Sexy as X

It's probably a total coincidence that it was being published at the same time I was going through puberty, but the 1980s Australian era of the X-Men really was the sexiest ever.

Claremont's X-Men comics were always horny as hell, especially when the dominatrix vibes and sexy lingerie of the Hellfire Club got involved - but there was something about the eight team members all hanging out in an abandoned town in the outback that made everything so much sexier.

It helped that the eight core team-members at the time had something for everybody- there was a pop star bringing her own bright lights; a southern belle who couldn't be touched; a member of the cold English nobility who could read your darkest thoughts; and a true African goddess. And on the male side, there was the big bloke who's actually a sensitive artist; an impressively restrained energy blaster stuck in the shadow of his big brother; the up-for-anything four-fingered plaything from another dimension, and the rough and tumble of the ultimate Canucklehead. There really was something for everyone.

And looking back at those comics now, it seems blindingly obvious that they are all gay as hell. If mutants are the next evolution, it make sense that they wouldn't be bound by boring old heterosexual norms, (as seen with the current X-books' idea that Scott, Jean and Logan are shacking up as a long-term threesome), and there was definitely a lot of swinging going on down under.

Between the fights against the Reavers and the Brood and institutionalised prejudice, there is no doubt the X-team of the time were filling in their days with the odd orgy, while Longshot and Colossus were spooning in the cold Antipodean nights. Storm was always up for anything, and 
Wolverine and Havok were definitely getting down to business in between panels when they go off on their Meltdown spin-off.

Astonishingly, the team didn't even have two of the sexiest X-men ever in those days, with the cute charms of Kitty Pryde and the devilish raconteuring of Nightcrawler shuffled off to England (the dripping sexuality of Excalibur was just as hot).

But while the Comics Code and the general homophobia of the 1980s meant they were playing it safe on the surface in the main X-Men book, and only showing the chaste romances between men and women, you don't have to dig very deep to see things were getting a lot more fluid. They're the next stage of human evolution, after all, and that's always going to be terrifically queer.