Flame On: Observing Gay Superheroes

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.” – Tennessee Williams.

In my recent return to reading comic books, a hobby from which I took a fifteen year vacation, it quickly became evident that the writing has gotten much better.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the stories of the last decade and a half have eclipsed the best stories that preceded it, but on average, there seem to be less poorly written comic books, and the middle to high quality titles are far more common than they used to be.

Some credit the influx of television writers to the comics medium with this seemingly across the board improvement, since the sitcoms and dramas that developed their talents required long-term plot development and a strong emotional connection between the characters and the audience within another predominantly visual medium.

With all that talent, you'd think there would be as much diversity in comic books as on TV, but there isn't: Where are all the gay superheroes?




Certainly there have been a few. There was Northstar from the Marvel Comics title Alpha Flight (basically a B-list, Canadian X-Men) who came out of the closet amid much media hype in 1992. He was far from a prominent superhero, and the incident was seen as a publicity stunt to work an AIDS plotline into the Marvel Universe. Today, that would be like developing an Asian hero to weave in a bird flu plotline, and possibly as insulting as adding a black hero just to give him sickle cell anemia. The spike in sales on that single Alpha Flight issue (#106) did little to attract new readers, and a little over a year later the title was canceled.


It would be ten years before Marvel introduced another gay character, and eleven or twelve before they got it right. In both instances the editorial department wisely opted to develop sexual preference from the very beginning.

In 2002, Marvel brought back the Rawhide Kid as part of their Marvel Max imprint, introducing the first openly gay comic book character to star in his own title. Max was a line of comics intended for mature audiences comprised mainly of hyper-violent versions of existing Marvel Universe characters like the Punisher, and Daredevil. Unfortunately, Rawhide Kid was far from mature, and was heavy with puns, euphemisms and blatant innuendo; it was rife with general poor taste. It wisely took place outside of the general continuity. It was a five issue mini-series with low sales and proved to be very unpopular with comic readers. On the upside it was published two years before the release of Brokeback Mountain, proving that the idea was ahead of the zeitgeist even if it was handled incredibly badly.

In New Mutants (Vol. 2). Writer Christina Weir not only opted to have the gay, teen character Anole come from an accepting home, but developed a mentoring relationship between Northstar and Anole that didn't seem merely like a plot of convenience. Since the widespread fear of mutants in the Marvel Universe has long been a metaphor for the lack of acceptance faced by homosexuals and minorities in the real world, Weir chose to make the majority of Anole's challenges a result of his mutated appearance rather than his sexual preference. As a character affected by two forms of prejudice, Anole was the perfect platform for criticizing the obvious (but infrequently discussed) dangers of training kids to take on adult responsibilities as part of a superhero team. The character was well-written, popular and opened the door to introduce more gay characters, but Anole (and all subsequent gays in the Marvel Universe) was still only a supporting character in a team book.

DC's track record is not much better, and perhaps worse. Ahead of Marvel on the openly gay hero stakes, Steve Engleheart introduced Extraño, an effeminate Hispanic man whose name means "Strange" in Spanish, in 1987 in Millenium -which like Alpha Flight at Marvel, was a B-list title at best. He was also used to usher in an HIV storyline, in which he contracted the disease during a fight with an "AIDS-Vampire" called Hemo-Goblin, and discarded like a bad idea after the cancellation of the New Guardians comic in a Green Lantern story that saw the entire Guardians team devoured by the island eating villain, Entropy. I'm not making this stuff up, folks!

In DC's Vertigo imprint there have been many stories told outside the regular superhero continuity that involved or revolved around gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender characters, but within the hero books, any story involving gay characters has been in the vein of The Crying Game, whereby one minor player falls in love with another minor player who turns out to not be what they claimed, therefore not addressing homosexuality as an intentional choice. More insulting than not addressing the issue is the implication that it could only be the result of some form of trickery.

It was in the pages of the aforementioned Green Lantern that DC has had its greatest success in addressing homosexuality within the pages of a superhero comic. It was under the direction of writer Judd Winnick, who some of you may remember as the cartoonist from MTV's third season of The Real World in San Francisco. Winnick has previously won major industry awards for Pedro and Me, a graphic novel he both wrote and illustrated about his friendship with AIDS activist and Real World co-star Pedro Zamora. His run on Green Lantern addressed several issues that affect the LGBT community, including gay-bashing, and predates all of the Marvel stories listed previously. When Winnick left Green Lantern to write Green Arrow, he introduced the first prominent superhero with HIV, in a remix of a classic sidekick storyline centered around intravenous drug use. Winnick's stories have won multiple awards from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Unfortunately, writers like Judd Winnick are rare. Like most comic book writers, Judd is a caucasian, heterosexual male. However, most comic scribes, including those who seemingly win or get nominated for comic book industry awards year in and year out, simply don't know how to write gay characters. Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that most writers can't write women either -and I'm not just talking about female superheroes, but women in general. Comic books are still seen primarily as a "boys club", and juvenile plots and sophomoric comedy is not only accepted it is rewarded. There is a time and a place for everything, and I admit that sometimes when I read a comic book I'm looking only for pure, neanderthal action, but enough is enough.

Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic book brought a lot of female readers into the hobby of comic book collecting. Unfortunately, the end of that book resulted in the loss of a great deal of that readership, because there was nothing else for them. The erratic publishing schedule of Love & Rockets has frustrated male and female readers alike to enter and leave the hobby regularly. It has been the crossover of Japanese manga with mainstream American comics that has brought the majority of young female readers back to the hobby, and yet there have only been a handful of comics that have even attempted to draw a female readership -and most of them are written by the Luna Brothers. Their Ultra was a great Sex & the City take on superheroes, and their The Sword is as good as any vigilante comic out there. Since female readers equal greatly expanded profits, why haven't the big two (Marvel & DC) actively gone after that demographic?
They don't know how.

I'm not going to win any friends at the editorial level with this statement, but I believe it to be true: The guys in charge have made it as difficult as possible for new writers to enter the trade, and I don't know whether it's fear of replacement or megalomania, but the Superhero writers only know macho, and it's getting stale.

It doesn't help when only three or four writers seem to write every book at both companies, and every six to twelve months all superhero titles are tied together with a single story line necessitating the purchase of crossover titles. Multi-crossover titles seem like good business, because publishers ship more units on books with low numbers, but over time it leads to drop off on the books that were already selling well, and it alienates new customers. So in the long run it's bad business. And I don't want to generalize, but if these crossovers bother the male consumers, they drive the females absolutely (forgive the pun) batshit! Do you see women incessantly flip through channels on their remote control? Is there a high level of ADD in female young adults and adolescents? No. Female consumers commit to a title and generally stick by it. Increasingly, among both genders, readers are following the creative teams, not the characters, which makes the crossover nonsense even less advised.

I guess my point is that we'll be less likely to see books dedicated to well written gay characters until the writing speaks to that audience. One in every five people, statistically, is gay. Currently, there is only one prominent gay character starring in their own book: Batwoman in Detective Comics. And it's a really good comic, but what percentage does that represent? .05%? Not surprising when you consider how few comic books are marketed to women, and they represent more than 50% of the population. In countries where the sequential, illustrated story-telling format is marketed to women, the business is booming -just take a ride on the subway in Tokyo.

I think that the fear of reprisal from the religious right wing is the only thing holding back gay superheroes. That's letting a small, closed minded portion of the population call the shots for the rest of the country. Let's not let them win. Let's be loud about what we want to read. They're vocal, so we need to be more vocal. Write letters, send emails, gather petitions. Don't let one squeaky wheel get all the grease in this country.

That was a bad analogy, I apologize, but you know what I mean: If you sit silent on the sidelines while ill-intentioned people misinterpret ancient theology books to call the shots in your life, you will be sorry.

I'm not suggesting that we all demand the outing of Spiderman or Superman, but the diversity of our own world should reflect in the comics we read. There should be more people of color, there should be characters that reflect the rich religious diversity of this country in a positive way, and non-salacious same-sex relationships should be presented and explored in a way appropriate for the readership. There are books intended for all age ranges and one or two should cater to free thinking adults.

So, come on, Marvel. Be like the human torch and, "Flame On!"