Given the hundreds of superhero characters owned by DC and Marvel, the fact that a handful of the biggest names among them might be queer just makes a kind of inevitable demographic sense. Richer, deeper stories, featuring more voices, perspectives, experiences and cultural touchstones. As the world depicted on the comics page starts to look more like the world off of it, as more members of comics' diverse readership gain the opportunity to see a version of themselves on that page, the inevitable result is more, and better, stories. In terms of representation, of course, this is an unalloyed Good Thing TM. It Makes Sense, If You Were Paying Attention It's not just a phase Pop Culture Happy Hour Batman's Sidekick Robin Comes Out.
Progress is being made, here, it's just a much smaller and more incremental species of progress than DC Comics' press releases, and much of the ensuing coverage, is suggesting. So if you're keeping score at home, that's Batman, Superman and Aquaman - three major DC players who've recently had very close, even intimate, queer contacts introduced into their stories. it was Aqualad.Īnd even that news came with its own asterisk: This wasn't the original Aqualad introduced in 1960, but another character, Jackson Hyde, who'd assumed the title in 2010. It didn't make waves (heh) at the time, because I mean. Thank you for being a trendīack in July 2016, the DC Comics character Aqualad revealed he had a boyfriend. It means they can say the thing ("Superman comes out!") that's certain to attract attention - attention in the form of this very article, in point of fact - but they'll always be able to ease the pressure by hitting that valve, and pointing to those all-important asterisks. It's a kind of release valve, that asterisk. *Not the Clark Kent Superman, but his recently-introduced son. * Not the original Robin, or the Robin that's currently Batman's sidekick, but the Tim Drake Robin, the third character to assume the title.
They re-introduce deep-bench characters that haven't appeared in any comic for decades, and slap 'em with a same-sex partner.įinally, they start nudging a few top-tier characters out of the closet - but are always careful never to send 'em out without first attaching an all-important asterisk, as a bulwark against any backlash from homophobic readers (and/or stockholders): So instead the publisher introduces much-needed, long-overdue progress along the edges - a sympathetic villain here, a supporting character there. They haven't queered their core characters, after all - no, those heavily licensed nuggets of intellectual property resist meaningful change because they must, especially if they're to keep paying out dividends by, among other things, getting printed onto kids' bedsheets. Superman's son, and has gone by the nomme-de-cape Superboy until now, in the pages of Superman: Son of Kal-El, he's assumed the mantle of Superman, while his father heads off to deep space for an indefinite period of time.īut when you take a step back, the canny strategy DC Comics is employing here comes into sharper focus. (There's been some talk, in the comics, that the combination of Kryptonian and human DNA may somehow make him somehow even more powerful than Superman, which doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface, but then, if a superhero can defy the Law of Gravity, why not the Laws of Gregor Mendel?)Īnd while Jon Kent is the O.G. Lots of stuff happened to the super-tyke, including but not limited to the kind of narratively convenient rapid aging that a lot of sitcom moppets undergo, and now he's a 17-year-old with all of his father's powers. They had a son, named after Clark's father, Jonathan. In current DC Comics continuity, Clark Kent married Lois Lane. It's still Clark and Lois, not Clark and Louis Jonathan and his male friend Jay, introduced earlier in the series, will share a kiss.
He's slated to come out as bisexual in the pages of Superman: Son of Kal-El #5, written by Tom Taylor with art by John Timms, which will published on November 9th.