Marvel and DC have been butting heads ever since both of the comic book publishing companies first came into existence. Last year DC trumped Marvel sales for a temporary amount of time with 'The New 52,' and Marvel hopes to do them one better not just with their summer event story arc 'Avengers vs. X-Men' which is making headlines not for its pairing of the two classic superhero teams but for the first gay wedding in a superhero comic book.

It's been known for awhile now that Northstar (Jean-Paul Beaubier), former member of Alpha Flight who's now a part of the X-Men, is a homosexual. His superpowers basically are the equivalent of Captain America, having super human strength along with the ability of flight and super speed to the point of where he can even run across water.

But nobody really cares about his powers right now, they're more interested in his upcoming wedding to his sweet male partner Kyle in 'Astonishing X-Men #51.' It's caused so much of a stir that everybody's gossiping about it. Naturally DC Comics doesn't like it when Marvel hogs the spotlight, so what do they do? EW reports that they also declare that one of their characters is secretly gay and will be coming out of the closet fairly soon.

Plenty of people can make the argument that Marvel and DC are doing this hot off the heels of Obama's support for gay marriage, but we have to disagree. Northstar has been an openly gay character for years, and the fact that he's finally getting married doesn't necessarily mean it was influenced by Obama's statement. Same goes for DC Comics. They've always been in hot competition against Marvel and their actions just prove that they don't want to be 2nd to a company that's not only trying to step over them in comic sales but with their own movies.

And let us not forget that Marvel isn't the first comic that went and had two of it's gay characters get married. 'Life with Archie,' basically the Archie comics, managed to pull this off despite protests earlier this year. So, if you think about it, Marvel and DC are trying to catch up with Archie Comics out of all properties.

Will you be picking up Astonishing X-Men #51 and checking out Northstar's wedding? Why or why not?

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