DC Comics To Switch The Sexual Orientation Of An Established Character
KyleMoyer
Posts: 727
Someone's going to catch the gay!
(and to clarify, yes this is a link to a bleedingcool article, but it's not a rumor. It's a report from a Q&A at a con)
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/05/20/dc-comics-to-switch-established-characters-sexual-orientation-soon/
(and to clarify, yes this is a link to a bleedingcool article, but it's not a rumor. It's a report from a Q&A at a con)
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/05/20/dc-comics-to-switch-established-characters-sexual-orientation-soon/
Comments
I'm sure I'll find out as soon as it hits. Pics and stories will be all over.
I bet it's one of the Bat family.
It'll be be Guy Gardner.
If you want the Atom(for example) to be gay..then great..create a gay character and tell a really cool story about how they got the powers and the costume.
We'll see, but it could be that it ends up being an established character whose sexuality was never established. So we only assumed them to be straight as we were never told otherwise. We'll see.
(I doubt if that is the case, but it is possible.)
EDIT- I re-read the quote from the panel, and they specifically said "previously straight". So forget that last part.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/26/batman-gay-grant-morrison-superhero-comics_n_1456878.html
As you can tell by my levels of snark, I don't see it.
BTW Fuck Grant Morrison
If you don't like the sort of intentionally provocative thing Morrison might say to a Playboy interviewer about Batman, why read the interview? You can probably guess at the sort of thing you're going to get. And if those sorts of things are going to get you mad at him, are you not just taking his bait?
Its reeks of "Hey, comics need to be relevant! That whole LGBT thing is a hot topic...... lets make Bruce Wayne a cross dresser."
They get some main stream press out of it...... people will react........ and then they have to find something else to glum onto to make their work seem "relevant".
I can't wait until a local Fox affiliate shows up at a playground to ask parents and grandparents what they think of a gay character in Superman. Then interview a 7 year old about it. 8-|
And honestly, this topic.... they're 25 to 30 years late to the party.
And I agree with you that the idea of gay characters is definitely old news. 30 years late to the party, as you say. So, at a time when they universe of characters is being updated in many ways, is it not the time to make their characters more in line with the modern audience? It would seem that the alternative would be to maintain the status quo, have your universe be a continuity museum rather than a place to tell current stories to a modern audience... and become even later to the party.
Though, sadly, even though it is old news in the real world, it will still be news in the world of superhero fiction because there still seems to be a desire to have that world be conserved to some past idea. A lot of media seize on it and make hay of it because they know some of their readers will still think that all of this is funnybooks for kids, and they know such reporting will also fill their inexpensive entertainment news posts with comments arguing the other side of that, and that comics aren't just for kids. And, hey, it is all traffic to their site, so who cares that it was never worth reporting on in the first place? Rinse and repeat. But I think, as comics fans, we are used to the medium being misunderstood. Or willfully misinterpreted to make hay. So it goes.
Moving away from how this will be covered and to talk about what the comics might actually be like-- will it come off forced? Maybe. It all depends on the execution in the work itself. So that remains to be seen.
As for whether you should just create new characters, as some have suggested, rather than change the sexuality of a character when introducing a new version of them in a new universe-- I think that is a tough one. I certainly see the argument on either side. The downside of making a new character that is gay is, first and foremost I think, that it is simply a toxic market for new characters of any kind. So I sort of don't blame them for rarely launching new characters (gay or straight) because as an audience we keep telling them over and over with our dollars that we don't want new characters.
And a new, gay character runs the risk of not only getting lost in the shuffle, but I would say might have even more risk of having their entire reason for being created be their sexuality.
Now, on the other side, changing the sexuality of an established character can also run the risk of that entirely defining the new version of the character to some readers. But, at least, in this market there might be enough retailer and reader support for a known property to stick around and give it enough of a chance to show the reader that the character isn't only that.
In a way, I think Kathy Kane (sp?) Batwoman ended up being the best of both worlds-- she was a Bat character, so there is an interest there to give her a chance, but she was a new person. In a way, Northstar was great execution, because Byrne created him as a gay character, but many readers just assumed he was straight because they weren't told differently.
I don't think there is a perfect way to go about doing this, and I grant it is a complicated issue, and good luck to them. The way it will be covered and speculated on probably won't help. But there will be times when updating a universe of characters mostly created 40 to 80 years ago will require some choices that might feel forced. But I think the alternative is to just maintain a museum piece.
They're here! They're queer! We've gotten used to it, already! :)
/Not news is still not news.
//It's Ambush Bug, btw...
How do we know he's not dressed as a female bat, the capes a bit tradge drag. That would strike fear in to those cowardly superstitious criminals.
Am I the only person that thinks Batwoman is a major character in the DC Universe?