DC Comics’ New Gay Character Is Green Lantern Alan Scott
DC Comics has been teasing the reveal of a major gay character for some time, and they’ve finally revealed who it will be: Alan Scott, known as Green Lantern, a media mogul, will be revealed to be gay in a story that resets his character. When this news came out, I said it would be best if the supposedly-iconic character DC was going to have come out was someone for whom the revelation that he or she was gay helped tie together things we’d always known about the character and their personality, much as J.K. Rowling did with Albus Dumbledore. I’m not sure if a pure reset of an existing character quite does that. And over at Topless Robot, Rob Bricken explains that the move isn’t as bold as DC insisted it would be, in part because Scott is not even the most prominent Green Lantern in comics today, and in part because his arc as a gay man will be taking place in an alternate DC Comics universe, rather than altering our sense of the core universe, where a straight Alan Scott presumably is still going about his business.
DC Comics was never going to turn one of their genuinely iconic characters gay. An out and proud Batman would have been a great joke on moralists like Frederic Wertham, the psychiatrist who saw sexual perversion everywhere he looked in comic books. A gay Superman would have been a fascinating exploration of what it means to feel like an alien in human society. But it’s hard to imagine that DC would have done something so bold simply to demonstrate its commitment to diversity, or to compete in a market where Marvel Comics, and even Archie Comics, are directly selling themselves both to gay readers and to straight readers who live among and love the gay people in their lives.
Checking the box and including a gay character in your universe, whether you frame them as a stereotype or develop them well or not, isn’t really enough to earn a company points anymore. And I actually think the somewhat disappointed reaction to this revelation is a good thing because it suggests that our expectations are getting more ambitious. If companies want credit for doing something different and genuinely brave, rather than simply meeting their basic obligations to represent the world around them, they need to tell stories or highlight kinds of characters that no one else has the courage to represent. The L.A. Complex gets points for portraying gay characters who aren’t white and male, the standard television default. Happy Endings gets credit for showing us a gay man who’s chubby, romantic, semi-downwardly mobile. Maybe DC Comics will do something genuinely exciting with Alan Scott, but it’s fine not to shower the company with gratitude for simply nodding towards a diversity quota, and doing so with the same kind of gay person who’s been acceptable in pop culture for years: rich and white.
Getting rather tired of all the dudebro comments saying it should have Wonder Woman or Power Girl...
source: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/201
DC Comics has been teasing the reveal of a major gay character for some time, and they’ve finally revealed who it will be: Alan Scott, known as Green Lantern, a media mogul, will be revealed to be gay in a story that resets his character. When this news came out, I said it would be best if the supposedly-iconic character DC was going to have come out was someone for whom the revelation that he or she was gay helped tie together things we’d always known about the character and their personality, much as J.K. Rowling did with Albus Dumbledore. I’m not sure if a pure reset of an existing character quite does that. And over at Topless Robot, Rob Bricken explains that the move isn’t as bold as DC insisted it would be, in part because Scott is not even the most prominent Green Lantern in comics today, and in part because his arc as a gay man will be taking place in an alternate DC Comics universe, rather than altering our sense of the core universe, where a straight Alan Scott presumably is still going about his business.
DC Comics was never going to turn one of their genuinely iconic characters gay. An out and proud Batman would have been a great joke on moralists like Frederic Wertham, the psychiatrist who saw sexual perversion everywhere he looked in comic books. A gay Superman would have been a fascinating exploration of what it means to feel like an alien in human society. But it’s hard to imagine that DC would have done something so bold simply to demonstrate its commitment to diversity, or to compete in a market where Marvel Comics, and even Archie Comics, are directly selling themselves both to gay readers and to straight readers who live among and love the gay people in their lives.
Checking the box and including a gay character in your universe, whether you frame them as a stereotype or develop them well or not, isn’t really enough to earn a company points anymore. And I actually think the somewhat disappointed reaction to this revelation is a good thing because it suggests that our expectations are getting more ambitious. If companies want credit for doing something different and genuinely brave, rather than simply meeting their basic obligations to represent the world around them, they need to tell stories or highlight kinds of characters that no one else has the courage to represent. The L.A. Complex gets points for portraying gay characters who aren’t white and male, the standard television default. Happy Endings gets credit for showing us a gay man who’s chubby, romantic, semi-downwardly mobile. Maybe DC Comics will do something genuinely exciting with Alan Scott, but it’s fine not to shower the company with gratitude for simply nodding towards a diversity quota, and doing so with the same kind of gay person who’s been acceptable in pop culture for years: rich and white.
Getting rather tired of all the dudebro comments saying it should have Wonder Woman or Power Girl...
source: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/201
Because it's all well and good to have a gay character, but not if said gay character never gets a long term, stable partner. Though I realize Marvel is doing somewhat better in this category.
Dakken and Bobbi aren't with partners right now because of ~reasons~.
Although it'd always be nice for other major Marvel characters to come out as bi (Tony Stark seems an obvious choice, though not a likely one, I guess).
Don't forget Shatterstar and Sunspot! I think Liefield (Shatterstar creator) threw a sh!t fit when he heard a Marvel writer turned Shatterstar gay.
I wish they'd have more characters of colour being gay (apart from Northstar's husband to be) though. If you followed the comics, you'd think that only white people were anything other than straight.
I think you're thinking of Rictor rather than Sunspot? I do remember that drama about Shatterstar though. I just didn't know whether to include them, since I wasn't sure how long their romance actually lasted. I am all for fail!X-Men relationships, though (Still angry Northstar/Iceman didn't happen, tbh).
The only queer PoC I can think of all the top of my head is Karma.
You get the feeling that they write Steve and Tony as people who are in a relationship but clueless and totally in love with each other. There's a reason why people were like, "Civil War was the worst breakup ever!" over in TV Tropes (yes, it's reductive to look at an event like that, but there you go).
I think Captain Marvel (Monica - not Carol Danvers) is supposed to be lesbian, but it's one of those things that might more be fanlore than actual canon.
Oh! Victoria Hand (Norman Osborn's former right hand woman) is lesbian - her partner broke up with her due to ~reasons~.
See, I feel like there are lots of LGBT characters... they're just not mainstream. So it's really a game of comic trivia to name them, which is the problem.
Red Zone is good, so is Avengers Prime. Bendis seems to have written it for fan service, because there are heartfelt apologies at the end, when hugs all around. D'awww.
Yeah, for comic characters on the LGBT scale- there's Daken - who just happens to be a troll, not because he's bisexual, but because he lives for the lulz.
Bobbi is bisexual, Natasha Romanova might be 'searching'.
But yeah, Marvel didn't really push the whole 'gay is okay' relationship until Young Avengers. Billy and Teddy are such good lads, I wouldn't even mind if they ended up married down the road (because I am leery of teenage romances that end up in marriage).
(I have been shipping the Science Bros (Tony/Bruce) ~so hard~ since the Avengers movie...)
Um, ehhh? Considering they crippled Ult!Northstar and Ult!Colossus is rotting in a concentration camp for mutants...
Not to mention that in a recent marvel comic, they just killed off another gay character, who was murdered by his lover.
Two somewhat minor characters that were made in the late 80s/early 90s. I think they had the first gay kiss marvel had that wasn't done by villains in marvel (I may be wrong)
And while they certainly have issues in their relationship they're still together and in love and have been for a couple years I think?