Aside from “Who would win in a fight?”, no one’s debate gets comic fans more heated than the question of whether or not superheroes should marry. In this revival of their column, Rebecca Henely-Weiss and Kayleigh Hearn take a trip to today’s spinner racks and look at the most recent times comic companies took the plunge and got their characters hitched! Did we like the couple? Did we like dresses and tailored women’s suits? And more importantly … will the marriage last? Today we look at the wedding of Mystique and Destiny.
The Couple: Irene Adler and Raven Darkholme
The Issue: X-Men: The Wedding Special (2024) #1
Published: May 29, 2024
Today: Read on to find out …
Rebecca: When Kayleigh and I were writing this column back in 2016-2019, we often lamented how we didn’t have many options for covering weddings with two brides. While we did take a look at the wedding of Batgirl side character Alysia Yeoh to her wife Jo, it’s still really awesome to be covering the wedding of Destiny and Mystique. These characters are classic lesbian comics representation, and it’s nice to see them celebrated as such.
Kayleigh: This is a big Wedding Issue first – a true supervillain wedding! (Sorry, Doc Ock, almost tricking Aunt May at the altar doesn’t count.) Thank you, Destiny and Mystique!
Rebecca: When I was first getting into Marvel Comics lore, which involved a lot of reading about various characters via fan-written websites (usually hosted by Geocities), Mystique’s romantic relationship with Irene Adler, a blind precog who went by the moniker “Destiny,” was commonly swapped around as a cool bit of fan knowledge. Destiny had been dead for years at that point, but I remember how neat it was to go back and find comics where she had been around and see how her interactions with Mystique hinted at something deeper between the panels. It was nice to see this extra side of Mystique that was never explored in either the 1990s TV show or the 2000s Fox movies.
Three decades later, Irene Adler has been resurrected through the miracle of Krakoa (albeit not without conflict), and now we get to see this previously only hinted-at couple celebrated in a giant X-Men wedding special. It’s … it’s OK.
Kayleigh: With this book, Mystique and Destiny tied up and pistol-whipped me before they stole ALL MY FEELINGS and then set my house on fire. I’m saying, I loved this comic.
The X-Men have had a deeply-invested queer fanbase for decades, but you and I, Rebecca, are old enough to remember when Northstar was the only officially gay mutant in Marvel Comics. Anything else lurked under the surface and between the panels, even as fans pointed to Karma’s pink buzz cut and Destiny being called esoteric terms of affection like “leman.” Keeping in mind the usual caveats about corporate cape comics, it blows me away that in 2024 I can pick up a comic featuring Rachel Summers and Betsy Braddock in bed together, Wolverine mentoring a bunch of queer kids, Mystique and Destiny getting hitched, and, oh yeah, the entire book is written and drawn by queer creators. But my insane emotional attachment to a bunch of fictional characters aside, my first reaction to the idea of Raven and Irene having a big sparkly wedding at Avengers Mansion was, “What the fuck?” Oh, reader, I needn’t have worried.
Rebecca: As always with the modern issues, we’ll cover the fashion first so those who want to avoid spoilers can bounce. The cover of this issue by Jan Bazaldula is gorgeous, with Mystique wearing a lovely gold and white lace pantsuit with a tiny jewel chain belt with a skull charm. Meanwhile, Destiny wears a white sleeveless dress with a long slit that descends into a blue, feather-like pattern, as well as a sheer blue veil connected at her wrist.
Their wedding attire in the actual comic pages doesn’t match the cover (symptom of there being multiple creative teams on the book, I suppose). Drawn by Rachel Stott, Destiny’s dress has a sleeveless neckline and a much different blue lace veil that she wears as a shawl, but it’s not too different. However, Mystique wears a purple suit for most of it which is actually a little boring. I like the white/off-lavender suit she wears later for … spoiler reasons … with the long slit-up-the-side tail with gold trim. It’s really cool and the white ascot she wears with it makes her look like a debonair wedding pirate.
Kayleigh: Destiny’s gown flowing from conventional bridal white to the more daring blue, feathery pattern visually evokes Mystique’s shapeshifting on film, which is a magnificent touch. Fittingly, we get multiple bridal looks for our mercurial Mystique, including her classic “skull white” look for plot-related reasons, wink wink, and a suit accessorized with a gold skull necklace for the reception they have before the wedding for plot-related reasons, wink wink wink. I love that they decorated Avengers Mansion with eerie gold masks and even more skulls – “We are Immortal” is just Raven and Irene’s way of saying they match each other’s freak.
Rebecca: As for the guests, since we’ve talked a lot about when wedding guests show up in just their superhero outfits vs. actual formal wear, the invitations reading, “Combat dress optional” made me laugh. But actually, the wedding guests do come in formal wear — and we specifically have a #TrendAlert in lots of gorgeous women’s suits. First there’s romantic pair Betsy Braddock and Rachel Summers, who both come in pants with matching blouses — in purple for Betsy to match her hair and black for Rachel (she can make a visible black bra classy). Then there’s daughter-of-the-brides Rogue in a lovely forest green that brings to mind her classic outfit. (Her husband’s pink suit and brown overcoat isn’t too shabby, either.) Usually I’d give the best dressed award to Storm, and I do like her short, tight black dress with gold accents and like her white afro with long strands even more. Still, I think this time I was ultimately … well, dazzled by wedding pianist Alison Blaire’s matador getup. I particularly liked her sparkly pants and the pair of skull hearts on the back of her jacket.
Oh, and hi to Chris Claremont in the wedding crowd, too.
Kayleigh: X-Men: The Wedding Special has some of the most diverse styles we’ve seen in one of these themed issues, so I must tip my fascinator to the artists. Can I just say: pants! Women in pants! I love women in pants at weddings! Phillip Sevy puts a fashionable spin on Betsy’s classic 1980s costume with bare shoulders and purple bell sleeves, and Rachel looks sharp and daring in a black sheer top with red Phoenix collar pins. And I love, love, love (underline that three more times) that Rogue is wearing a fashionable suit and tie (as drawn by Stott and Jenn St. Onge) to her moms’ wedding instead of being vacuum-sealed into a tiny tube dress.
Spoiler Warning!
Rebecca: I really like this comic’s concept for an anthology issue. The wedding ceremony itself is a framing device, beginning with the couple preparing for the wedding. Raven frets over which gun to bring. Son Nightcrawler and daughter Rogue prepare for their roles as priest and attendant, respectively. And the couple gets a mysterious present from Mr. Sinister.
Then we get three different stories in the center. I mostly liked them. Betsy and Rachel preparing for the wedding is a little complicated with its dimension hopping and the villainess working off of a Maleficent-esque, “How could they not invite me to the wedding?” motivation, but it also features a T-Rex Captain Britain so I don’t care that much. I, uh, did not know Betsy and Rachel are an item now and I have no shipper opinion (don’t kill me, Kitty fans!) but the last page really dug up the feelings that come up when you go to a wedding with a partner-but-not-a-spouse so I appreciated that, as well as seeing another f/f couple in this issue.
Kayleigh: “Wedding Gatecrashers” effectively concludes Tini Howard’s tenure writing Betsy Braddock as Captain Britain, so while I’d normally quirk my eyebrow over why Saturnyne wants an invitation to this wedding anyway, it’s a sweet little exclamation point at the end of a run that confirmed (cue the confetti cannon!) Rachel Summers is queer. But then the last page reveals Betsy and Rachel are that one couple that brings their dog to weddings, in which case I take back everything I just said about them. (Just kidding, please put down the psychic knife!)
Rebecca: I have some reservations about the second story. The first is that I almost want to study how Wolverine is used in weddings in a lab at this point because it’s so disparate depending on the writer and franchise. It is weird that in Avengers/general titles he seems to show up as the grumpy guy who’s just here for the booze yet in previous X-Men titles he usually bounces before the ceremony. In this issue, he’s fretting over what to get Mystique for a present.
Still, this is really about Wolverine playing a teacher, so we get some scenes of Pixie, Bling!, Anole and Indra suggesting outlandish gifts that involve highly dangerous settings such as Limbo or The Savage Land … before Wolverine settles on his original thought. It’s at least charming and I do like the note by the creators thanking teachers in real life who nurture queer students.
My other reservation is … well, I’ll talk about it later.
Kayleigh: “Get Mystique…A Gift!” charmed me quite a bit. I’m usually indifferent to the Academy-X mutants, but Tate Bromball gives each kid a distinct attitude and voice: Bling! thinks Mystique is a badass, Pixie loves the twisted melodrama of Wolverine getting his ex-lover/enemy a wedding present, and Anole is very concerned about whether Destiny and Mystique count as hashtag good queer rep. The banter is great (“Yo, has he met Northstar? Bro sucks”), Emilio Pilliu’s art is cute and vibrant, and the deadliest man in the Marvel Universe taking queer kids under his wing to show them that they have a future is very sweet stuff.
Rebecca: In the next story, Mystique and Destiny go to couples therapy with Emma Frost, who ends up instead making them do some psychic fencing and lets Mystique get out her feelings from when Irene was dead. After the talk, there’s a twist revealed in that Emma was actually Loki the whole time, who gets an earful from the real Emma. I think the story goes too fast for the emotions to really hit hard and spends too much time on the twist but … ehh, I didn’t hate it. It’s cool that the couple get a moment to themselves.
Kayleigh: The Revolutionary Girl Utena fan in me will always be seated for Sapphic fencing matches, though I don’t have much to say about Yoon Ha Lee and Stephen Byrne’s “Epee is Truth.” Since X-Men: The Wedding Special is Marvel’s Voices Pride comic of the year, Loki’s cameo is a welcome acknowledgment of the LGBTQ characters outside the X-Books. (Loki confronting Emma with the image of Dark Phoenix while talking about love, however? All the eye emojis, ever.)
Rebecca: The last story-within-a-story involves Rogue having a heart-to-heart with Destiny while Gambit gets on the subway to go to the wedding without his cards and has to fight off The Thieves Guild with the petals on his boutonniere. This was my favorite, not only because Gambit doing that is funny, but as the daughter of a gay man this hit me right in the heart. Also, it’s a nice callback to previous wedding issues, not only Rogue’s wedding to Gambit, but also Rogue wistfully wishing that Mystique and Destiny could marry back when Northstar and Kyle Jinadu tied the knot.
Kayleigh: I love the invisible string connecting these three very different wedding issues spanning over a decade. (And all three couples are still together as of this writing, impressively enough.) “The Thief’s Surprise” by Wyatt Kennedy and Jenn St-Onge nails everything fun and flirty about Gambit and Rogue. They’re a couple that knows each other inside and out (literally, thanks to Rogue’s powers), but they can still surprise each other – a fact Rogue explains to her precog mother. A solid gold story.
Rebecca: And now we come to the end. The last guests arrive and we pay particular attention to Scarlet Witch’s entrance. Destiny walks down the aisle, Rogue and Storm holding her long train. Nightcrawler conducts the ceremony, during which Destiny and Mystique have a beautiful speech about how their love has literally transcended death. (“We died and we did not part. We part and we do not part. We are a circle, like these rings.”) Yet when Destiny is asked if she accepts Mystique as her lawfully wedded wife, she refuses and says this isn’t the woman she loves. The real Mystique was off burglarizing Scarlet Witch’s Emporium, and she returns via crashing through the window. The couple refuses to be lawfully wedded because “[They] spit on the law!” but they nevertheless run off into a crime-filled honeymoon together.
And … I’m sorry. I fully appreciate any mutant character making The Scarlet Witch eat shit, but this ending just hit as way too corny for me. I already didn’t really like how the Wolverine storyline had a thread where Anole argues that Mystique shouldn’t get a gift because she’s a terrorist. (In the end he decides to hand out shirts at the dinner before the ceremony with a picture of her face reading “Bisexual Menace.” To be fair, Raven would probably find that funny.) But Rogue chuckling over this and saying her moms live the “Be Gay Do Crimes” life was where the issue jumped the shark for me. It’s just so twee and doesn’t seem to square the creators’ wish to have a fun gay wedding with the darker sides of these characters at all.
Kayleigh: Unlike Mystique and Destiny, here is where we part, dear friend, because this twist made the issue for me. As I alluded to earlier, I was suspicious before I read the issue – not of Raven and Irene committing themselves to each other again, but these once and future outlaws having a conventional ceremony surrounded by the approving eyes of the Avengers seemed mind-boggling to me. (At least Wanda admits she’s only there to support Kurt.) But, no, of course they wouldn’t – it’s all a big con, and once the smoke clears, they renew their vows solely in the presence of Kurt and Rogue, the only other two people who matter to them. That’s so Raven! (And Irene.)
Rebecca: Before I sign off, I do want to say I consider this issue and how it celebrated this decades-old, once-hidden relationship a triumph. After the story there’s a two-page write-up of the history of this couple’s relationship and then an interview with Chris Claremont about his creation of the characters. Both really illustrate the importance of stories like these at a time where this level of queer representation wasn’t so visible. Still, I haven’t been able to read a lot of comics these days — having kids basically coincided with the Krakoa era for me — but one of my favorite parts of the original House of X storyline was the new origin of Moira MacTaggart, in particular the scene where Destiny swears to end Moira’s life in every reincarnation if she ever tries to destroy all mutants again. I wish a comic that had celebrated these characters had a bit more of that edge. I love pretty dresses and heartfelt family moments and chibi renditions of characters… but I like the danger, too.
Kayleigh: Mystique and Destiny occupy a complicated space in Marvel history. They were two women who loved each other and raised a daughter together at a time when censorship prevented their author from stating it directly, but then there’s that whole “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” thing. It’s a love story with a body count. Mystique may be a “bisexual menace” to Anole, but as Rogue points out, she and Destiny don’t need to be role models. Kieron Gillen writes the framing story, which is effectively an epilogue to the romance he wrote in Immortal X-Men, and he strikes a good balance in sending off these fan favorite characters on a well-earned honeymoon while acknowledging that appearances are always deceiving with these two – there’s always another scheme, another future. Hopefully, for Mystique and Destiny, it’s a good one. They are immortal, after all.
