Today, we look at how Moon Knight's first solo comic book adventure featured one of Marvel's earliest LGBTQ characters and it was...not good.
In "Things That Turned Out Bad," I will spotlight plotlines by writers that probably weren't a good idea at the time and have only become more problematic in retrospect. I'll try to stick with stuff that's more on the ill-conceived side of things than flat-out offensive (like generic racist stereotypes of characters during the 1940s), but some of these definitely edge into just flat-out offensive territory.
A number of readers have written to me about this one over the years, and I figured with the Moon Knight TV series over, now is as good of a time as any to explore this ill-advised introduction of an LGBTQ character in Moon Knight's first solo comic book story.
WHO IS MERKINS AND WHAT IS HIS CONNECTION TO MOON KNIGHT?
After his initial introduction as Marc Spector, a mercenary who was hired to become Moon Knight and capture Jack Russell, the werewolf star of Werewolf By Night, Marvel's Editors-in-Chief Len Wein and Marv Wolfman suggested to Doug Moench and Don Perlin that they do a Marvel Spotlight story starring Moon Knight to see if the character could make a go of it as a solo superhero after being more of an antagonist in his first appearance (but antagonist to a werewolf is not really a bad guy, ya know? Especially since he ended up saving Jack Russell at the end of the story from the guys who hired him, who he realized were villains). Moench came up with what turned out to be a very important hook for the character, that Moon Knight employs multiple identities - the wealthy playboy, Steven Grant, and the salt of the Earth taxi driver, Jake Lockley. As Steven Grant, Moon Knight also had a "Gal Friday," Marlene, while Jake had his own supporting cast, as well, of a woman who worked at a diner and a homeless man who feeds him information.
Grant also had a butler and at the start of Marvel Spotlight #28 (by Moench and Perlin), we see that the butler, Samuels, has hired a new valet for Grant named Merkins...
THE DISTURBING WAY THAT MERKINS' SEXUALITY IS HANDLED
Merkins, of course, is a plant by the villain of the story, the Conquer-Lord. Merkins is meant to spy on Grant, who Conquer-Lord knows is actually an alias for Moon Knight (I never quite got why it was so obvious to the Conquer-Lord what Moon Knight's aliases were. It seemed like a bit of a leap, plot-wise, just for the sake of some exposition describing Moench's new setup for Moon Knight). Well, after Marlene is captured by the Conquer-Lord (Moon Knight thwarted Conquer-Lord's attempt to murder the mayor and so the villain took Marlene hostage to assure his safe escape), Moon Knight returns home to his Grant identity in Marvel Spotlight #29 and discovers Merkins spying on him...
Right off the bat, Grant refers to him as "Tinkerbell," which is a clear sign that the character is meant to be gay.
But wait, it gets worse (much worse).
Merkins hits him, trying to escape, and Grant pretends that he is knocked out so that he can follow Merkins to the Conquer-Lord's hideout (and presumably where Marlene is being held captive)...
Yiiiikes. So Grant calls him a pansy TWICE and then tells Frenchie that they can track him by his perfume. Ooooph.
The plan works, as Grant throws in one last "Twinkletoes"...
Merkins is then killed by Conquer-Lord for allowing Moon Knight to track him to the hideout.
You have to understand that Marvel had VERY, VERY few gay characters by this point in time and Merkins was really arguably Marvel's first clearly gay characters and with that in mind, the story is even worse, considering that THIS was one of their very first gay characters? Of course, there is also the matter of the hero of the comic book treating Merkins like garbage, even calling him a pansy on multiple occasions (along with "tinkerbell" and "twinkletoes"). I don't think that you need me to explain to you why it is problematic for the superhero star of a comic book to be slurring a gay character, right? But when you couple that with it being one of the first (if not THE first obvious) gay characters at the company, it looks even worse.
A lot of it comes down to the same basic complaint that I had about the gay rapists in Jim Shooter's Hulk! magazine story a couple of years later, where Bruce Banner is almost raped in the shower at the YMCA. In both instance, you could, as a writer, argue that you were just trying to write examples of characters that you saw in real life. Shooter specifically noted that the story he told was based on a real life incident. The issue, though, is that if you have a diverse mixture of characters, then sure, fair enough, it isn't as big of a deal to mix in negative depictions of groups of people, but when these are the ONLY depictions of a group of people and the only depictions are negative? That's a problem. All the earliest depictions of gay characters in Marvel comics (including the ones that were less obviously gay than Merkins, that is) were all villains, as well. It's not a good look, at all.
That doesn't even get into how unseemly it is for your HERO to be calling a guy a pansy, of course. It was a big misstep by Moench and Perlin, though thankfully not one that they repeated, as far as I can recall.
That's it for this installment! If you have a suggestion for a future edition of Things That Turned Out bad, drop me a line at [email protected]
