DC to reveal 'iconic' male character as gay

[Grumman]

~In the marvelous realm of fiction, anything is possible~

Only if you're shit at your job.

[Bakustra]

~In the marvelous realm of fiction, anything is possible~

Only if you're shit at your job.

Imagination makes you a terrible writer? Hahaha, do you write user operating manuals or something?

[Batman]

While you are absolutely correct methinks Grumman was referring to those many times in superhero comics when something that was undeniably possible (what with us being fiction and all) yet an incredibly stupid idea was nevertheless carried through. Valen knows there's tons of 'you gotta be fucking kidding me' storylines in Me comics alone.

[Grumman]

While you are absolutely correct methinks Grumman was referring to those many times in superhero comics when something that was undeniably possible (what with us being fiction and all) yet an incredibly stupid idea was nevertheless carried through. Valen knows there's tons of 'you gotta be fucking kidding me' storylines in Me comics alone.

Yes, that's what I was saying. A good writer does not negate previously established character traits or plot points without good reason. Declaring Amazons Attack uncanon for being a poorly written, offensive piece of dreck would be a good retcon. Declaring that a superhero's relationship with their significant other is invalid just because you want them to start dating someone else (as in One More Day) is a bad retcon.

[Bakustra]

Canon is a child of stupidity that is murdering the comic book industry. Did King Arthur have canon? Did fucking Gilgamesh need exhaustive canon? So why is it important for Superman?

[Tsyroc]

Well they recently rebooted their entire line (again).
I bet Martian Manhunter, because he's one of those Justice League guys, but one that nobody cares about.

I was thinking along those lines too but then I remembered that he had been married with at least one child before he came to Earth. Plus, he's an mind reading, shape shifting alien. It would make sense that he and his species would have a very different look on personal relations, but people would bitch about him either not really being gay or that making him gay was a cop out.

Someone could certainly do a very interesting and in depth character study about the Martian Manhunter living on Earth and adapting to there being no one else like him anymore (is that the case or are there still other Martians on Earth after the retcon?). I doubt that DC is all that interested in doing something like that though.

[Bedlam]

Too much hetero backstory for virtually all of us-Clark's got Lana, Lois, at least one other woman with the initials LL whose name escapes me for the moment, I got Talia, Vicky, Selina and depending on the writer Dr Isley, Barry had Iris, Wally had that TV reporter who would become the mother of his children, Hal-Carol Ferris, Ollie-Dinah, Dick-(always) Barbara, Donna, Kory and whoever it was he married to, Tim had Arianna and Steph, Arthur was married and a father, there aren't all that many iconic characters who are male and not at the very least bi.

Besides, me and Clark would never work. Nevermind the fact that I would always want to be in charge, which would inevitably lead to stress given that he's the one with the actual superpowers, how did he put it in DKSA when Lara asked him about Sex?
'Never with terrans. They're too fragile.'

Do all of these connections still exist post flashpoint? The universe is now only 9 issues old and unless the writers say otherwise never happened. To take Tim for an example as far as I know there hasn't been a mention of any of his previous girl friends so far and he has a gay team mate in Team Titans at the moment to be a potential partner. Same with Superboy, in previous cannon he's been fairly agressively heterosexual but hes more of a blank slate now.

[Thanas]

Canon is a child of stupidity that is murdering the comic book industry. Did King Arthur have canon? Did fucking Gilgamesh need exhaustive canon? So why is it important for Superman?

I don't think canon is murdering the comic book industry. Comics that have high canon are good (see: Sandman). The thing the comic industry lacks editors and maybe even canon. I mean, it is hard for me to take a series seriously when the main character changes traits and dies every five years or so.

[The Yosemite Bear]

should we remind them that Zattanna's favorite brit goes both ways?

[Simon_Jester]

Canon is a child of stupidity that is murdering the comic book industry. Did King Arthur have canon? Did fucking Gilgamesh need exhaustive canon? So why is it important for Superman?

I don't think canon is murdering the comic book industry. Comics that have high canon are good (see: Sandman). The thing the comic industry lacks editors and maybe even canon. I mean, it is hard for me to take a series seriously when the main character changes traits and dies every five years or so.

Canon is something characters need, badly, from year to year. But maybe not from decade to decade, because at some point the sheer mass of backstory and loyalties and obligations and friends and enemies drags the story down.

Hm. That actually reminds me of a mythological character- not Arthur or Gilgamesh, but Cuchulainn, who was finally killed off in a strange and highly specific way, by some sneaky bastard who knew how to exploit all the geases he'd been put under over the years. When you have to accept hospitality or die, and you can't eat dog meat or you'll die, and your enemies know this... well, it doesn't much matter how mighty a warrior you are.

Death by canon-savviness.

What really needs to be done is to simply retire characters every ten or twenty years, scrap their backstories and start over- which the industry does. It's the intermediate moments of rearranging characters under new authors every two to five years that makes trouble, because it annoys the reader and usually involves some really dumb or at least inconsistent choices being made by the characters.

There are characters in fiction that people read, fully expecting them to make a lot of stupid mistakes. But most of them are at least endearingly or amusingly stupid. Things like throwing over your long, happy marriage for some trivial nonsense are just as stupid, but a lot less endearing.

[mr friendly guy]

I got sick and tired of Jurgen's Thor, when he contradicted his own continuity... right in the same issue. Its hard to take something seriously, when the main character says one thing, and then does another thing and no one even bats an eyelid.

This is just shitty writing, and no matter how you spin it, its an example of canon NOT weighing down a story.

The funny thing is, getting around canon isn't that hard. For example, want to use a character but he is dead. Write a quick spiel explaining how his death was fake / how he came back alive again. Saying that canon is weighing down comics when its not followed, and easy enough to get around seems a stretch to me. However ignoring basic continuity like Thanas noted can make it hard to take seriously a character.

[evilsoup]

should we remind them that Zattanna's favorite brit goes both ways?

1. Only in theory, in the comics he's only ever gone out with women (IIRC the one time we saw him sleeping with a man was as a part of a plot of his)
2. Is Johnny boy even a part of the DC shared universe at this point? Aren't all those Vertigo books their own thing?

[Simon_Jester]

I got sick and tired of Jurgen's Thor, when he contradicted his own continuity... right in the same issue. Its hard to take something seriously, when the main character says one thing, and then does another thing and no one even bats an eyelid.

This is just shitty writing, and no matter how you spin it, its an example of canon NOT weighing down a story.

The funny thing is, getting around canon isn't that hard. For example, want to use a character but he is dead. Write a quick spiel explaining how his death was fake / how he came back alive again. Saying that canon is weighing down comics when its not followed, and easy enough to get around seems a stretch to me. However ignoring basic continuity like Thanas noted can make it hard to take seriously a character.

What makes it a burden is when a character's backstory is complex: when they have so many allies and enemies and so on that it gets in the way of showing the character in interesting activities that play to their natural strengths and weaknesses.

Remember Cuchulainn?

One way this sets in is if you have a hero with a large rogue's gallery of villains, and you've been running the comic for ten years... this hero has fought those villains several times each. All the obvious variations on the old themes have been tried- each villain has tried several devices for nullifying the hero's special advantages, most of them have probably taken a shot or two at the hero's family or loved ones, most of the possible teamups have been tried too. This gets boring after a while.

So restarting the whole thing, and not welding yourself to the notion of everything going exactly as it did 'last time' is good, because it lets you reimagine the character and revisit old themes that will seem fresh once again when you tackle them twenty years later.

[Rossum]

The Joker? Maybe that's why he never treats Harley right...

Okay okay, they probably mean an iconic and heroic character. In that case... um... uh... okay the only others I can think of are Robin or one of the Green Lanterns that nobody cares about. I suppose there's also Superboy or the like. The only DC characters I can think of are either evil, have known female love interests, or are nonhuman and thus exist outside human sexuality (The Brain and Mallah from Doom Patrol make a pretty nice couple regardless).

[evilsoup]

If you're going to restart the characters every ten years with new backstory and new relationships and a different personality, why not just write a different character? I mean I know the commercial brand recognition nerd-pandering reasons, but artistically it's pretty empty.

[Bakustra]

Canon is a child of stupidity that is murdering the comic book industry. Did King Arthur have canon? Did fucking Gilgamesh need exhaustive canon? So why is it important for Superman?

I don't think canon is murdering the comic book industry. Comics that have high canon are good (see: Sandman). The thing the comic industry lacks editors and maybe even canon. I mean, it is hard for me to take a series seriously when the main character changes traits and dies every five years or so.

Mainstream comics cater to a fanbase that is obsessed with interstory canon, and this is because of the emphasis on said canon. Intrastory canon, or rather, continuity, is a good thing, but when it comes to interstory canon, the focus on it creates a massive barrier to any sort of entry when, for example, Superman's origin is nine words and five pictures in length, and you can sum him up in a few sentences. By all rights, you should be able to instantly comprehend Superman comics when you pick them up. You can't. The reason is canon- you have to have ten or eleven other decompressed-to-hell comics to figure out what's going on. Soap-opera-style storytelling isn't even the culprit here, because that tells you upfront the investment you have to make. What we have here is a mass of shit rendering characters who are embedded deep in the global culture unable to succeed in their original format.

If you're going to restart the characters every ten years with new backstory and new relationships and a different personality, why not just write a different character? I mean I know the commercial brand recognition nerd-pandering reasons, but artistically it's pretty empty.

Chretien de Troyes wrote Launcelot as a lusty, goodhearted man who stumbles and falls. Thomas Malory wrote Lancelot as a violent, berserkerish, and deeply flawed man who is nevertheless one of the greatest of knights ever to live. T.H. White wrote Lancelot as an ugly, self-loathing closet masochist who nevertheless rises to heroism.

Superheroes are the modern Arthur, the modern Odysseus, and all of these characters have been reinterpreted time and again, because they are beyond mortality, they transcend it to become archetypal. Spiderman can be a nerdy kid from Brooklyn, or a nerdy Hispanic black kid from the Bronx, or a tokusatsu hero, because who Spiderman is- a young man with spider powers who fights overwhelming evil because of a sense of personal responsibility and who faces severe difficulties in his personal life- is something that is immensely broad. Not all superheroes are so broad, but even Pellinore goes from a noble king in Malory to a clod and a clown in White. There is a great deal of room for reinterpretation and the lack of it curtails comic books.

[FaxModem1]

The Escapist comments:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... oes-Is-Gay

DC Says One Of Its"Iconic" Heroes Is Gay
John Funk | 22 May 2012 10:53 am
302
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The hero will be coming out of the closet in June.

When you get down to it, there's something about superhero comics that is just inherently homoerotic. You have these strapping, square-jawed men in skin-tight spandex with rippling muscles forging lasting bonds with equally spandex-clad muscle-men - it's like the locker room after a football game. In that light, it's a wonder that there aren't more openly gay superheroes. However, DC Comics says that one of its major heroes will be soon joining the ranks of Northstar and the Midnighter as an openly gay crimefighter.

Speaking at the Kapow comic convention in London, DC co-publisher Dan DiDio was asked about DC's policies regarding its universe "reboot" and the reimagining of its historic characters. DC had previously said that any LGBT characters would be newly introduced rather than existing characters reworked. But why, DiDio was asked, was it okay to change a character's age, race, size, or any other number of features that made them identifiable, yet sexual orientation was off the table?

DiDio answered that DC had in fact reevaluated that policy as well. In fact, he said, a storyline in June would reintroduce a character who had previously been portrayed as heterosexual as gay. This superhero would be "one of our most prominent gay characters," said DiDio.

Predictably, this answer caused quite a stir, with many across the internet trying to figure out which of DC's many, many characters would be coming out of the closet. A statement from DC's Senior VP of Publicity Courtney Simmons narrowed it down, when she confirmed to ABC Burbank that one of DC's "major iconic" characters will "reveal that he is gay in a storyline in June." So we know that the hero in question is male, and that he is considered an "iconic" level character.

That slims the field down considerably. The only male DC superheroes I can think of who would be considered "iconic" are Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, and maybe Aquaman. Any one of these coming out of the closet would be a huge deal, as he would easily be the most high-profile gay hero in the comics business - how many people who don't follow comics have heard of Wiccan or Apollo?

In all seriousness, while I applaud DC for making one of its major characters gay, I can't shake the feeling that this is little more than a stunt. Whether it's to keep pace with the mood of the country following President Obama's declaration of support of gay marriage, or to keep pace with rival publisher Marvel, who just announced that two of its gay heroes would be getting married - it feels a bit more exploitative than it does genuine.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, and maybe DC will treat the subject matter with the seriousness it deserves. Maybe the high profile nature of the character will make it so that instead of being "that gay superhero," he'll be "that awesome superhero who fights crime, and oh yeah he happens to like dudes." I would love for that to be the case.

I just hope it isn't Aquaman. Making the "joke" superhero gay would feel like a pretty sleazy thing to do.

[Sinewmire]

DiDio answered that DC had in fact reevaluated that policy as well.

So they retconned their policy on retcons? Brilliant!

I'm interested to see just how ballsy they will/won't be with this.

[evilsoup]

Bakustra that's a good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. But it still feels wrong, to me... I guess because comics are a mass-produced medium in the modern age, rather than the King Arthur stuff which was written by a small number of people separated by pretty long stretches of time. Or something.

[Bakustra]

Bakustra that's a good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. But it still feels wrong, to me... I guess because comics are a mass-produced medium in the modern age, rather than the King Arthur stuff which was written by a small number of people separated by pretty long stretches of time. Or something.

Yeah, and we also know exactly who invented the characters, while the author(s) of the Mabinogion (the literary root of Arthur) will probably be forever unknown. This isn't necessarily an endorsement of anything goes, either.

[Bedlam]

should we remind them that Zattanna's favorite brit goes both ways?

1. Only in theory, in the comics he's only ever gone out with women (IIRC the one time we saw him sleeping with a man was as a part of a plot of his)
2. Is Johnny boy even a part of the DC shared universe at this point? Aren't all those Vertigo books their own thing?

I think there's two of him at the moment, one in Justice League Dark which is part of the normal DC universe and one in Hellblazer in Vertigo.

[mr friendly guy]

Remember Cuchulainn?

One way this sets in is if you have a hero with a large rogue's gallery of villains, and you've been running the comic for ten years... this hero has fought those villains several times each. All the obvious variations on the old themes have been tried- each villain has tried several devices for nullifying the hero's special advantages, most of them have probably taken a shot or two at the hero's family or loved ones, most of the possible teamups have been tried too. This gets boring after a while.

So restarting the whole thing, and not welding yourself to the notion of everything going exactly as it did 'last time' is good, because it lets you reimagine the character and revisit old themes that will seem fresh once again when you tackle them twenty years later.

Personally I felt that getting confused because you didn't know the heroes back story was lame even before the advent of wikipedia, because you could simply google, er I mean yahoo / info-seek it.

Crossgen comics tried to get around this with "key" issues where they would tell the story in such a way to give a bit of a recap, but advance it further. In fact each issue of a CG comic would have a brief summary on the inside cover. So in other words, via a combination of how you tell the story, and expecting fans not to be ADHD readers one would expect to be able to get the gist of it.

I am however not adverse to a reboot per se to make things seem fresh, although why don't they just create new characters.

[Simon_Jester]

Personally I felt that getting confused because you didn't know the heroes back story was lame even before the advent of wikipedia, because you could simply google, er I mean yahoo / info-seek it.

You missed what I mean. The problem isn't "Can I access this information?" The problem is "I am a complete newbie who knows nothing. Can I quickly figure out what the hell is going on, or do I need to read twenty pages of backstory if I expect to be able to understand the significance of this week's episode?"

If the answer is "more like the latter," then you have a marketing problem.

I am however not adverse to a reboot per se to make things seem fresh, although why don't they just create new characters.

Because that's what gives them a competitive advantage over someone else who doesn't have IP rights to those characters. If DC had retired Superman, Batman, and so on back around 1960, what would they have today that Marvel doesn't?

[mr friendly guy]

On Australian (SBS) news they imply that DC is outing a character in response to Marvel having Northstar marry in an issue of X-men. I knew he was gay, but I didn't realise Marvel had him marry someone.

The SBS segment also put forward the notion that comic book fans are less likely to be against gay marriage, because you know, when people in the comic book universe are from some other planet with weird powers, the sexuality most probably doesn't matter much anyway.

[HMS Conqueror]

Come on, they're all incredibly gay.