A little while ago, I covered the upcoming addition of Bunker to the Teen Titans team in this column. Now, as part of that, I mentioned how I thought it was a shame that they wouldn’t be focusing on people having negative reactions to him and his sexuality in the book, especially not from his fellow team mates.

Now, it has been asked of me why I think that’s a shame, and isn’t it better that a state of total acceptance is shown. And yes, that would be lovely in the real world, certainly. And when we get to that stage when it is the norm, then yes, we should definitely only have sexuality in comics handled as such. But sadly, that isn’t how it is in the real world. This is fiction we are talking about too, but sometimes fiction bears some powerful responsibilities in the context of the real world it’s released into.

My thoughts on this are maybe a little complicated, and I myself have been struggling to clarify it, so bear with me.

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From issue #13, Generation Hope will no longer be written by Kieron Gillen and Sebastian Shaw will be heading up the team. No I haven't lost my mind, it's all part of the X-Men Regenesis that's coming off the back of Schism. The new writer will be James Asmus who's definitely got some X-Men form having written some Dark X-Men: The Beginning, specifically the Mimic story and some of the Manifest Destiny stories, clearly they've been gearing him up to take over an X-book for quite some time now. He'll be joined by artist Ibraim Roberson who also worked on Dark X-Men, The Zombie Survival Guide and then some the Second Coming stories, I'm a big fan of his classical pencils and especially the way he renders Hope:

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Whilst SDCC '11 was going on I was trying to stay out of it, I wasn't there, we had no Sidekicks there so I decided not to report much news from the show. If I'm being honest I was having a bit of a sulk, plus SDCC news always makes good content for Secrets and Lies on The Sidekickcast. There was one bit of news that passed me by that I should've reported on, as I promised I would here, Cable was not on the list, so that's an epic fail by me.

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I had wanted to start this column with an entirely different kind of piece; something lighter in tone, maybe, and with the edge of self-deprecating fun. Then I picked up a copy of Generation Hope #9, from Marvel, by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie.

Frankly, I was blown away. Immediately after reading the comic, I had to go on twitter and thank Kieron for putting that story out there. This ultimately led to some discussion on the issue, and I let him know that I would have to write this column about it too.
So what is the topic of this issue that is both so sensitive and so vitally important that it needed to be addressed? For those of you have not picked up or read a copy of this issue, and I sincerely insist that you should, here be spoilers. So go away, get a copy, read it, digest it, and come back.

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