Why does dc comics keep making gay characters

The change in culture both Taylor and Grayson note comes at a time when, to put it delicately, the broader culture of politics and acceptance is being pushed backward with terrifying speed. Legacy heroes, after all, do more than double up on existing IP; they allow big-time superheroes to stay young, adaptable, and relevant with passing decades right along with their changing readership.

Two years later, writer N. Ostensibly a charming buddy-comedy team-up in which Jon takes his dour and decidedly unworldly friend Damian Wayne a legacy character himself, being the latest in a line of periodically queer-themed Robins to his first Pride celebration.

How DC has utilized queer characters and themes says much about the social context in which they appear, opening a window into the challenges and pressing issues facing the queer community at the time they were published.

And sure enough, the outrage was swift, sharp, and depressingly predictable. The first openly gay characters in American comic strips appeared in prominent strips in the late s and gained popularity through the s. But people are complicated and societies evolve, so since that time it has come to be acknowledged that some characters are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

Using the most conservative count I could go higher! Prior to the s, all comic book characters were assumed to be, and presented as, "straight" heterosexual people.

Superman Comes Out Why

So is it a cheat for the sake of toothpaste for DC to make the younger Superman queer while his dad remains resolutely straight? A gay, or bi, or ace, or trans superhero might be a small and cautious gesture, but every gesture takes on outsized meaning when speaking out is itself a source of fear.

This, in the world of 21st-century comics, is hardly unique. Since the s, equal and open LGBTQ themes have become more common in mainstream US comics, including in a number of titles in which a gay character is the star. At the time of this writing, 28 states have introduced anti-LGBTQ bills inand 8 have already signed them into law.

It all feels inspiring, seeing these young characters unashamedly expressing their sexualities and genders, until the cynicism sinks in: Where are the queer grown-ups, anyway? How would you feel…? Legacy, the moral goes, is about making symbols adapt to new generations as much as making new generations adapt to powerful symbols.

Trans bodies have been persecuted and criminalized in courts of law, and queer books pulled off of library shelves. To be a young, queer comic reader in America today is to look for heroes in a country that seems insistent on denying heroism any chance to triumph.

The story is charming enough on its face, with some moments of genuinely wry comedy. In that sense, a queer legacy character is a surefire way to get the headlines without actually risking the long-term acceptability of any major IP.

Devin Grayson has some experience when it comes to implicitly and explicitly queer DC characters. And on it goes: Younger Aquaman Jackson Hyde confesses the difficulty of coming to terms with his big-time Atlantean heritage when so much of his childhood was wrapped up in pressure to look more human read: straight than he really is.

Well, maybe. Northstar isn’t necessarily the most popular character in Marvel, but he is one of the most important LGBTQ characters in comic book history because he is one of the first ones to try to break the mold. But there are multiverses and fanfic and ways to get around that if you disagree.

The Comics Code Authority explicitly forbade depiction of homosexuality untilinfluenced by Fredric Wertham's. That Superman, the one we had been reading about in comics and watching on movies and TV sincewas as resolutely heterosexual and as monogamously attached to Lois Lane as he had ever been.

How the Code Authority

Consider: Back inyoung Jackson Hyde, then the new Aqualad and now dubbed Aquaman alongside his older namesake, was revealed to have a boyfriend in the pages of DC Universe: Rebirth Special. Because of this, comics, like all literature, function not just as entertainment, but as historical documents.

The Ray, successor of his father, the Golden Age hero of the same name, wonders how to build a new found family while under the weight of his biological family and upbringing. At a Marvel-dominated panel on LGBT characters and allies in comics at New York Comic Con, we couldn't help but talk about what that other major comic company was doing — and how an exec.

This, after all, is a bisexual Superman — but not that Superman, not the one emblazoned on coffee mugs that your parents could comfortably sip from. And if those characters happen to be, themselves, young and uncertain, maybe that just means they, like their readers, will have to make a new future in spite of the old guard ahead of them.

Though Taylor had long wanted to write a story with an out-queer hero, it was DC who approached him with the suggestion to bring Superman out of the closet even as Taylor himself had been toying with the notion:. There have been so many comics, movies, and TV series focused on the Clark and Lois ship that I think changing either of their sexualities now would be a hard sell.