heroes for a change.

Of course, any male-male rescue in a world of men rescuing women is going to have a gay subtext.

Here are the ten most creative ways that super-villains conjured up to dispatch the Young Allies:

1, A tank of carbon monoxide. Wouldn't strangling them work just as well?  Notice that Knuckles is helping, so there will be three heroes, and they can pair off nicely at the end of the story.

2. All four face a stabbing machine.  Notice Adolph Hitler behind the Red Skull.  The covers have no connection to the stories inside, so I have no idea why the four are drawn as middle-aged rather than young teens. Maybe some sort of aging gas?

3. Just Jeff and Tubby this time, getting racked on a "Stretcher" machine run by skeletons in green pants.

4. Here Knuckles is helping Toro and Bucky rescue the other three from guillotines, but it actually looks like the evil Nazi cultists are planning to stab them.  Notice that Knuckles barely misses hitting Bucky in the butt.

5. Tubby and Jeff are facing death by giant octopus.

More after the break.

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD: Lots of Beefcake, One Fleeting Gay Character

Agents of SHIELD (2013) is a tv adaption of the Marvel comics series, produced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Joss Whedon.

SHIELD stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division -- rather a clumsy way of saying Homeland Security.  Except instead of ISIS, they're fighting "inhumans" (people with paranormal powers that emerge suddenly, for various reasons).

The Big Bad is Hydra, a secret society run by reptile beings, which has attempted to intervene into world history many times, from ancient Egypt through Nazi Germany (Hitler was a Hydra stooge).  Its current secret weapon is the Hive, some alien parasites merged into a single sinister being.

There's also an evil government agency that wants to kill all inhumans, regardless of whether they're on our side or not.

There are 11 agents of SHIELD, each with their own alliances, hidden agendas, and angst-ridden back stories.

1. Grand Ward (Brett Dalton, top photo), an undercover Hydra agent who is possessed by the Hive.

2. Leader Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who died at the end of The Avengers,  but who said that all of the movies, tv shows, and comics in the Marvel Universe have to have continuity?

3. Pilot Melinda May (Wing-na Wen), who has a horribly tragic backstory.

4. Lincoln Campbell (Luke Mitchell, left), an inhuman who can manipulate electricity.  He dies.

5. Skye Johnson (Chloe Bennett), an inhuman computer hacker who joined the good guys.

6. Leo Fitz (Iain de Caestecker, left), a weapons expert who suffers from brain damage and lacks emotion.

7. Jenna Simmons (Elizabeth Hemstring), a biochemist who was trapped on the planet Malveth for six months, and emerged psychologically damaged.

8. Lance Hunter (Nick Blood, left).  Does anybody else like the actors' names more than the characters'?  Blood, Hemstring, De Caestecker vs. Hunter, Simmons, Fitz?  Anyway, he's a gruff mercenary who was married to Bobbi.

9. Bobbi Morse (Adrienne Palicki), who works undercover at Hydra.

10. Mack McKenzie (Henry Simmons, left), an evangelical Christian mechanic who dislikes people with superpowers.

11. Holden Radcliffe (John Hannah), a transhuman (don't ask).

Plus a huge supporting cast of government officials, Hydra agents, college professors, college professors who are really Hydra agents, Hydra agents who are really government officials, civilian ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriends, monsters, kids, lions, tigers, and bears.

David Conrad as Ian Quinn, a billionaire industrialist who tries to sell Deathlok soldiers to the U.S. military and has gravitonium (whatever that is).

Gabriel Luna as Robbie Reyes, the vigilante superhero Ghost Rider.

Matthew Willig as Lash, a forensic scientist who helps the SHIELD agents track newly-emerged inhumans.


















Leave it to wishy-washy Joss Whedon to wait until the series has been established to gingerly introduce a gay character.  During Season Three, Joey Guttierez (Juan Pablo Raba) was introduced, an inhuman who can melt metal (and hearts).  He was adopted (and outed) by the SHIELD agents.

He even managed to go out on a date -- well, the beginning of a date, before he was called away on SHIELD business.  Then, his story arc ended, his character was dropped.

I guess we'll have to be content with straight guys taking their shirts off.

Ahhhh! The Horrible, Heteronormative, Offensive, Disgusting, No-Good End of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a huge series of movies starring Marvel superheroes, who all know each other, interact with each other, and refer to events and situations from previous movies, so you have to watch all of them in order to understand what the heck is going on.  Every origin-story movie involves a superhero meeting, losing, and winning his True Love.

1. Iron-Man, aka Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), head of the giant corporation that provides technological stuff, falls in love with his former assistant Pepper.  They retire, move to a farm, and have a kid.

2. Captain America, aka Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, top photo), a World War II soldier turned into an Axis-fighting machine, falls in love with Peggy, one of the scientists working on him.  He's trapped in an iceberg for 70 years, leaving Peggy to grow old. But when he emerges, he still hangs out with her.  

3. Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) falls in love with Hope, daughter of the scientist who invented his shrinking suit. He has a daughter from another relationship, I think.

4. Hawkeye, aka Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner, left), retired from the superhero business to move to a farm, get married, and have some kids.

5. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt, below), leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy crime-fighting team, falls in love with his coworker Zamora.  

6. The Hulk, aka Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), had a True Love in one move, another in a second, and then fell in love with fellow superhero The Black Widow.

7. Superhero Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda Maximoff, fell in love with  the android Vision (Paul Bettany), but he was killed.

There are lots more, but I'm getting tired. 

After the origin story, the True Loves are barely mentioned, especially in the ensemble movies titled the Avengers.  But apparently they were always there, forming the basic motive for each superhero's life and work, and at the end of the movie series they come roaring back like the Second Coming of Christ.

An ongoing plot arc is an attempt to track down all of the Infinity Stones, like Tolkien's Rings of Power but much more powerful, because an evil demagogue named Thanos wants to use them to wipe out 50% of all sentient life in the universe (that's right, I said the universe).  The team tries to keep him from getting the stones, then tries to stop him, but in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), he succeeds.  Snap!  Half of the sentients in the universe crumble into dust, including a lot of superheroes and their True Loves, but never both.

Imagine the chaos!  We're so interconnected that civilization would definitely collapse.  But here the economies and governments of the world seem fine; survivors are traumatized, but they manage to put up memorials to their lost True Loves and go back to high school classes, museums, pop music, and restaurants. There's actually a scene in a group therapy session, where a guy talks about his first date since the Snap -- with another guy, making him the first and only identifiable gay person in any Marvel Universe movie.

In Avengers: End Game (2020), the surviving superheroes figure out how to go back in time and prevent Thanos from getting the Infinity Stones, thus bringing everyone back.  There are lots of tracking each other down and "we need to work together" scenes, and a long, long, loooo-ng battle.  The Snap is reversed, everyone returns, and the long, long, looo-ng batle continues, involving everyone who has ever appeared in any movie fighting with swords, monsters, and energy blasts. 

I fell asleep.  When I awoke, the battle was over, Thanos was dead, and about 20  superheroes are sitting by a lake, saying "I miss her" about True Loves who died before the Snap or during the battle (a slight exaggeration, but I did count five "I miss her" statements). 

But the movie isn't over: we have another 45 minutes depicting 2,000 other superheroes reuniting with their True Loves and setting up heterosexual nuclear families. Again and again and again!

Just when you think everyone is paired off or missing "her," Captain America has to go back in time to return the Infinity Stones to their proper place, so the whole thing doesn't happen again.  Except he comes back as an old man.  He explains that he decided to stay in 1947, reunite with his True Love, and live the next 80 years with her.  We close to the two in their 1940s Levittown tract house, dancing and gazing into each other's eyes.  

I get it; the sole purpose of being a superhero is to provide men and women with an opportunity to gaze into other's eyes forever.  This is the meaning of life, our sole reason for existing.  Gay people absolutely do not exist. Do you have to rub it in, over and over and over and over and over?

To be fair, Thor doesn't settle down on a farm with his True Love or miss Her.  He joins the Guardians of the Galaxy, fighting intergalactic crime with Peter Quill and Drax the Destroyer (both of whom miss Her).  

"Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings": Martial Arts Hero with Heterosexual Subtext

 

I've been avoiding Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, on Disney Plus, because I heard that it had that old, tired, uber-heterosexist cliche of a dead wife.  And it does; but worshipping the dead wife turns out to be misguided and evil, not praiseworthy.  

There are enough plotlines crammed in to the 2 1/2 hour running time to fill several movies.

1.  A thousand year old crime boss named Xu Wenwu (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, who stared in one of the first LGBT movies to come out of Hong Kong, Happy Together ) has Ten Rings (worn on his arms) that give him infinite power.  But he wants even more infinite power, so he sets out to find the fabled village of Ta Lo, hidden behind a living forest and scary waterfall, where everyone practices a "martial arts sent by the gods."

2. He can't get into the village, but he does convince the guardian, Ying Li, to marry him.  They return to the crime compound and have two kids.  Then she dies.

3. Neither kid likes their crime lord father: his lack of affection, his "I'm going to train you to be an assassin" parenting style.  Shang-Chi (Simu Liu, top photo, the hunk from Kim's Convenience), runs away to America at age 14.  He takes the name Shaun, and becomes one of those effervescent scalawags who populate Disney movies (although it's not quite so charming when you're pushing 30).  His best friend and wisecracking partner-in-30-year old juvenile delinquency is bff Katy (Aquafina), whose main defense is to sing "Hotel California" and confuse her assailant.   At this point I'm thinking,  "Of course they're just friends now, but they'll fall in love during the movie.  Probably in a Betty-and-Veronica 'girl next door' vs. svelte sophisticate triangle."

4. Shang-Chi's sister, Xialing, runs away to Macao, where she runs an illegal fighting club on the umpteenth floor of a half-constructed building.  She's also the chief performer.

5. When Dad sends some of his soldiers to kill Shang-Chi, he easily tromps them.  Then he returns to China to protect his sister, who is no doubt getting the same treament.  He arrives just in time to fight her, then to fight more soldiers on the scaffolding outside the upteenth floor of her club.  Pay attention to the extremely sexy Razor Fist, who is missing a hand, but makes up for it with a magic sword.  His name is Florian Munteanu, and his instagram contains 6,000 pictures of him hugging guys, but no women except his mother.

 Then Dad captures them both. 

6. He explains that he has been receiving messages from his Dead Wife, who is being held captive in the fabled village of Ta Lo. They're all going to break through the living forest and rescue her, and "be a family again."  "But Mom's dead!" "No, she's not."  After they retrieve her, his soldiers will burn down the village and kill everyone, just to be evil.

7. To save the village from decimation, Shang-Chi, Sister, Bff, and a comic relief drunk Shakespearean actor (is there any other kind?) steal a car and rush over themselves.  It's in a pocket universe full of strange entrancing animals, and people who speak perfect English.  They meet their aunt, and train in various martial arts, and Shang-Chi learns that he is the Chosen One (naturally).

Left: Andy Le, another of Dad's soldiers, who wears a Chinese demon mask.  In real life he gives off a gay vibe..

8. Auntie explains that the village, and its resident sleeping dragon, are guardians of the gate to another Dark Universe, where soul-eating Cthulhu monsters have been banished.  If they ever break through the gate, it's curtains for all of us!

9. But Dad thinks that his Dead Wife is being held captive behind the gate!  You can see where this is going. 

Beefcake:  Shang-Chi takes his shirt off a couple of times.  Otherwise the main characters are all elderly or women.

Gay Characters:  Shang-Chi displays no heterosexual interest.  I kept waiting for a fade-out kiss with Katy, but all they do is: she puts her head on his shoulder; they touch hands; they have dinner with a heterosexual couple; they walk into the portal to their next adventure arm-in-arm.  At most they have a heterosexual subtext.

Why didn't they kiss, like the boy-girl team in 13,000 other action adventure movies?  Is the director trying to hint that Shang-Chi, or Katy, or both, are gay?  Then why not come out with it?  Because then the movie would be censored in China?

In an interview, director Destin Danile Cretin explains that a romance "didn't seem right," true to the characters and their personalities.  I agree: after being friends for 15 years, like Will and Grace, falling in love would be like perving on a brother or sister.  But heterosexual viewers are pining for the two to hook up in future installments, while gay viewers are grateful for momentary relief from the "boy meets girl" brainwashing.

Homophobia:  The internet has been buzzing with a 2015 comment from Simu Liu that he recently played a pedophile, and it changed his opinion:  "pedophilia is no different from being gay." Both are "disorders" based on genetic mutations. He responded to the accusations of homophobia by saying that he has "evolved" during the last seven years.  But there were gay characters in only one episode of Kim's Convenience.  

Sub-Mariner: Marvel Beefcake Comic

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I liked Harvey, Disney, and sometimes Archie comics, but I usually skipped Marvel.  Who had the time or money to keep track of story lines that extended over a hundred issues and crossed over into a dozen titles?

But I made an exception for Sub-Mariner.  Who could pass up a physique like this?

Namor the Sub-Mariner actually premiered in 1939 in Timely Comics, the predecessor of Marvel, as a villain, a prince of Atlantis seeking revenge on the upper world by trying to sink th island of Manhattan.

Soon he was rehabilitated, and teamed up with another villain turned hero, the Human Torch, to fight in World War II.  They often rescued each other, or flew to the rescue of Torch's teen sidekick Toro.

For some reason, Namor never got a teen sidekick.  Instead, he gets a girlfriend, intrepid police officer Betty Dean.  But his interactions with the Torch provided enough gay subtexts.

After the War, he disappeared.  He returned in Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962), when the new Human Torch finds him living in the Bowery, a homeless derelict.

Namor discovers that his homeland of Atlantis has been destroyed, and returns to being a villain for a few guest spots.  When he got his own title, from 1968 to 1973, he was back to being a hero again.

The 1960s-1970s Namor was not a popular character -- he was cold, even cruel, so he didn't team up well with other superheroes.  Besides, he kept falling in love with women.  What boy wanted to read about hetero-romance?

But I never really paid much attention to the stories-- they were incomprehensible anyway, full of references to plotlines and characters from a dozen years ago and other titles.  You needed a chart to keep track of it all.  I was mostly in it for the beefcake.















And there was a lot of it.