Therumancer said:
That said, this article (as other responses have picked up on) is saying that the statement is that an iconic DC character will be Gay, which means interested only in men. This being opposed to Lesbian or Bi-sexuality. Something that would be hard to reconcile with any of the iconic male characters without some ridiculous amounts of retconning, that in some cases could bring the entire continuity into question given some of the motivations in play.
Even if they went "bi" which I was omitting for a reason, as I explained, understand that DC is a universe where we've had numerous situations where villains have literally learned everythibng about a hero (even if they later forgot it) and then kidnapped their true love to leverage them, likewise we've had characters beat overwhelming odds while saying the name of their loved one and so on. If you were to suddenly say any one of these characters was secretly gay and nobody noticed, using their girlfriends as a beard (as the only way to justify it) up until this point, you'd have to question why they would be saying a girls' name for strength, or why some of these villains didn't kidnap their boyfriend, etc...
As I said it's a stunt, a bad idea being used to get attention, it's not something that could be justified with characters this established. DC is also not a company that really has anything to prove on these grounds to begin with, which is one of the reasons why it's such an obvious stunt. Despite my overall opinions, I have frequently referanced "The Authority" as being one of my favorite comic series of all time (along with things like Gen-13 and other Wildstorm titles). We've even had crossovers from Wildstorm into the DC universe, firmly setting it as an alternate dimension that can bleed into DC. They really don't need to do this to say "prove they are as politically correct, and hip, as marvel" since they arguably did it better than Marvel did when they "outed" Northstar many years ago.
That said, if they did want to do the whole bi- thing, I suppose they could reveal that Superman and Batman had an affair between other things, but that wouldn't be quite what they seem to be going for. This could be justified to an extent by "The Midnighter" and "Apolo" being the Wildstorm analogies to Superman and Batman and they are not only gay but married, so they could argue transdimensional inertia showing those tendencies were always there or whatever else. Of course "had a gay fling" isn't the same as wanting to make a gay character to parade around which seems to be the intent.
Personally if I was in charge of DC right now, given the ups and downs with Wildstorm's success, I'd consider bringing some of the more popular characters like The Midnighter into the DC universe more or less permanantly. Granted that wouldn't be iconic, and characters like that who kill wouldn't fit in with the JLC, but it would acheive a similar effect without having to retcon things. Of course then again the retconning is exactly what is going to get the attention and make them the money... so you know... it isn't really about common sense.
Buddy, hate to break this to you, but you have no idea what you are talking about. No, seriously, you've gravely misunderstood a few significant things.
1 - I have to refer to your first two paragraphs now... "Call the whole continuity into question"? "Villains who have learned everything about a hero"?
Do you comprehend the idea of a Relaunch? You know that the New 52 is a COMPLETE reset of the DC universe after the events of Flashpoint?
All that history is now rebooted. They have complete free reign to do whatever they want with DC history, save for the last nine issues of each series that has come out. With what we know of Batman, Superman and Flash in this Universe, they could all be gay but not open about it.
Perhaps you should google "New 52" and just get a clear idea of what the reboot is, because you seem to have misunderstood it from what I can tell.
2 - You think it'd be a good idea to bring Midnighter and Apollo in? Here's a plan: Go back in time one year and tell Paul Cornell that. See, Midnighter and Apollo
are in the DC Universe. Stormwatch has been running for nine issues now in the New 52. And for the record, Paul Cornell did a fantastic job of re-introducing the couple's romance in a subtle and classy way (You should give that a read, if you liked the old Authority comics)
3 - What's the problem with making changes to established characters? Especially since right now is the IDEAL time to do it considering how everything is set back to a status quo.
I mean, would you rather batman still wore blue and yellow and Dick ran around in briefs?
Would you rather Superman's powers involved random rainbow fingers? Or would you like to see him torture Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen every week for laughs?
Should Wonder Woman still go everywhere in her flying jet?
Should Green Lantern be crippled by the daunting power of the colour yellow? Or anything made of wood?
Characters change over time. We don't see this with a lot of other media of story-telling, but comics or sort of unique in that they have the same characters written by dozens of writers over several decades. These characters have survived way bigger changes in the past and even come out from it looking better.
In short, ONE character becoming gay during a time period where it doesn't conflict with the character's past is NOT a big deal.
So all in all, you basically claim it's a stunt because if they just wanted gay characters they'd bring in Apollo and Midnighter, or make new ones. Well they've done both of those things. But maybe they'd like to have an Iconic gay character, and a recognizable gay character, and you can't manufacture that.
Also, your logic appears to be that it's a stunt, because they have nothing to prove, thus it's a stunt? If they had nothing to prove then this publicity "stunt" would get them nothing.
Besides, if making the JLA a small bit more diverse is a "stunt", then it's not exactly a bad one. Looking at Bunker, Batwoman (eh, sorta batwoman), Apollo and Midnighter in the New 52, gay characters have been written very cleverly. Plus, if it's a character in one of the flagship books then it will most likely have a very good writer behind it.
You seem to be very poorly informed considering the authoritative tone you assume.
