ON National Coming Out Day,the annual LGBT awareness day, DC Comics announced that Superman will be revealed as bisexual in a new comic published next month.
Well, that’s a turn-up for the (comic) books. Clark Kent’s alter ego is full of surprises, isn’t he?
Well, actually, it’s not Clark who is coming out. It’s Jon Kent, the son of Clark and Lois Lane, who will be seen kissing his friend Jay in the next issue of Superman: Son of Kal-El.
And he’s Superman now?
He’s one of them. Jon Kent has inherited his father’s powers.
So, what’s the thinking behind this?
“The idea of replacing Clark Kent with another straight white saviour felt like a missed opportunity,” said Tom Taylor, the writer of the series.
He also added that a “new Superman had to have new fights — real world problems — that he could stand up to as one of the most powerful people in the world.
"I've always said everyone needs heroes and everyone deserves to see themselves in their heroes and I'm very grateful DC and Warner Bros. share this idea."
Now that I think of it, did I read something about Robin too?
That’s right. Batman’s sidekick did recently acknowledge romantic feelings for a male friend. This is Tim Drake, by the way. Not Dick Grayson. There has been more than one Robin down the years.
Also, it’s said that the latest incarnation of Aquaman is going to be a gay black man. And in June DC published a number of variant covers on titles including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman that included a Pride symbol.
As for Marvel comics, they’ve introduced a new LGBT Captain America.
You wouldn’t have had any of this back in the comics of the 1950s.
Well, you say that, but, of course, the psychologist Frederic Wertham claimed in 1954 that the depiction of Batman and Robin in the comics was like “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.”
This may have said more about Wertham’s psychology than Batman’s creators, but it did lead to the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1956 which controversially policed what comics in the United States could portray for decades until it disappeared in 2011.
How has news of Superman’s sexuality gone down?
Well, how do you think? Inevitably it has sparked some voices moaning about “woke” superheroes on Twitter. It is possible none of these people have actually read a comic since they were kids.
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