When news broke that DC Comics plans to reintroduce its old, unused Batwoman character, and that she'd be a lesbian, comics fans immediately began dissecting her costume design and discussing whether Gotham City needed another vigilante.
The mainstream media's reaction, of course, was Holy alternative lifestyles! A gay superhero?! Amid cute headlines ("Batwoman comes out of the Batcloset") The New York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, the BBC, the Associated Press, the UK's Independent and just about everyone else featured stories about Kathy Kane, "a lesbian socialite by night and a crime fighter by later in the night," whom the Gray Lady referred to as "a buxom lipstick lesbian."
If the comics community has met the announcement of her sexuality with a shrug, it may be because we've gotten used to seeing gay superheroes in our comics lately.
Marvel Comics currently has two teen teams with gay characters on them, The Young Avengers and Runaways. In Marvel's "Ultimate" line, X-Man Colossus is gay, while Iron Man's butler, Jarv, is a perverted old queen who hits on Thor.
Meanwhile, at DC, Gotham City policewoman Renee Montoya, who starred in recently cancelled Gotham Central and is currently featured in the company's real-time weekly ensemble series 52, is a lesbian. (In fact, she and Kathy Kane, who made her first appearance in 52 last week, used to date).
Superhero Obsidian, subject of a decades-long is-he/isn't-he debate, has finally come out in the pages of Manhunter (an irony best ignored, seeing as any discussing of homosexuality in a milieu where everyone wears spandex and has secret identities is so rife with irony it eventually stops registering).
Of course, if you hear Obsidian and think, "Wait ... who?," that goes a long way toward explaining why a lesbian Batwoman is perceived as big news outside of the insular comics press.
The New York Times story that outed the new Batwoman focused on DC and Marvel's efforts to diversify their mostly white, straight heroes to better resemble their readers and the world. What the Times and most other media didn't say is that what makes the idea of a queer Bat character seem so queer is that DC has always been sensitive about any questioning of Batman and Robin's sexuality.
It's been an issue for years—the dynamic duo's relationship, as a confirmed bachelor and his "partner" or "ward," has raised eyebrows since the 1950s, when Dr. Fredrick Wertham penned Seduction of the Innocent and spearheaded a campaign against comic books from which the industry never completely recovered. The '60s-era TV show prompted juvenile jokes about "Bat poles."
DC takes this stuff seriously.Just last year, the company issued a cease-and-desist letter to a New York art gallery that was exhibiting Mark Chamberlain's watercolors of Batman and Robin kissing.
So the fact that DC created a lesbian character in its most gay-sensitive franchise is rather admirable, especially considering how quickly the company has apparently changed its tune on the subject of gay superheroes.
In 2000, a mini-firestorm erupted over one panel of Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of The Authority, a book published on an imprint DC owns. The panel showed two gay characters sharing a passionate kiss before battle. Editorial demanded the panel be changed, to writer Mark Millar's (rather loud) objections.
The two characters, by the way, were Midnighter and Apollo, members of superteam The Authority, and they were created by writer Warren Ellis to be Batman and Superman analogues. So on one level, the fact that they were gay at all was simply a childish riff on Superman and Batman—See, we knew they were gay!—but the characters proved so popular they quickly outgrew their one-note, knockoff status.
Over at Marvel, they outed old-time Western hero The Rawhide Kid (again, ignore that irony) in 2002 in a special miniseries, making him the first gay headlining character. Now, the Kid was a minor, out-of-use character, but the move was certainly a challenging one in some circles—this was pre-Brokeback Mountain, and the cowboy was one of America's manliest archetypes. The Kid hailed from the cowboy comics of the '50s, so the only people who gave a shit about him were older readers ... those most likely to be offended by Marvel's move.
But what a difference a few years can make—within the companies themselves, the fans and even the mainstream press.
The coverage of Batwoman's sexuality has been overwhelmingly positive, with few commentators ranting about a lesbian superhero being used by the gay agenda to recruit our youth (and those who are ranting are the usual suspects). Judgment calls over whether or not a lesbian Batwoman—or more gay superheroes in general—is a good or a bad thing have barely even entered into the conversation. It's been pretty much limited to: Hey, guess what? Batwoman's a lesbian.
Of course, before anyone starts patting American society on its back for its enlightenment, it's worth noting that the positive reaction could just be because Batwoman is a "buxom lipstick lesbian."
It's been a sharp contrast to the media's open, and mostly empty-headed, speculation last week about how gay that manliest of all superheroes, Superman, may be. (If you missed the hubbub, Google "Superman + gay." I'll wait.)
It's no secret that American pop culture is much more comfortable with lesbians than with gay men. (The Onion's coverage cut to the heart of the lesbian double standard; in a faux person-on-the-street reaction to the Batwoman news, one response was, "I applaud DC Comics for taking the bold step of introducing a voluptuous, beautiful, girl-kissing superheroine. I only hope DC's legion of chronic masturbators will accept her.")
While DC's decision certainly shows growth from its panel-changing edicts of a few years back, and while the comics community's apathy shows its acceptance of gay characters, we won't really know how far we've come until we see what happens when we get a gay, male superhero starring in his own comic.
We shouldn't have to wait too long: Later this year, The Midnighter is expected to get his own series.