A few weeks ago, word got out that one of DC Comics’ original superheroes, the Golden Age Green Lantern, was being rewritten as a gay man. After decades of depicting Alan Scott as a heterosexual, married father of two — y’know, like in the old days — DC has revamped his backstory so he and his fellow masked adventurers are now decades younger. One side effect of this is that Scott’s adult gay son doesn’t exist anymore. So they just transferred the gay over or whatever. Fair enough. It’s comics, they do that kind of “retroactive continuity” all the time.
But it turns out that’s just the beginning.
Courtesy of the site that broke the story in the first place, Bleeding Cool, here’s a peek at the next piece of exciting news:
Wow, that’s some really well-written dialogue! OMG, what happens next? “Marry me so we can–” Clumsily capitalize on a hot-button issue in a desperate attempt to boost sales?
Well, whatever you think about their sincerity, they’ve definitely overshadowed Marvel Comics’ attempt at relevance a couple of weeks ago:
“See? We’re gay too. Look. Why aren’t you looking? We’re gay too!”
The guy proposing is a superhero named Northstar. Who’s Northstar? Exactly.
The great thing about gay marriage in comics is that there’s no risk of the voters slapping it down. Well, unless you consider the purchase of a comic book as a vote. If so, the voters went away a long time ago.
By the way, Green Lantern is only gay on “Earth 2,” which is a different universe than the one with the long-underwear characters in DC’s main line of comics. (This is because comic books are needlessly confusing.) If you don’t like that they’ve gayed up GL, it could be worse. They flat-out killed the Earth 2 versions of Superman and Batman. Which is probably for the best. In light of this Green Lantern business, those two would be under a lot of scrutiny…
And if you don’t like this, you’ll hate what they’re doing to the new Flash. Two words: indecent exposure.