Sing if you're glad to be a Super Hero!

[Beaker]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/...ing-out-as-gay

Publicity stunt, bold move or long-overdue step..you decide.

But anyone have any idea who it might be?

I'm very rusty on DC comics and haven't seen any of the new 52 stuff....but my money's on Dick Grayson or Tim Drake.

[Happy-Hangman]

Well, if it's Dick or Tim then they have been seriously in denial for years. Those boys is Dawgs.

Green Lantern and Flash both have established female 'significant others'. Batman's relationship with Catwoman, even within the New 52, is very physical, so unless he swings both ways (a Bi-Bat) he's out of the running. I don't think Didio is brave enough to risk the wrath of the right-wing media by making Superman gay, and if Aquaman is, then Mera may be a little surprised. I think they'll opt for Wonder Woman, as DC would get the best of both worlds - a gay first-tier iconic character, and the opportunity to tease adolescent male audiences with Amazonian snogging. "Suffering Sappho!" indeed.

[MrShears]

I will be massively pissed off if it's Wonder Woman or any of the Big Seven, as that would be naked, headline-chasing revisionism at it's very worst. I doubt that'll happen though, given that every DC heavy hitter besides Supes and Batman has yet to be seen in a major movie franchise, and therefore if it does turn out to be one of them, then any future Wonder Woman feature, say, won't just be a superhero movie, it'll be the Gay Superhero Movie, and I doubt that's on Warner's agenda if they mean to compete with Marvel.
My money's on Token- sorry, Cyborg!

In totally unrelated news, for-I-am-gay marriage over at Marvel!

[Happy-Hangman]

Cyborg would certainly be the safe choice - high-profile (in that he's in the Justice League), but, with a recently ret-conned origin (sans Teen Titans), otherwise a blank-slate. I'm not sure, though, if Didio would be quite so unsubtle as to put all his 'token'-eggs in one basket. Also, Cyborg is not now and never has been an A-List character.For this move to be seen as anything but a publicity stunt, we'd need it to be someone more high-profile.

Wonder Woman being gay wouldn't bother me in the least, as - save for a few brief flirtations with Superman, Batman and as few others, most of which fizzled out because the writers either lost interest or moved on - her sexuality hasn't been an issue for years. Steve Trevor's role as her beau is pretty much Pre-Crisis (the original Crisis, that is), and coming from an island of immortal female warrior-women it would make sense for her to at least be bisexual, if not lesbian.

That said, a gay Batman would make some sense, too.

[roddersj04]

I heard a rumor that it would be Alan Scott, who's being reintroduced sometime soon

[Fricky]

He's appeared in the Earth 2 comic, but hasn't gotten his powers yet. It could be him, because Robinson apparently did an interview, where the guy asking the questions said that he'd seen some previews of upcoming pages and was aware that Robinson was making a significant change and asked him if he was ready for the reaction to it, and Robinson replied that he was "proud" to be making that change. It would make sense for Alan Scott too in the way it would be sort of an exchange, as his gay son Obsidian can't realistically be around(at least as an adult) in this new continuity where Alan's so young, so giving Alan that character trait seems possible.

Edit: Gail Simone's also said that Catman is bi, and that when she gets to use him again, she intends to make it explicit(as in confirmed, not XXX).

[Sensei Ping]

its Northstar and Kyle Jinadu - says Ping as though he has slightest clue who they are



I recognise some of the guests though...

did not Midnighter and Apollo of The Authority get there first...

[darkman]

Originally Posted by Happy-Hangman

That said, a gay Batman would make some sense, too.

Grant Morrison certainly thinks so:

Originally Posted by Grant Morrison

He's very plutonian in the sense that he's wealthy and also in the sense that he's sexually deviant. Gayness is built into Batman. I'm not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay. I think that's why people like it. All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn't care-he's more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid.

[Happy-Hangman]

Quite. Frederick Wertham was convinced that Batman and Robin were enticing America's '50s youth into a gay lifestyle of masks and secret identities - though, by all accounts, the gay community only started to identify with them as such after Dr Fred has decimated the comics industry. If anything the contrived introduction of the original Batwoman, Batgirl and Ace the Bat-Hound (1 Bat-Couple and 2.4 Bat-Children) actually made the strip more camp.

That said, sometimes Batman didn't need any help in that regard.



Occasional dalliances with Catwoman and Talia ('fag-hags'?) aside - and he was drugged the first time he went all Barry White with the mother of his child - Batman has never struck me as having any real sense of sexual-identity. He's too driven. To singularly focussed on his crusade - or in the rather bloodless pretence of being a playboy-dillitante. While a gay Batman wouldn't alarm, offend or upset me - and I say this as a lifelong Bat-fan - I think he's probably asexual, at heart.

'Course, Batsy survived being 'outed' by Wertham during the biggest cull the industry ever endured - and during a period when being openly gay was unacceptable - so I have no doubt that he'd weather the media-storm today, if his character was led in that direction in this rather more tolerant age. Actually, the reaction of other characters within the DCU would be interesting to see.

I always find the reaction of characters being revealed as gay or bisexual as being very telling. When dr Who introduced Captain Jack, for example, the newspapers and (adult, though often highly immature) commentators flipped-their-lids....the kids watching, though, just said 'So what! Neat ray-gun!' I felt a little sorry, too, for Zachary Quinto, last year, when he outed himself - in that he clearly expected a bigger reaction: aside from a few die-hard Trekkies wailing "Spock's GAY!" (no, darlings, Spock is porking Uhura, Quinto is gay) no one really gave a hoot...much to the chagrin of the few gossip-sheets who (for all of fifteen seconds) thought it was newsworthy.

[Fricky]

It's funny Captain America's sexuality never gets the same amount of scrutiny