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Marvel Voices Pride is an anthology comic which collects 11 lgbtq superhero stories. The comic starts with a short history of the big lgbtq moments in the marvel comics, then it continues with Wiccan and Hulkling's vows for their wedding. That's followed by the 11 stories and the comic ends with a few pages from Alpha Flight #106, which is Northstar's coming out issue. I liked the structure of the comic a lot, because it introduces the reader to all the big lgbtq moments in the marvel comics, then it has the stories and it ends with the biggest lgbtq moment in any marvel comics.
Unfortunately, while the comic's structure was good, the main part, which is the stories, wasn't as good. I had three main problems with the stories. First of all, there were too many of them, to the point where almost nothing happens in some of them. The actual first story, "Under the Stars", which is written by a very well regarded writer, Mariko Tamaki, is just meaningless. Nothing happens in it and it just wasted three pages of the comic. It had good artwork, but that same artist could have worked on a longer, better story. If you are trying to fit 11 stories in so few pages, what's bound to happen is that these stories are gonna be insignificant and extremely short, so there's not gonna be any development or character growth, or anything that makes the stories worth telling. The second problem I had with the stories is that almost all of them don't stand alone. They aren't complete stories. They tie in with the current Marvel titles at an extend where it becomes almost impossible for someone like me, who doesn't read the comics Marvel is currently releasing, to enjoy these stories and understand them. I honestly still have no idea who half of the characters are. The third problem of this comic is that it's clearly just trying to sell other comics. Every other story is like "Oh yeah, did you see this nice gay moment? If you want to understand the story around it and see how it'll affect the characters, buy this other comic that's currently coming out". I think it's totally fine for Marvel to want to sell more comics, it'd be weird if they didn't want that, but they could have done that in a much better and more subtle way. If the stories were interesting enough and I got to see the characters' personalities a bit more, then I'd be interested in buying more comics with them, but when everyone is almost completely bland, because there's no room for interesting character writing, then I lose all my interest in reading anything else with them. Other than these three main problems, I also had another problem with some (not all) of the stories. At times they feel way too preachy. The story that comes to mind when I think about that is the one featuring Elektra. In that story, Elektra saves a transgender character and unfortunately, this character is not well written at all. She was very preachy to the point that I got annoyed and if I got annoyed, then the people who actually should get preached got infuriated and that's not at all a way to teach them anything. This character constantly talks about how certain things are offensive and yeah, they are, but that's not the right way of tackling an issue like that.
I started with the negatives of this comic, but truth be told, it also has some positives and some stories are actually nice. I especially liked the one written by Kieron Gillen. The title of this story is "Colossus" and it's about two young mutanst who are dating, talking about how they realized they are bisexual. The way it's described is simply perfect and 100% realistic. I truly enjoyed this story a lot and I was actually surprised by how accurate it was. Also, it had a certain line that I loved "Imagine trying to pay attention when Emma Frost is your teacher". That honestly sounds like a torture. A torture that I'd love to experience.
Something that I found very interesting is the segment from Northstar's coming out issue. It was certainly not a masterpiece of writing and it was very much a product of its time, but I actually liked that, because it's a way of seeing how people saw things like AIDS and homosexuality back in the day. I'm glad that since then we have evolved as a society and we are more accepting, understanding and open-minded.
Overall, this was a fine comic. I didn't love it and most of the stories were completely forgettable, but I had a nice time reading it and most of the artwork was pretty nice.
7/10
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