The Heck With That

Individually, each choice--Jackson Hyde, Jon Kent, Tim Drake--makes some sense.  DC deserved some higher profile gay characters, particularly some younger ones for kids to have as role models of confidence.  Really, it's part of a larger issue we may discuss another time (DC not knowing what to do with "younger heroes", now that the days of "kid sidekicks" running around with their mentors on rooftops are over).

Jackson Hyde was introduced as and to be a gay character, but his real hook is that he's Aquaman's heir apparent despite being the son of his nemesis, Black Manta.  The character he was based on (Kaldur'ahm) wasn't gay; he had a crush on Aquagirl/Tula. That's why in later seasons of Young Justice, when they adjusted Kaldur'ahm to better align with Jackson by giving him a boyfriend, they made Kal bisexual so as not to create an apparent conflict with his original portrayal.  

"So; 'Thriller Moth'. Is that just your screen name or your actual superhero name? You... are a hero, right? I mean... you're not just...wearing that for no reason, right?"

Jackson's introduction certainly could have been "cleaner".  It's kind of amazing that even when DC has complete control and all the properties are theirs, they always seem to be trying to reconcile and merge similar characters or various versions of the same character.  Such is the process of mythic syncretism, whether it's in Greece 2500 years ago or in the DCU right now.  

Jon Kent was a known character before this reveal, but, since he was a child, sexuality was not at issue.  it was dealt with pretty much as soon as he was aged-up (and pretty tastefully, I thought).  Is his relationship with his boyfriend developed too fast and too corny? Absolutely. But, you know modern writers hate decompression and thus modern comics move so FAST! It's not like we're going to get 40+ years of will-they-or-won't-they courtship.

How absurd and tedious would THAT be?

Jon Kent's sexuality is, honestly, the only normal thing about him, because his backstory is NONSENSE. He went immediately from non-existence to 10-year-old cuteness and then just as immediately to 17-year-old sexy earnestness.  I mean, even on SOAP OPERAS you get a few scenes as a baby or a toddler first.  Fans of Moppet Jon have been understandably upset that that character basically got overwritten overnight. Well, I still don't understand when, how, or why Clark and Lois got married (let alone had a 10-year-old), so welcome to my world.

I mean, Lois is, objectively, a terrible person, you know.

I think much of the resentment against "bisexual (young) Superman" is really about "you stole our adorable super-tot from us and turned him into sexy agit-prop for headlines' sake!" No one wants to think of Their Innocent Little Child growing up into a sexual being, but usually they have TIME to get used to the idea.  DC did not give readers who thought of Jon Kent that way that kind of time.  Heck, I still I shake my head sadly at youthful ward Dick Grayson shacking up with that foreign girl in the metal bikini.  

Tim Drake?  My sissy-sense tells me that DC would have liked to have made Tim Drake gay, but thought it might be too inconsistent with his history; he had already had several girlfriends (especially Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown). Now, young men who've had girlfriends can certainly turn out to, in fact, be gay, but that's a bumpier reality than comics usually embraces. Besides, doing that would have seemed to undercut or invalidate Tim's relationship with Stephanie, and fans of Stephanie Brown--well, I guess DC figured they'd been pushed far enough over the years.  And so Bisexual Tim was born. 

Tim always seemed to have selfhood issues of some kind. What kind of Robin to be, what his motivations were, whether to become Batman, whether to insanely attempt to clone his dead friend, blah blah blah.  

He always seemed to be in the middle of some...
identity crisis.

I myself could never figure out how old he was supposed to be.  And, as previously discussed, it all got worse when his very literary raison d'être was undermined by the arrival of that Elseworlds invasive weed, Damian Wayne.  

DC's been looking for SOMETHING to do with Tim. And with Jon. And to a lesser degree, Jackson. So they now they are serving a broader purpose: to bring some "representation" to DC's headliner dynasties.  And it's working. Face it; Bunker (who has been around for ELEVEN YEARS) never made headlines like these three have.  

I'll give you a MILLION DOLLARS if you know Bunker's real name without looking it up.
Didn't think so.

It does seem like "a lot at once" to some people and it's rattling their little worlds.  For a while I was sympathetic. Perhaps it is a bit too much, too fast, too forced. But after looking at some actual timelines and at some very unpleasant chat sites, I finally decided:

the heck with that.

First of all, we underestimate how fast changes in comics used to come. FAST. When the original Robin, the Sensational Character Find of 1940, was introduced, it not only completely changed Batman overnight, it changed COMICS; within a year, they were LOUSY with sidekicks.  You couldn't cross a rooftop without knocking one over.

What kind of archer says "Great Guns!"?
You're an idiot, Ollie.

Well, Jon Kent came out as bisexual (not even just 'gay') a YEAR ago, Tim Drake did so OVER a year ago (August 2021), and Jackson Hyde was introduced SIX years ago. 

You may not love the idea, but your time window for 'shock' has expired and your denial doesn't make it less true.  This evolution of these characters is 10,000 times more believable and in character than THEIR VERY EXISTENCE (the teenager who deduced Batman's identity and becomes Robin just because someone should, the son of a supervillain who becomes his nemesis's apprentice, and the 17-year-old son of a couple who can't be a day over 35 and were NOT teen parents), so LUMP IT.  

Next, I thought about the substance of the problem. The reason I decided to stop having sympathy for all the people bitching about "teh ghey" invading their private comic book pantheon was the sudden realization:  

if that's the reaction they have to a FICTIONAL CHARACTER they imagined to have been straight turning out to be something-other-than-straight, how would/will they react if the same thing happens with their OWN CHILD?  

People bitching that 'every character is gay now' is tedious over-reaction. Sure, there's going to be a period where you see more such characters being introduced just to catch up from having had few before (just as was the case at one point with black characters).  I get it, people; things are changing faster than you can handle. But the harsh reality is: for a lot of you that will ALWAYS BE THE CASE.  There is little reason to slow down the train for you, since you are determined to fall off if it moves at all.

He's not going to save you.

But you can stop saying dumb things like "all/ most / half of  DC's characters are gay nowadays"; you just sound stupid and I really don't want to have to sit down and DO THE STATISTICS, because that's a power I have and you don't want me to do that.  Even if you look across various media versions, it's not that many, certainly compared to the INSANE number of characters in the DCU.  

You're not mad because it's so MANY characters. You're mad because it's now characters that you can no longer ignore. You didn't really care when it was 'gay ghetto' characters like Bunker.

I like his idea much better, Tim; give him a call.
His name's "Miguel Barragan", by the way.

Is DC 'turning their characters gay' a shameless ploy to appeal to 'more liberal readers'? Maybe it is; good for DC!  Being shameless in trying to have appeal to as broad an audience as possible is not the worst survival strategy for any company, I should think.  

There's really only ONE comic that DESERVES to be called 'shameless'.

I guess black characters are shameless ploys, too. And hispanic ones, and females ones, and well, white and male ones, too since those appeal to lots of people. Let's hear it for shamelessness.  The people who labeled "pride" as one of the seven deadly sins are people who wanted to use shame as a weapon against others.

A rationale level of pride in lieu of shame, in fact, is quite emotionally healthy.

DC's motivations are irrelevant.  These characters are now what and who they are.  If I let people piss on them for that, I'm setting the stage for them to do that to REAL PEOPLE; their own children, the children of others.  That would be truly shameless.

The Lavender League

The Gay Bloggers Union has officially requested that I weigh on an issue I have been punting on, one of the truly novel phenomena in contemporary comics: the sudden proliferation of gay legacy characters.

Now, we have had gay characters before in the DCU, and not just fly-by-night ones.

Not quite what I meant. Besides, Mr. & Mr. Estate-Sale are hardly "in the DCU" as much as they are "owned by DC now and kept in the attic". You know it's true.

At first it was supporting characters, like The Great Extraño (1988), Maggie Sawyer (1988), Mitch Sekovsky (1989), Pied Piper (1991) Terry Berg (2000), Renee Montoya.  

We all love "Auntie" Gregorio (IN RETROSPECT), but let's not kid ourselves. Despite all the in-story hype, nobody really believed the "New Guardians" were going to amount to anything or even last long and we were right.  They just props in a miniseries to make a point about about diversity and bigotry.

I'm not counting all the revisionist bisexual box-checkers like Constantine, Ice (Maiden), Blue Starman, Cat-Man, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quin, et al., because I think that's a different and much less significant phenomenon and if you'd like to argue about that, let's do.

But the first real high-profile DCU gay hero, of course, was Batwoman who was introduced in 2006 as a crime-fighting socialite (NOT yet Bruce Wayne's cousin; that was an ingenious retcon that happened in a later universal reboot, I forget which one-- so..many...reboots...).  

She had an immediate, widespread, and lasting impact on lesbian fashion.

There have been new gay characters with tenuous or no dynastic connections (e.g, Bunker, Anissa Pierce, Grace Choi).  There have been some pre-existing heroes now revealed to be gay, like the Tasmanian Devil, the Ray (current multiversal status uncertain?), or, most prominently, Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott and his son, Todd "Obsidian" Rice.  

That awkwardness when your date intercepts and misinterprets a hologram message from your actual dad, who happens to be a serious zaddy.

Prominent or not, such characters are still in the 'suburbs' of superhero-dom; they are on the edges of the real metropolises: the dynasties of DC's Big Iconic Heroes. That's the classic Justice Leaguers, of course: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman; Green Lantern & Flash; Green Arrow & Aquaman. Arguably others could be included, but over time they are DC's most consistent roster of royalty.  

Characters like Batwoman and Alan Scott are certainly well known and pedigreed; they are definitely dukes and duchesses in DC's royal houses.  But they are not in the line of succession, so to speak; they will not inherit that seat at the Justice League table.

Who wouldn't want THAT thrilling opportunity to watch Hal stare at his own beautiful hands?

Naturally, NO ONE will actually inherit that seat, as repeated attempts to oust the original JLAers have proven over the years (including several recent spectacular failures).  "Batman/Superman/et al." aren't just costumes and skill sets, they are actual individuals. You can give the codenames 'Superman', 'Aquaman', 'Green Lantern', and 'Flash', to Jon Kent, Jackson Hyde, Girl with Weird Glasses, and Wally West (yeah, I went there), but that's all you are doing.  Superman is still Clark Kent, Aquaman is still Arthur Curry, Green Lantern is still Hal Jordan, and the Flash is still Barry Allen. Despite 70+ years of various creators/editors to 'fix' the "problem" they feel that consistency represents.

Nowadays we're not just talking about Odd Man's nephew, Queer Fellow, or Woozy Winks adopted pansexual son Flirty, or even some Black Canary-lite with short dark hair, butch skillz, big boots, a motorcycle, and a leather jacket, who immediate pair-bonds with literally the first available person she meets.

Waitaminute:
That IS Black Canary.

No. Now,  we are talking about the "heirs apparent".  We are talking about: 

Batman's protégé, Tim Drake.  A long-standing character (1989) who served as Robin--many believe as the best Robin--for twenty years. He's been buried in the background for years since Bruce Wayne's son Damian began his reign of terror as Robin (2009).  His recent emergence from Damian's shadow has coincided with the reveal of his bisexuality.

Uhhh...
13 does NOT look like the minimum age for that ride.

Aquaman's protégé, Jackson Hyde. A comparative new character (2016), son of Black Manta and a Xebellian rebel, Jackson was introduced as a gay teenager.  He seems to have had some trouble gaining traction, probably because his look, power set, and origin are clearly based on the "Kaldur'am" character in the Young Justice cartoon and yet... he is very much NOT that character.

For one thing, Jackson understands how important it is that Aquaman-characters have fabulous hair.

and Superman's instant-son, Jon Kent.  Through temporal shenanigans driven by fan-service, Clark Kent and Lois Lane wound up with a pre-pubescent 10 year-old son after some reboot (Convergence 2015) without they or readers having to slog through the real-world tedium of, you know, pregnancy and infancy and toddlerhood and childhood.

 I mean, any SILVER AGE writer knows those are the FUN part. Aren't those playsuits ADORABLE?

Jon's principal narrative function in the DCU seemed to be as saccharine poured over Damian Wayne stories to make them less bitter and easier to swallow.  As previously discussed, Damian's clearly on his way out of favor as l'enfant terrible among DC's editorship, so some more temporal shenanigans were employed to have Jon suddenly become a POST-pubescent 17-year-old son of Superman. Puberty came with the reveal of bisexuality (his love interest is male; that he is bisexual and not gay is known only through external evidence from the creator and publisher, not internal story evidence).

 

You know, Jon, I'm sure Jackson would be glad to go through a stylebook with you at Supercuts.
Heroes are here to help those in need, after all.

How do I feel about all this?

Let's discuss that tomorrow; but feel free to tell me your thoughts today.

DCU History: Was there a Stonewall Riot in the DCU?

 Yes; yes, there was a Stonewall Riot in the DCU.

However, as usual in the DCU, it manifested itself differently.

Strange Subject

Ah; Extraño.

Inkers don't like tildes.

For those of you who DON’T know, Extraño is a character from the New Guardians, a well-meant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at incorporating more diversity in the DCU during the 1990s.

Tech-head! Accent-girl! Cleavage Lass! Super-Quentin! Chia-man! Harbinger!

You know when you bring in Harbinger for star power that you're in trouble.

DC has had a lot of unsuccessful attempts at things over the years, but… New Guardians was outstandingly unsuccessful.  Supplying links will have to do for those you who didn’t experience it firsthand because I don’t have the fortitude to recount the horror, but suffice it to say: the Guardians of Oa decided it was time to make some “New Guardians” by sparking powers in a cultural hodgepodge of persons who would lead humanity to its ‘next level’. 

 

Now THAT is weird garb. Eat your heart out, Alan Scott.

One of those people was Peruvian Gregorio de la Vega, better known by his codename: Extraño. Extraño was DC’s first gay character. 

He's been reading my Yelp reviews.

Um, well, at least, that’s how we were supposed to interpret him.  

You're there for comic relief/emotional support, Gregorio. That's what gay characters are for, after all.

He was created in 1988, when you could be bold enough to create a gay character… as long as you didn’t actually use the word ‘gay’.  

Gregorio was what they call “flamboyant”, and his superhero identity even more so. He sometimes referred to himself in the third person as “Auntie”.  He was not designed to blend in; he was designed to be on the boundary. I mean, his codename is “the Strange One” for pete’s sake.

Now THERE is a team-up I want to see. I'm picturing mostly a shopping montage, with PS intoning ominous warnings about buying those pants, which will endanger the multiverse and make you look hippy.

...and we were SO CLOSE.

I am not criticizing that choice on the part of Steve Englehart; I have zero doubt he had the best of intentions with Extraño and the other New Guardians.  But we all know what road is paved with good intentions and New Guardians was nothing if not hellish.

Now, they butched Extraño up in short order:

Glowing skull available at Hot Topic.

Was this due to reader reaction? Conforming to the superhero body stereotype? Did Gregorio simply take advantage of having magical powers to make himself more conventionally attractive?  Because it's important to remember how he started out:

Non-conventionally attractive.

Now, all of those "Chosen", the people picked to become New Guardians, were ordinary schlubs before being 'ascended'.  But Gregorio was, well...

(from Millenium #2, 1988)

a jaded, snarky drunken barfly? I think that's the phrase I'm looking for.

Peruvian Paul Lynde here has his next scene on at the nearby waterfront:

Oh, I saw THIS movie. But I was certain they were Brazilian.

where he attempts to commit suicide.

Bury your gays at sea.

But is saved by Wally West.

Wally West telling you "It Gets Better" is perfect comic book irony.

Thanks to Wally's fractured-Spanish pep talk, Gregorio decides to put suicide on hold and instead ascend to near godhood.

The New Guardians were pretty quickly erased by hypertime and a collective agreement by the general public but not before Extraño came down with a case of Bury Your Gays.

 The fate of Gregorio was ambiguous although:

“Extraño was ultimately killed by HIV infection, but it was contracted from a fight with an "AIDS vampire" supervillain called the Hemo-Goblin.”  I took that quote from Wikipedia directly because, frankly, I didn’t want to be responsible for saying it myself. 

Oscar-bait monologue.

Also... it's not true.  Gregorio didn't get the chance to die of AIDS because he was eaten by Krona. 

It happened off-camera, too.

Yes, really.

For once, I'm with you, Hal.

Besides, thanks to Rebirth, Extraño turns up healthy and whole a mere quarter of a century later in the 2016 Apollo/Midnighter miniseries.

As The Most Interesting Gay Man In The World.

The butching up of Gregorio took a HUGE leap in this Steve Orlando miniseries.  And that's kind of understandable.  The original portrayal of Gregorio was "of its time" and so is this one.

"Oh, let me imply that I've killed people for using my only codename, just so you know that I'm not only a DILF but ALSO a bad-ass, because this is a Midnighter story. Also let me emphasize that I'm not suicidal even though that is my only backstory."

This version of Gregorio has a husband named Hugh (presumed to be the superhero Tasmanian Devil, because Those Two Gays You Know Are PERFECT  for each other!) with an adopted eldritch girl.  Because it's 2016 so of course he does.

There is, of course, no questioning Orlando's bona fides in his reintroduction of Gregorio De La Vega: "With a book like Midnighter & Apollo, which from cover to cover is a love letter to queer characters and our struggle to live, be visible and love, it felt right to return to one of the first and reintroduce Gregorio to a new generation."

However.

Orlando didn't "reintroduce Gregorio to a new generation." He reinvented him for one.  And, in its way, his reinvention is just as stereotypical for our time as the original version was for his.  Like much of the gay community, this version of Gregorio seems to be embarrassed of his more flamboyant past and become conformist rather than individualistic.  Is this really a healthy model for contemporary gays?

I don't think Gregorio has been seen in the DCU outside this series since then. But if he were...

would we be losing more than we gain with this version?

I submit that, although a painful stereotype in 1988, the original Extraño might be a welcome breath of fabulousness in this era of the stodgy suburban gay couple.

I think if I were to reinvent Gregorio de la Vega for modern times he would nearly JUST like Orlando's version.  But Extraño....!  

My version of Gregorio would have to (or would choose to) convert to his original flamboyant over-the-top witch-self, both in dress and in personality, in order to use his power and it would be a perfect disguise...

The gayest thing about Wonder Woman

The gayest thing about Wonder Woman is that she's not a lesbian.

Despite the fact that Golden Age Wonder Woman is so chockful of lesbian overtones and homoerotic fetish play,

Like... LOTS of it.

Wonder Woman was always portrayed as having a male love interest, 

Hussies favor capes.

man-damsel-in-distress Steve Trevor.

Who had his own issues.

Sure, Wonder Woman engaged in woman-on-woman fetishy stuff.

For the good of others, of course.

But all that DISC theory fetish play that her strange creator, William Marston, put her through...

LOTS.

shaped HOW she approached the subject of love (as 'sex' was coded) but not with WHOM.

It was never Real Lesbianism.

That requires Etta Candy.

Rather, it was always Show Lesbianism (tm) (two women getting freaky for the prurient interest of the putatively mostly male comic book reading audience).  And, make no mistake, Marston unequivocally wrote WW to appeal to the pervy-ness of growing boys (himself above all).

And so VERY pervy.

But for 'romance', Wonder Woman's focus was man-ward.  

"Nobody dominates Steve but ME."

Well, at least Trevor-ward.

That butt, though...!

The same could not be said of Wonder Woman's tribe, the Amazons of Paradise Island, who, well... you know.

Why bother with a caption...?

They had their playtime with one another. Centuries of it. With no apparent sense that anything was lacking; men weren't even allowed to set foot on Paradise Island.  

Told you.

Eventually, in the modern era, writers acknowledged that, yes, the Amazons form couples among themselves.

But long before that it was always pretty clear that "sisters are doing it for themselves", as the old song goes.

Now, here's the important part...

It's when you combine Wonder Woman with the Amazons that it gets really interesting.  The juxtaposition of those two facts -- that the Amazons are lesbians (even if only situational ones) and that Wonder Woman is not -- implies something very special.  It means that:

Diana, the only child ever raised on Paradise Island, was a sexual minority in her native society. 

Which is, in fact, the core experience of (nearly) every real-world gay person.  Making her experience -- being a straight person raised by and in a gay world -- the most parallel to the experience of gays who are raised by and in a straight world.

Thus, the gayest thing about Wonder Woman -- the thing that makes her a perfect icon that gays can identify with -- is that she isn't gay.