Issue #51 of Marvel's Astonishing X-Men is being celebrated for all the right reasons. As the first Marvel book to depict a same-sex wedding ceremony for one of its most interesting mutants, Northstar, the book has been recognized for breaking ground and promoting sameness, even in the offices of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
All the accolades the book has been receiving are fair praise for brave storytelling, but I am not giving them a free pass in the instance of one glaring mistake I spotted on page 19. On the top panel of the page, Northstar's sister and co-Alpha Flightster Aurora presents him with a pre-wedding gift: season tickets to the Habs.
Now, according to Marvel's biography for the pair they were born in Montreal, and any discerning fan of the National Hockey League recognizes "Habs" (short for Habitants) as an affectionate nickname for the Montreal Canadiens franchise. The problem? If you look at the illustration, penciller Mike Perkins has drawn in two places, the ticket and what looks like a puck, the logo of Montreal's hated rival and now defunct Quebec Nordiques!
How could Marvel do this? As a respected artist in comics and prose fiction, one must congratulate issue writer Marjorie Liu for doing the research and knowing that the Montreal team is called the Habs, but who dropped the fact-checking ball and allowed Perkins to draw the Quebec City hockey logo in there not once, but twice?
If I was the type of guy that wished to go for a coveted Marvel No-prize, the usual reward for doing Marvel's damage control for them by inventing feasible means to explain away their mistakes, I might say that neither Northstar or Aurora were sports fans, and so the mistake was an ironic attempt at humor; except that the Quebec franchise moved away from La Colisee and set up shop in Denver, Colorado in 1995... More than seventeen years ago!
No, I don't think there's any logical explanation for this massive boner except that Marvel didn't check their facts, and they allowed a stinging insult to NHL fans in French-Canada to be published in their most influential book of the year. Why? Isn't Marvel-616 a fictional universe? Why not just invent a fictional sports team for the mutants to support, rather than besmirch the already painful memory of Quebec's lost franchise (a loss felt as deeply in Quebec as the Dodgers' move to L.A. was by Brooklynites)?
My message to Marjorie Liu, Mike Perkins, editor Jeanine Schaefer, and the rest of the Marvel staff is this: congrats on the step forward in same-sex rights, you did well. When it comes to sporting references, however: Get it right, or just don't go there!