Cannonball gay
‘Cannonball’ by Kelsey Wroten
“Mythology is so weird,” says Feather, the level-headed best partner and foil to Caroline Bertram, the fierce, rudderless queer art school graduate at the center of Cannonball, the new debut graphic novel from Kelsey Wroten. Pen (whose packed name, Penelope, suggests the Homeric-level mythological traditions this book engages with) and Caroline have, in desperate, impoverished boredom, shown up at a grimy dwelling party where a beefy bro is trying to impress Pen by telling them about a tattoo he plans to receive of the Norse mythological king of the wolves, Finrir, who he proclaims “unstoppable.” “Except that I’m pretty sure they did,” Pen responds, “with a chain made out of like bird spit and lady beards.”
The weirdness of mythologies—the bizarre yet apt symbolic narratives we grow to articulate the problems and insights that defy ordinary language—is Cannonball’s obsession, which it pursues with a dazzling blend of intelligence and anti-elitism. Cannonball is about taking whatever is at hand, however meager, and making something out of it. This is a book where the protagonist, finding her cupboards nearly bare, feeds a stray cat a bowl of
By Steve Morris
As your mum’s favourite asexual, it takes a lot for me to notice sexual attraction anywhere it occurs. So if even I can see that there’s sexual tension from Sunspot towards his “favorite person in the Universe” Cannonball, I have to assume that it’s actually there. It was sort of visible in the first two issues of New Mutants, and it returns with a vengeance in issue #5, with Jonathan Hickman and Rod Reis returning for a continuation of their space adventure.
The story presented here is presented by Sunspot himself, who is the narrator for the issue, and it’s through the subtext in his narration that a clearer second story emerges. One of the first things Sunspot does in the issue is praise his ally Cannonball as “handsome and charming”, before noting that Sam’s wife was probably not good enough for him. Roberto has also invested serious amounts of time into winning over Sam and Izzy’s son, which is explicitly stated to be part of a longer-term tactic to assure he stays in Cannonball’s life. When you pair this with the actual story – Sunspot has persuaded all the New Mutants to fly
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