Created 1998, Apollo and Midnighter were among the first married gay upl superhero ics — and they were totally parodi of Batman and Superman. Now, thanks to DC Comics ntuy, the four characters fally met face to face.
Contents:
- BATMAN IS PRETTY GAY: QUEER REPRENTATN COMICS & THE DARK KNIGHT
- IS BATMAN GAY, BISEXUAL, OR STRAIGHT? WHAT IS DC CANON?
BATMAN IS PRETTY GAY: QUEER REPRENTATN COMICS & THE DARK KNIGHT
Wh the recent passg of Kev Conroy, the voice of the ped csar Batman: The Animated Seri and gay in, felt like a good time to discs LGBTQIA+ reprentatn ic books, specifilly Superhero ics. Lookg past the tastels jok about Bce spendg all of his time wh an old Brish man and a speedo-clad boy he kept a ve, there has always been a homoerotic subtext to Batman. In a 2012 Playboy terview, Morrison said “Gayns is built to Batman.
I’m not g gay the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay.
Obvly, as a fictnal character, he’s tend to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole ncept is utterly gay. This new wave of ercive censorship forced the hands of creators to keep thgs subtextual and give their hero a stone-ld se of the “not gays. She served as Batman’s love tert for a few years, specifilly orr to fend off mors that Bce was gay.
IS BATMAN GAY, BISEXUAL, OR STRAIGHT? WHAT IS DC CANON?
“He’d be much healthier if he were gay, ” Miller said.
The few attempts at creatg a gay character were more often than not handled poorly. DC Comics buted Extraño, a gay magician hero, 1988. He embodied typil stereotyp of a homosexual man and was eventually killed by way of an HIV fectn while battlg Hemo-Gobl the AIDS vampire.
Wh the backlash to Joel Schumacher’s 1997 Batman & Rob for “beg too gay” and darg to put nippl the Bat-su, DC kept non-hetero romance far away om the ics. “As a gay boy growg up the 1950s and 60s a voutly Catholic fay, I’d grown apt at ncealg parts of myself. You n be gay, bi, trans, or whatever sha of awome you are and be a hero.