Image: Devin Grayson, Nick Robles/DC Comics Of the 12 stories housed in this year’s installment, half centered on out-of-the-closet legacy iterations of established characters.Īnd if there’s a running theme that winds through each of these stories, it’s about the weight of legacy and reputation on the ability of these newer heroes to embrace their own sexuality… and whether sexual identities and superhero identities can coexist in the public eye. DC Pride 2022 leaves a queer legacyĬase in point, this year’s DC Pride special, the company’s second annual showcase of an increasingly sizable stable of LGBTQ characters. So if Superman (Bisexual Version) was, indeed, bandwagoning, it was a bandwagon long overdue. Jemisin and artist Jamal Campbell introduced us to Jo Mullein, a fresh-faced Green Lantern stationed far from home whose bisexuality was just one of several traits that established her (in Jemisin’s words) as a “ stranger in a strange land.” Nubia of the Amazons, twin sister of fellow Wonder Woman Princess Diana, was casually shown in bed with her lover Io just this past December.Īnd then there’s Tim Drake, Robin #3 for those keeping score at home, whose sexuality had been speculated on, joked about, and passionately debated since his 1990s heyday by queer readers like me - more than two decades before Meghan Fitzmartin and Belén Ortega brought him out of the closet as bisexual in August 2021. Image: Joshua Swaby/DC ComicsĬonsider: Back in 2016, young 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. Left to right on the wraparound variant cover of DC Pride 2022: Batwoman, Aqualad, Superman, Queen Nubia, Jo Mullein/Green Lantern, Jesse Quick, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Dreamer. And lately they’ve served a special function in particular: A surprising number of them have turned out to be more than a little bit queer. 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. So while Marvel, pioneer in the delicate art of the illusion of change, often feels like it takes place in a perpetual 1968, DC’s universe feels more like a multigenerational epic - One Hundred Years of Solitude with more capes and spandex. And let’s not start on the Green Lanterns, because buddy, we’ll be here all day. Using the most conservative count (I could go higher!), mainline DC continuity has blessed us with no fewer than two Supermans, three Flashes, four Wonder Womans, two Aquamans, three Batgirls, and five Robins. And while legacy heroes are hardly the province of DC alone, they’ve long played a special role in the company’s storytelling. Jon is an example of a legacy character: a younger protégé or inheritor of an established hero, who takes on their title and codename as their own. This, in the world of 21st-century comics, is hardly unique. No, our newly out-and-proud Superman was one Jon Kent, the son of Clark and Lois, introduced by writer Dan Jurgens in 2015 and (after a successful stint as Superboy) lately promoted to sharing his dad’s alter-ego when elder Kent took a trip off-planet to overthrow an alien dictator or two, as is his wont. That Superman, the one we had been reading about in comics and watching on movies and TV since 1938, was as resolutely heterosexual (and as monogamously attached to Lois Lane) as he had ever been. In the midst of all this shock and furor, you might have had to squint a little to catch a fairly significant detail: The Superman in question wasn’t Clark Kent, the Last Son of Krypton, at all. Meanwhile, former Superman actor Dean Cain (increasingly the voice of scowling disapproval of modern DC Comics) took to cable news to accuse the company of “bandwagoning” on a trend of publicly queer superheroes. Less than a month after DC announced the character’s forthcoming revelation, police were dispatched to the homes of writer Tom Taylor and artist John Timms after threats were made to the comics company. And sure enough, the outrage was swift, sharp, and depressingly predictable. “ Why ‘Bisexual Superman’ Has Conservatives’ Tights In a Twist,” declared Forbes. “ Superman comes out as bisexual ‘not a gimmick,’ writer says,” blared the Reuters headline. 11, 2021, the Man of Steel came out of the closet.
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