New ‘Mary Jane & Black Cat: Beyond’ Series Fuels Speculation As To Whether MJ And Felicia Hardy Are Now Members Of The LGBTQ+ Community

Jon Del Arroz |

Aug 11, 2022

Source: Mary Jane & Black Cat Beyond Vol. 1 (2002), Marvel Comics. Words by Jed MacKay. Art by Carlos Villa

Over the past several years, Marvel and DC Comics seem to have developed an obsession with making their B and C-Tier characters members of the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, Bleeding Cool broke the story that Felicia Hardy, Black Cat from the Marvel Universe, had been rewritten as one of the aforementioned characters.

The revelation in Black Cat #7 made no sense, as Felicia Hardy has always been portrayed as in love with Spider-Man, making this rewriting of the character look more like a virtue signalling for Pride Month, which was occurring at the time this particular issue was released.

Now, Marvel has announced a new Mary Jane and Black Cat ongoing series by the writer who penned the issue where Black Cat is seen kissing another woman, Jed MacKay. This announcement has fueled speculation about Mary Jane and Felicia being in a lesbian relationship.

Marvel’s made its position on Peter and Mary Jane’s relationship known ever since the One More Day storyline, where Peter Parker made a deal with Marvel’s literal devil character, Mephisto, to erase his marriage and relationship with MJ in exchange for keeping his elderly aunt alive for a brief period.

The story made little sense, with Mephisto manifesting reality-rewriting powers he’s never shown before. It was so absurd that writer J. Michael Straczynski even threatened to take his name off of the editorially-mandated story.

With Marvel’s disdain for allowing Peter to have a healthy, stable, and heterosexual relationship, they’ve pushed the character of Mary Jane away from her flighty actress roots into a completely unrecognizable character who, in recent years, is now as much an action star as Spider-Man.

As established in 2019’s Amazing Mary Jane, MJ has moved on from her soap opera actress roots to playing a female lead in a Spider-Man film. She’s also been galivanting with Black Cat in her own Black Cat costume in Mary Jane & Black Cat: Beyond, a one-shot from Marvel last year.

Fans of Marvel and DC superheroes brace themselves for any characters being named LGBTQ+ at this point, with Superman (Jon Kent) coming out as bisexual in Tom Taylor’s recent run, along with Robin being revealed as the same in the Batman line, despite always having a stable love interest in Stephanie Brown and other female DC characters.

Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, has also been revealed as “queer”, to which Green Lantern’s iconic artist, Ethan Van Sciver, declared nonsense. He stated on a YouTube live stream, “Hal Jordan has always been heterosexual, a ladies man. And he’s an alpha male test pilot.”

Upon the announcement of the Mary Jane & Black Cat series, Shotgun Samurai creator, Dachul Okamoto, made a bold prediction, tweeting, “Calling it: Mary Jane and Black Cat are gonna be gay for each other.”

With Marvel’s recent treatment of Black Cat being bisexual, it isn’t much of a stretch to see how a comic where Spider-Man’s love interests have been turned into starring heroines could be portrayed as LGBTQ+ to pander to the woke demographic.

It seems there’s no end to Marvel and DC turning their characters gay to get attention for their books, but readers are increasingly growing tired of both companies’ gimmicks.