Turning Classic Heroes Gay

[Kid Montana]

With Northstar, at least, we have a character who was gay from day one (or thereabout). There just wasn't much publicity about it, and he wasn't a flamboyant caricature like DC's Extraño. That gives him more substance, when it comes to sexual orientation, than a classic character who's suddenly altered to suit some current agenda. Not that the Big Deal Front Cover marriage itself (between a decidedly B-list character and his essentially unknown partner) isn't a stunt, but at least it fits with what had been established before. And it says something about Marvel (Disney's?) views on equal rights for everyone in America, which is a very good thing.

Of course, now, the fire & brimstone crowd will say that in the Marvel universe, Mephisto undoes traditional marriages but is fine with gay ones! (You just can't win).

The funny thing is Northstar was my favorite character back in the day and your right that he was written that way from Day one, it just wasn't done for shock value. So many undertones without milking it, like when he gets a call while in the pool and his male friend answers the phone J.P.B. residence, just alot of everyday stuff portraying him that way without rubbing anyones nose in it for shock value, and Byrne established it from day one. It is obvious now, but at the time I was reading those stories, I missed it completely, it was just such a non factor part of the story telling.

I hate the way DC is doing this. So much so, I have dropped a ton of titles from my June order. More money for classic titles I guess, but the way they are approaching this really doesn't sit well with me.

[dupersuper]

I grabbed the free wedding invitation promo card and forgot it at the comic store along with the free Comic Shop News issue. I am annoyed with myself. I did splurge on some nifty DC super hero glasses though (Supes, Bats, Wondy and GL).

[Jolly Mon]

Well, it's been announced and Green Lantern (Alan Scott) is the character in question. Apparently Didio doesn't mind lying when he said the character hadn't appeared before June in the New 52. Although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised anymore when he lies. Or he's justifying it by saying he hadn't appeared as Green Lantern.

[Kikaider]

One of the reasons I gave up completely on Marvel was when they turned Moondragon gay. If they create a new character that is gay, that is one thing but to take a character with an established history and change them in this way is not acceptable to me. I feel DC would not have done this if it wasn't designed as some type of media attention grab.

[dupersuper]

One of the reasons I gave up completely on Marvel was when they turned Moondragon gay. If they create a new character that is gay, that is one thing but to take a character with an established history and change them in this way is not acceptable to me. I feel DC would not have done this if it wasn't designed as some type of media attention grab.

I see your point, but:
A) people come out of proverbial closets in real life all the time
B) new characters very often fail

[Johnny P. Sartre]

I see your point, but:
A) people come out of proverbial closets in real life all the time
B) new characters very often fail

C. This is a completely new universe and past histories no longer matter.
D. This is not the main DC Earth but Earth-2 which is a more open sandbox.

[Scott Harris]

I read an interview with James Robinson about this topic yesterday and he claims that making Alan Scott gay was his idea and that he came up with it like eight months ago when he was first planning Earth-2. He said it wasn't intended as any kind of media ploy, he just thought it was a shame that Obsidian -- arguably DC's most prominent gay character -- was being erased by the New 52 and he started thinking about introducing a different gay character instead and ended up deciding on Alan Scott.

He also said you can expect to see more character changes for future introductions, including race and gender changes.

I have to say I believe Robinson's claim that this was an organic part of his creative process and not a ploy concocted by management to get headlines. Robinson has always been a gay-friendly writer and has included major gay characters in many of his previous works.

I for one have no problem with this change at all.

[berk]

The way DC has gone about the whole thing, I picture all the macho DC characters sitting around like at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs, with the Green Lantern going, "What, me?! How come I gotta be the gay guy?!"

[Polar Bear]

NOTE: This looks irrelevant, but it actually does relate to the topic. Sorry it got so long.

Why I dropped weekly comics buying:

1) The price increases. The release of the normal-sized Dark Avengers #1 at $3.99 was the day I canceled my subscriptions to all titles.

2) Marvel's darkening the past of its characters. X-Men: Deadly Genesis showed Xavier as a corrupt liar, Amazing Spider-Man showed Gwen as having slept with Norman Osborne, etc. I can deal with some of the present being corrupt, but don't do that to the past. ("Leave my classic comics alone! Keep your stinkiness to yourself!")

3) The ultra-violence present in many titles (the Green Lantern books come to mind, as does Mark Millar's work).

4) The extreme casualness with which sex outside of marriage was handled. Kevin Smith explicitly stated the Black Cat and Spidey had done "the nasty" (Felicia's words) several times, and Smith's Daredevil showed Black Widow ready to "do it" for old times sake. In Nightwing's first "One Year Later" issue by Bruce Jones, he slept with a woman whose name he couldn't remember in the morning.

5) The normalization of the gay lifestyle being pushed so hard, starting (for me) with Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men and moving onward from there.

Many everyday people do treat sex casually. To me, a hero/-ine is not an everyday person. A hero/-ine lives his/her life differently.

I think it was Jim Shooter who said that the reason there were so many more super-villains than super-heroes in the Marvel Universe is that most people, when given that kind of power, become corrupt. It takes a very special, self-sacrificial person to have that kind of power and not use it selfishly. That kind of self-sacrifice and unselfishness just doesn't meld well with the casual attitude toward sex seen in many comics today.

Also relevant: "Nobody should write superheroes who doesn't believe anyone can be more noble than they [the writers] are." - Roger Stern, per John Byrne on his forums.

If you want to read some more about this, read this article from a couple of years ago, "Tolkien and the Silver Age of Comics."

[Roquefort Raider]

NOTE: This looks irrelevant, but it actually does relate to the topic. Sorry it got so long.

Why I dropped weekly comics buying:

1) The price increases. The release of the normal-sized Dark Avengers #1 at $3.99 was the day I canceled my subscriptions to all titles.

I can relate to that... even if there was a LCS around here, I could't justify paying four bucks for a 20-odd pages new comic,no matter how shiny looking... especially with stories d. e. c. o. m. p. r. e. s. s. e. d for the trades.

2) Marvel's darkening the past of its characters. X-Men: Deadly Genesis showed Xavier as a corrupt liar, Amazing Spider-Man showed Gwen as having slept with Norman Osborne, etc. I can deal with some of the present being corrupt, but don't do that to the past. ("Leave my classic comics alone! Keep your stinkiness to yourself!")

Agreed on general peinciple, and even more so in these particular examples where the rewriting of history makes NO SENSE! Thos old stories didn't exist in a vacuum; they fit in a larger scheme of things. They agreed with dozens of other stories being told at the same time, stories in which we saw how characters acted, thought, and behaved. Rewiting the past haphazardly may make for ONE shocking story, but it leaves a mess of suddenly unexplained contradictions behind. Blech.

3) The ultra-violence present in many titles (the Green Lantern books come to mind).

Violence for violence's sake was never a good thing, unless it was meant as parody. And although violence has always been present, today's comics seem to have raised the bar (in the wrong sense!) regarding what is acceptable and what is too much.

4) The extreme casualness with which sex outside of marriage was handled. Kevin Smith explicitly stated the Black Cat and Spidey had done "the nasty" (Felicia's words) several times, and Smith's Daredevil showed Black Widow ready to "do it" for old times sake. In Nightwing's first "One Year Later" issue by Bruce Jones, he slept with a woman whose name he couldn't remember in the morning.

Although sex is a part of life and could be used to tell richer stories, there is another reality about it: sex sells. And abused sex sells even more. Hence we get characters initially conceived to amuse 8 to 10 year old children with their improbable adventures turned into sex kittens and roving swordsmen. I seriously doubt that Red Hood and the outlaws did much good to the development of Starfire's character, although it did titillate the prurient interests of a few male readers. Blech again.

5) The normalization of the gay lifestyle being pushed so hard, starting (for me) with Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men and moving onward from there.

It's not so much a gay agenda that irks me as any agenda that goes beyond telling a good story. Incorporating a message in a good story is fine with me; cooking up some story because there's a message to convey is putting the cart before the horse (as far as I'm concerned). I especially hate it when some social or political agenda is more than alluded to but downright shoved down the reader's throat as if it were a self-evident Truth.

I loved mature comics replete with sex and violence when they're called Preacher. Such titles are meant for adults. I love the innocençe and fun of Archie or Captain Marvel (his name is NOT Shazam) or the old Legion of super-heroes. But sex in Captain Carrot? Bondage in Sugar and Spike? Anal rape in Justice League? That I can do without. Those titles weren't made for that. It's one thing to have one odd special issue where such themes are used counter-intuitively in titles not meant for them, but it's another to make the exception the norm. (In other words... One Killing joke is quite enough.)




(edited to correct typos. Darn those tiny keyboards!)

[dan bailey]

especially with stories d. e. c. o. p. r. r. e. s. s. e. d for the trades.

And with letterers too lazy to spell the words right!

But sex in Captain Carrot?

The title character's name has just taken on a whole new implication for me.

Bondage in Sugar and Spike?

"The safe word, Doll Boy, is 'grxsp,'"

[Kikaider]

Yeah the decompressed thing was one of the nails in the coffin for Marvel with me. A Silver Surfer series with awesome art and one word balloon per page (exaggeration by me, I think?). The new Adam Warlock by Greg Pak, The Avengers issue with Alpha Flight defeated or dead on the second page with Bendis' typical few or no words per page. Bruce Jones' horrible Hulk writing after the movie was released. Keith Giffen' changes of Drax the Destroyer.

I want to add this as a quote to every post.....
" Originally Posted by Roquefort Raider: I especially hate it when some social or political agenda is more than alluded to but downright shoved down the reader's throat as if it were a self-evident Truth."
The Green Lantern thing is such a blatant media grab that it almost makes me want to give up on DC as well. The last issue of Demon Knights I read had lesbian Queens. It is like DC is just begging me to stop buying their books.

[destro]

NOTE: This looks irrelevant, but it actually does relate to the topic. Sorry it got so long.

Why I dropped weekly comics buying:

1) The price increases. The release of the normal-sized Dark Avengers #1 at $3.99 was the day I canceled my subscriptions to all titles.

2) Marvel's darkening the past of its characters. X-Men: Deadly Genesis showed Xavier as a corrupt liar, Amazing Spider-Man showed Gwen as having slept with Norman Osborne, etc. I can deal with some of the present being corrupt, but don't do that to the past. ("Leave my classic comics alone! Keep your stinkiness to yourself!")

3) The ultra-violence present in many titles (the Green Lantern books come to mind, as does Mark Millar's work).

4) The extreme casualness with which sex outside of marriage was handled. Kevin Smith explicitly stated the Black Cat and Spidey had done "the nasty" (Felicia's words) several times, and Smith's Daredevil showed Black Widow ready to "do it" for old times sake. In Nightwing's first "One Year Later" issue by Bruce Jones, he slept with a woman whose name he couldn't remember in the morning.

5) The normalization of the gay lifestyle being pushed so hard, starting (for me) with Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men and moving onward from there.

Many everyday people do treat sex casually. To me, a hero/-ine is not an everyday person. A hero/-ine lives his/her life differently.

I think it was Jim Shooter who said that the reason there were so many more super-villains than super-heroes in the Marvel Universe is that most people, when given that kind of power, become corrupt. It takes a very special, self-sacrificial person to have that kind of power and not use it selfishly. That kind of self-sacrifice and unselfishness just doesn't meld well with the casual attitude toward sex seen in many comics today.

Also relevant: "Nobody should write superheroes who doesn't believe anyone can be more noble than they [the writers] are." - Roger Stern, per John Byrne on his forums.

If you want to read some more about this, read this article from a couple of years ago, "Tolkien and the Silver Age of Comics."

1. Agree.

2. Agree.

3. Agree.

4. Okay I'm probably the furthest from a Kevin Smith fan that you can get. But really? Spider-Man and the Black Cat are both characters in their 20s who were in a highly sexual relationship, in fact there really wasn't much else to their relationship. I could see that as a 10 year old reading PPTSSM. I can't believe you were shocked by this. It wasn't casual sex (and who cares if it was??) they were seriously dating.

5. Okay you have every right to your opinion, but this really bothers me. Nobody is pushing gay relationships. Gay relationships ARE normal and have existed since humans have existed. That comics are finally showing probably 1% (there are many more gay people in real life than that of course, can't believe this TINY representation disturbs you) of relationships as being gay is no different from when Stan Lee introduced the Black Panther. Marvel has always had a slow, but progressive agenda and tried to give some representation to minority groups be they racial or sexual. This is a good thing and nothing new.

[DBrewer75]

5) The normalization of the gay lifestyle being pushed so hard, starting (for me) with Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men and moving onward from there.

Should it not be shown as normal?

Gay people exist in the world and if comics will actually integrate them into the books (like they did with the African-American heros back in the day) it will seem less of an "agenda" and more like everyday life.

[Polar Bear]

Should it not be shown as normal?

Gay people exist in the world and if comics will actually integrate them into the books (like they did with the African-American heros back in the day) it will seem less of an "agenda" and more like everyday life.

Yes, it should not be shown as normal. (I completely disagree with the African-American comparison, by the way.) The exact reason it should not be shown as normal is, as you said, that "it will seem less of an 'agenda' and more like everyday life."