How Gay Is Superman?

[rivkat]

LA Times story. Excerpt from the Advocate story that sparked it.

Cover:


Best blog post title answering the question.

Bonus: actual trading card in which Superman comes out of the closet.

Comments

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

What would it mean for the greatest superhero of all to be something other than a straight white male?

Good question because, even though I figure I'm pretty gay-positive as these things go (for a white Canadian of Anglo-Irish descent raised Catholic) but there's a part of me that goes "neeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrr" at the idea of a homosexual Superman - and I don't know if that's resistance to messing with established characters or homophobia: if Superman wants to marry Jimmy instead of Lois, does that make him less heroic? Culturally, North America is still working on creating heroic narratives for female characters that realistically balance ideas of heroism and physical courage with the "feminine" attributes - I had to stop watching Alias because I couldn't accept that any undercover agent would be quite so fucking weepy - I'm not sure the mainstream is ready to accept the idea of homosexuality in our "heroes". I dunno.

It's an interesting question that I'm not sure anyone has a good answer for because gay characters, particularly in the Superhero genre, have yet to move beyond the level of patishe - the "gay" Batman and Superman analogues in The Authority, for example.

[irishabastard.livejournal.com]

While forced to admit that I haven't been able to track down a meaning for patishe, Marvel is much better at diversity in all its forms than DC. In the new Ultimates line, Peter Rasputin (Colossus) is gay, and Northstar has been gay as long as I can remember. Arguably the most powerful mutant in the universe is a woman (Jean 'Phoenix' Gray), Magneto is Jewish, there are also multiple main characters who are of Asian, Hispanic, and African descent.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

While forced to admit that I haven't been able to track down a meaning for patishe

Um, helps if I spell it correctly: a 'pastiche' is a picture or musical composition made up of pieces from established works or a story written in the style of a well-know author and I kind of blend to two meanings here to say that comics have their "gay batman" types but no original gay characters as the central character in their own books. At least so far.