Queer Superhero History: Cannon and Saber—Be Gay, Do Crime

It’s time for another installment of Queer Superhero History, where we look back at queer characters in mainstream superhero comics, in (roughly) chronological order, to see how the landscape of LGBTQ+ rep in the genre has changed over time. Today: Cannon and Saber!

I know, I know. You are begging me to write about characters anyone has ever heard of. I promise we’ll talk about Mystique next time.

One of the things that I’ve found the most interesting in researching this series is the line between subtext and text, especially in the days when the Comics Code still banned queer characters. How explicit is too explicit? How far could creators push the envelope, as long as they didn’t say what they were doing? How much can you sneak into a comic when no one reading it expects the characters to be anything but heterosexual? What if you gave one of the characters a really dumb haircut?

These are all questions raised by the DC supervillains Cannon and Saber, especially that last one.

Cannon and Saber first appeared in Vigilante #5 (April 1984), by Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard. Marschall Saber is an assassin who specializes in guns; Henry Cannon is an assassin who specializes in blades. Yes, that is confusing. Also, Saber has the same haircut as Moe from the Three Stooges for some reason.

Anyway, Cannon and Saber fight Vigilante, and that’s really all there is to say about them…except that they are very clearly a couple. At one point, while they’re plotting to take over their former criminal organizations, Saber calls Cannon “m’love”; Cannon, sprawled on the couch in front of him, says “Marschall, I love it…simply love it.” “Cannon, you love the sickest things!” Saber replies. The body language is intimate, the language is flirty, but the “m’love” is undeniable.

Well, sort of. As I’ve mentioned in pretty much every post in this series so far, the Comics Code wouldn’t be updated to permit queer characters until 1989, and this is five years before that. Wolfman didn’t hide what he’d done, either. The fanzine Amazing Heroes ran a lengthy article on queer characters in comics in July 1988; I’ve previously shared quotes about Extraño and Maggie Sawyer from it. When it came to Cannon and Saber, Wolfman didn’t beat around the bush:

Whatever “attack” letter Kahn got, DC did not print it in the letter column of Vigilante.

I’ll note that Wolfman is one of a number of straight creators quoted in Amazing Heroes who essentially say that it’s totally fine to have gay characters as long as they don’t seem gay. The above quote comes immediately after Wolfman firmly denies that another creation of his, the Teen Titan Jericho, is gay, and that in fact to suggest that Jericho is gay just because he’s sensitive is “reverse-prejudice.” It’s worth putting these quotes in the context of the 1980s, when depictions of gay men in media were often quite stereotypical. However, that wasn’t the case with comics, where there weren’t enough gay characters to be depicted stereotypically because having any gay characters at all was explicitly prohibited. Wolfman’s defensiveness, as well as that of some of his fellow creators, feels more like a profound discomfort with anything but the most aggressively butch performance of masculinity than a true desire to represent gay men in a three-dimensional way. (For what it’s worth, Jericho would finally be confirmed as gay in a comic written by Wolfman in 2015; he’s now canonically bisexual. We’ve got a ways to go until that profile.)

Stereotypes or not, how could Wolfman get away with Cannon and Saber at all? Well, Vigilante was exclusively a direct market comic, meaning it was only sold through comic book stores, and not to newsstands. That meant it didn’t need to go through the CCA. It was noticeably edgier than most comics at the time: more violent, more ethically fraught, sexier. The same issue that introduces Cannon and Saber has a relatively racy heterosexual sex scene as well. By #39 (after Wolfman had left the book), it had earned a “Suggested for Mature Readers” label.

But I think it’s simpler than that: you don’t see what you aren’t looking for. Queer characters weren’t allowed in comics, so of course they wouldn’t be in comics. Jenette Kahn read one man calling another partially dressed man “m’love” and didn’t realize they were lovers, because how could they be?

Cannon and Saber’s next appearance a couple years later, after Paul Kupperberg took over as writer, was more blatant. In #35, Cannon and Saber are shown in a beach house in Malibu; Saber, dressed in tiny yellow shorts, is giving a mostly nude Cannon a massage. After they accept an assignment to kill Vigilante, Saber suggests they celebrate, lifting up Cannon’s towel and leering. (The attempted hit, which goes down in Vigilante Annual #2, is not successful; Vigilante shoots Saber, and Cannon abandons the mission to get his lover to a doctor.)

The couple had no further appearances in Vigilante, though according to Amazing Heroes, writers John Ostrander and Kim Yale planned to use them in a different (and also edgy) book, Manhunter. In Amazing Heroes #145, Ostrander said an upcoming issue would feature Manhunter (man)hunting for the villains in Chicago’s gay community. This would require help from a gay contact—but don’t worry, this new gay character “is not a pansy nor swishy.” A year later, the story had still not materialized; according to Amazing Heroes #157, the subject matter, which was now specified to include “the leather/S&M scene in Chicago,” had “already scared a couple of artists off.” It never wound up being published. Even today, though gay characters are much more common in comics, the gay community is rarely depicted—possibly in part because of the same insistence on gay characters who act exactly like straight characters that was so prevalent in that Amazing Heroes #144 article.

Instead, Cannon and Saber vanished almost entirely. They appeared exactly three times in the early 2000s, showing up in large groups of supervillains without any lines (but always together). Their next significant appearance wasn’t until DC’s 2023 Pride special, in which they fought antiheroes Catman and Ghost-Maker. The story doesn’t even make it clear that Cannon and Saber are a) queer or b) a couple for the benefit of everyone who missed two random issues of Vigilante in the 80s. However, at least Saber now also has absolutely atrocious hair? Maybe that’s their couple thing.

Their most recent appearances have been in The Vigilante/Eagly Double Feature, a tie-in to the TV show Peacemaker and thus not in continuity with the main DCU. I won’t spoil how the arc ended earlier this month, but it draws heavily on their original storyline: they are lovers working together to take over their rival criminal organizations. It’s less subtle than their 80s appearances, which weren’t subtle at all: at one point, Vigilante slams their faces together while crowing “Now kiss!” Later, there’s a lot of humor involving a used condom. It’s pretty bro-y, gross humor; on the other hand, Cannon and Saber would probably laugh.

Recent years have seen a number of creators shining a spotlight on forgotten queer characters from decades ago, even the most obscure ones—see Steve Orlando bringing Extraño out of retirement, or Anthony Oliveira spearheading the Arnie Rothaissance over at Marvel. That said, I don’t expect Cannon and Saber to suddenly gain prominence, unless they manage to make it onto the Peacemaker show. At the end of the day, they are ultimately pretty stupid characters.

That said, Cannon and Saber, with their one-note personalities, ridiculous names, and goofy hair, do matter—if only to remind us that comics have never been entirely straight. That queerness has always been there, right on the page. Even if some readers missed it completely—or willfully ignored it.