The character Xavin from Joss Whedon almost undid that progress. In the mid-2000s The Runaways, along with the New X-Men and Young Avengers, were Marvel’s first earnest attempts at new socially diverse teams of young people of varying, backgrounds, body types, races, and sexual identities. Proper representation can be a rocky road, but when Brian K. Vaughan introduced the gender-fluid Skrull character Xavin midway through the series' second volume, they seemed like a natural fit. Unfortunately when Whedon took over The Runaways in 2008, he made a change to Xavin’s identity that, while intended to be celebratory, wound up making the book look tone-deaf and reductive.
Xavin is a who s the Runaways’ team.
In issue #29 of Joss Whedon’s Runaways story arc, “Dead End Kids,” with art by Michael Ryan, the team travels back in time to 1907, when superheroes were just beginning to appear in New York City. Up to this point Xavin’s human form has been black, but in 1907 they take the form of a white man for their own safety, an intriguing premise that is not explored at all. When Karolina meets an abused girl and wants to take her back to the present, Xavin objects so vehemently they lose control and revert back to their black female form. Karolina decides that this means that Xavin’s female form is the “real” Xavin, and the two embrace. This contradicts what Vaughan wrote in issue #22, where Xavin explains that Karolina already , a far more constructive place to take that conversation.
Having Karolina be the one to make this observation about Xavin completely robs Xavin of their agency. Xavin, who usually transforms from male to female freely, and always in black skin, is suddenly confined to a white male body for an extended period of time, specifically because harm could come to them otherwise. Yet when Xavin returns to a more comfortable form in an especially stressful moment, this is somehow supposed to equate to that form being more “real” than the others. Fortunately this was completely ignored by the next creative team, but Xavin would be written off of Earth and by extension out of comic books for more than a decade in the process.
Xavin made their first appearance since 2009 at the tail end of The Runaways' 100th issue by writer Rainbow Rowell and artist Adres Genolet in 2021, depicted with a new, more overtly androgynous green Skrull form. Xavin was also included in the live action Runaways Hulu series, but that version isn’t a Skrull and only takes a female human form. Xavin was the first example of gender-fluidity in Marvel comics, and the character was subjected to slurs and ridicule that would never make it into one of today’s books, but to the writers’ credit, Xavin’s identity is never played for laughs. However, one of the biggest mistakes Marvel made with The Runaways was letting a high profile writer like Joss Whedon play down Xavin's gender-fluid identity entirely.
