Which versns of Superman, Rob, and Wonr Woman are gay? How DC Comics is refg the symbols of characters like Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash for a new, queerer generatn.
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DC NCELS GAY SUPERMAN IC AMID SAL CLE
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. * gay comics batman superman *
“Characters that were unknown to most of the general public — like Starman, say, or Maggie Sawyer, or Green-Lantern-no-not-the-active-one-wh-a-seri-but-the-olr-one-nobody-outsi-of-ics-fandom-knows-by-name — uld be gay, but Superman had to be able to sell movie tickets and toothpaste the Midwt.
“You n see a clear shift between so-lled ‘gay vague’ marketg and queer normalizatn mastream advertisg around 2015, ” Grayson ntu. A gay, or bi, or ace, or trans superhero might be a small and ut gture, but every gture tak on outsized meang when speakg out is self a source of fear. I remember when Batwoman beme the pany’s first gay character to headle a book 2009, and Midnighter beme DC’s first solo seri for a gay man 2015, and the long stretch of the 2010s when Wonr Woman, and Harley Qun, and Poison Ivy, and John Constante were fally allowed to be irrevobly queer.
Eltaeb was thrilled to see the end of the gay Superman seri. Aqualad, is gay. And sce, at the time, he’d temporarily taken over as Superman while his father was off-world, generated headl about Superman beg gay.
DC COMICS CANCELS GAY SUPERMAN COMIC DUE TO DISMAL SAL
This is a dynamic which led homophobic cric Fredric Wertham to suggt the 1950s that superhero (pecially Batman and Rob) promoted homosexualy through their privilegg of male/male bonds. The pot here isn’t that Superman was really gay those early ics. But the obssn wh double inty and disavowed sire do suggt that the character has been built on anxieti about homosexualy and masculy.
) But at the same time, refg to date women also mak Superman ls than fully male a homophobic, misogynist culture which se homosexualy as feme and therefore lser. There are superhero stori over the years, though, that have qutned the genre’s terlked mments to homosexual panic and to vlence. Superman, many of his eratns, is most sred not of Kryptone but of femy, which has stereotypilly been lumped together wh homosexualy.