feature
from December 2005

Comic book characters are worth big money at the moment - particularly to Hollywood. Comics expert Jay Eales takes a look at an often-forgotten area of comic culture: queer heroes and heroines.

In mainstream comics, and by that I mean predominantly US-centric ones, the first time that gay issues really hit the headlines was with the publication of Dr Frederick Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. Wertham was the psychiatric consultant to the Chief Censor of the United States Treasury Department, and the man who popularised the notion that Batman and Robin were anything more than a millionaire playboy and his ward. Seduction of the Innocent blamed the rise of homosexuality and juvenile delinquency in America on comic books, and led to the creation of the infamous Comics Code Authority, a brand that appeared on most comic covers for the next 50 years. Code restrictions put many publishers out of business. Genres such as horror and crime were almost eradicated, one high profile casualty being EC Comics, publisher of Tales From The Crypt.

While the mainstream went vanilla, underground comics blossomed through the 60s and 70s. The 80s saw another giant of counterculture comics with Love And Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez, embracing sexuality in all flavours, and introducing lesbian/bisexual characters Maggie and Hopey to the world.

Flash forward to 1988 and Clause 28 of the Local Government Act in Britain, which stated ‘A local authority shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.’ Alan Moore, writer of Watchmen, From Hell and V For Vendetta formed Mad Love Press in order to protest. He invited some of the cream of comics to participate in an anthology called AARGH! (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia). Moore's own contribution to the book, The Mirror of Love, was recently reissued in a beautiful expanded edition from Top Shelf Press.

As the 90s arrived, comics dabbled with gay characters in minor roles, usually wheeled out for ‘message’ stories. A Hulk supporting character developed AIDS. The X-Men comics introduced an AIDS-like disease - the Legacy Virus, which targeted mutants between 1993 and 2001, finally resulting in a cure. Superman and Batman introduced their own gay supporting players, Maggie Sawyer, head of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit, and Renee Montoya, whose recent outing in issue 16 of Gotham Central has led to some very interesting storylines. Wonder Woman caused a little stir with the suggestion that her home, Paradise Island, populated entirely by women, might mean that they were lesbians.

In Alpha Flight, Northstar had been an implicitly gay superhero from the beginning, but Marvel felt the need to ‘out’ him in issue 106, to the surprise of exactly nobody.

Strangers In Paradise by Terry Moore debuted in 1993. Still going strong today, SiP explores the complicated love trinity of Francine, Katchoo and David.

1995 brought Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse, previously known for creating Gay Comix and Wendel. Stuck Rubber Baby tackles racism and homophobia in equal measure, and is Cruse's most acclaimed work.

Into the new millennium, Pedro and Me by Judd Winick was the author's frank account of his time on the MTV US show The Real World: San Francisco, and his friendship with HIV-positive roommate Pedro Zamora. After Zamora's death, Winick decided to use the format he worked in to honour his friend. Since then, Winick's comics work has touched on the subject a number of times, most recently in Green Arrow, where the titular character's female sidekick has been diagnosed with HIV.

Possibly the biggest news splash in recent years relates to The Authority, with its gay couple Apollo and The Midnighter. Created by Warren Ellis, the duo was obviously modelled upon Superman and Batman, though sufficiently different to avoid legal action by DC Comics. Amusingly, after publisher Wildstorm was bought out, DC found themselves owning the characters that lampooned their most prominent figureheads. The Authority was possibly the biggest selling Wildstorm series, and yet DC management were at times a little bemused, or even downright disgusted by the series, and heavy-handed editorialising went on, sanitising some of the more outrageous scenes in the issues by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely, causing them to leave prematurely.

Marvel's latest use of the gay angle to get free publicity was with Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather, where a second-string western character they had lying around was retooled with added subtext to suggest that the kid preferred fellas to gals. Critical reaction was poor at best.

While not attracting the media attention of headline-grabbers like The Authority, many of the most interesting and important gay stories continue to come from the pen of Alan Moore. To take just one example of many, in Top Ten (best described as Hill Street Blues with superheroes), Police Captain Steve Traynor has had a monogamous same-sex relationship since 1949, detailed in the frankly beautiful graphic novel Top Ten: The 49ers. His soon to be completed Lost Girls is ‘an attempt to reinvent pornography as something exquisite, thoughtful and human’ featuring a meeting in 1913 between Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and Wendy from Peter Pan, recounting their erotic adventures.

Jay Eales is a comics journalist and publisher.