Superman, Robin, and Wonder Woman are DC’s new queer characters… sort of

The Man of Steel emerged from the closet on Oct. 11, 2021.

“Superman comes out as bisexual; ‘not a gimmick,’ writer says,” blared the Reuters headline. “Why ‘Bisexual Superman’ Has Conservatives’ Tights In a Twist,” declared Forbes. Sure enough, outrage was swift, quick and predictably predictable. Less than a month after DC announced the character’s forthcoming revelation, police were dispatched to the homes of writer Tom Taylor and artist John Timms after threats were made to the comics company. Meanwhile, former Superman actor Dean Cain (increasingly the voice of scowling disapproval of modern DC Comics) took to cable news to accuse the company of “bandwagoning” on a trend of publicly queer superheroes.

In the midst of all this shock and furor, you might have had to squint a little to catch a fairly significant detail: The Superman in question wasn’t Clark Kent, the Last Son of Krypton, at all. It is thatSuperman was as heterosexual as ever (and as attached to Lois Lane as any other superhero) and he has been a character we have been following since 1938.

No, our newly out-and-proud Superman was one Jon Kent, the son of Clark and Lois, introduced by writer Dan Jurgens in 2015 and (after a successful stint as Superboy) lately promoted to sharing his dad’s alter-ego when elder Kent took a trip off-planet to overthrow an alien dictator or two, as is his wont.

It isn’t uncommon for comics to do this in 21st-century comics. Jon is an example of a legacy character: a younger protégé or inheritor of an established hero, who takes on their title and codename as their own. And while legacy heroes are hardly the province of DC alone, they’ve long played a special role in the company’s storytelling.

I have used the conservativest count, but you could do higher.Mainline DC continuity has given us no less than three Supermans and three Flashes. There have been four Wonder Womans. We also had two Aquamans. Three Batgirls. And five Robins. And let’s not start on the Green Lanterns, because buddy, we’ll be here all day.

So while Marvel, pioneer in the delicate art of the illusion of change, often feels like it takes place in a perpetual 1968, DC’s universe feels more like a multigenerational epic — One Hundred years of SolitudeWith more spandex and capes. The legacy heroes do much more than simply double the IP they have; they enable big-time superheroes to remain relevant and young with every passing decade. And lately they’ve served a special function in particular: A surprising number of them have turned out to be more than a little bit queer.

Image: Joshua Swaby/DC Comics

Take a look at this: In 2016, Jackson Hyde (then Aqualad) was named Aquaman along with his older name. DC Universe Rebirth Special. N.K. became a writer two years later. Jemisin and artist Jamal Campbell introduced us to Jo Mullein, a fresh-faced Green Lantern stationed far from home whose bisexuality was just one of several traits that established her (in Jemisin’s words) as a “stranger in a strange land.” Nubia of the Amazons, twin sister of fellow Wonder Woman Princess Diana, was casually shown in bed with her lover Io just this past December.

And then there’s Tim Drake, Robin #3 for those keeping score at home, whose sexuality had been speculated on, joked about, and passionately debated since his 1990s heyday by queer readers like me — more than two decades before Meghan Fitzmartin and Belén Ortega brought him out of the closet as bisexual in August 2021.

If Superman (Bisexual Edition) really was bandwagoning it would have been a long time overdue.

DC Pride 2022 leaves a queer legacy

Case in point, this year’s DC Pride special, the company’s second annual showcase of an increasingly sizable stable of LGBTQ characters. Of the 12 stories housed in this year’s installment, half centered on out-of-the-closet legacy iterations of established characters.

And if there’s a running theme that winds through each of these stories, it’s about the weight of legacy and reputation on the ability of these newer heroes to embrace their own sexuality… and whether sexual identities and superhero identities can coexist in the public eye.

Devin Grayson/DC Comics

Consider, for instance, Devin Grayson’s and Nick Robles’ lead story on Jon Kent Superman. It is a delightful buddy-comedy comedy team-up, in which Jon brings his dour and unworldly friend Damian Wayne (a legacy character who happens to be the latest in a series of queer-themed Robins), to Pride. It’s a charming story with plenty of moments of genuine humor. But the heart of it is Jon’s own wrestling with the weight of the Superman name and mythos it imposes on him.

Informed by his boyfriend Jay Nakamura that he’s expected to wear his Superman togs to the parade, Jon become suddenly reticent to saddle the S-shield with his own bisexuality: “Symbols tell stories at the speed of sight,” he reflects in narrative captions, “But people don’t always agree on what symbols mean. And the meaning of a symbol can change depending on who’s viewing it.”

In the end, it’s Damian who assures him that identifying the symbol of Superman with Jon’s self-acceptance is perfectly in line with what Superman Sr. always represented: “Your dad would love it. It’d be you being you — which is exactly what he told you he wanted.”

The moral of Legacy is that symbols should adapt to the new generation, just as powerful symbols must adapt to them.

And Grayson’s story isn’t alone in selling us this particular message. A few pages later, erstwhile ’90s Green Arrow Connor Hawke makes a rare 21st-century appearance in a story by Ro Stein and Ted Brandt (here, like Jon, Connor is teaming up with Damian Wayne, a coincidental decision that hilariously makes Damian come off as everyone’s clueless straight best friend).

And it doesn’t take long before Connor, too, is mulling over the weight his queerness imposes on Green Arrow history: By page two, he’s thinking of his superheroic (and rather emphatically straight) father and writing, “I keep thinking about reaching out to Ollie, to get his perspective.”

Here’s another: Aquaman Jackson Hyde, the younger Aquaman, admits that it was difficult for him to accept his Atlantean roots. His childhood was filled with pressure to appear more humane (read: straight). Ray, the Golden Age Hero of the Same Name, is now the successor to his father. However, he wonders how to make a new family with the help of the legacy of his birth family.

The young people expressing themselves freely and openly with their genders is inspiring. But then, the cynicism sets in. These areWhat about the queer grownups? This, after all, is a bisexual Superman — but not ThatSuperman is not the Superman you see on your coffee mugs. It’s a queer Aquaman and Wonder Woman, but not the ones Jason Momoa or Gal Gadot would have to answer for.

A queer legacy character can be a great way to grab the headlines, without having to risk the acceptance of major IPs in the future. Isn’t DC just trying to have its Pride-frosted cake and eat it, too?

Bi Superman can sell bicycles

Image: Walmart

Devin Grayson’s experience with implicitly or explicitly queer DC characters is extensive. After writing a long string of mostly Batman-related DC titles beginning in the late ’90s, she was briefly announced as the writer of an ongoing series for Batwoman Kathy Kane (another queer legacy character, of a sort), and has said that her own headcanon for Nightwing includes the character’s bisexuality. Looking back, she tells me, there’s been a clear shift in the way the company is willing to out its top IP that has come only in the past few years:

“My understanding [in the late ’90s] was that any character with an action figure couldn’t be outed,” Grayson says. “Characters that were unknown to most of the general public — like Starman, say, or Maggie Sawyer, or Green-Lantern-no-not-the-active-one-with-a-series-but-the-older-one-nobody-outside-of-comics-fandom-knows-by-name — could be gay, but Superman had to be able to sell movie tickets and toothpaste in the Midwest.”

“You can see a clear shift between so-called ‘gay vague’ marketing and queer normalization in mainstream advertising around 2015,” Grayson continues. “Once you understand superheroes as licensed IP, it should be no surprise to find comics following that same general timeline.”

Is it cheating for toothpaste to make DC’s younger Superman queasy while DC remains straight? Well, maybe. But as far as Grayson is concerned, it’s less a matter of IP preservation than a portrait of real demographics:

“Looking at things like Gallup polls and GLAAD’s Accelerating Acceptance index, you often see higher levels of LGBTQ self-identification and acceptance in younger people than in their elders. So in that sense, it’s just a reflection of reality,” Grayson says.

“Additionally, there’s the issue of creating a new character versus changing an existing one. So many TV shows, films, comics and movies have focused on Clark and Lois that it would not be difficult to sell changing their sexuality. Personally, though I believe having someone who is actively Superman be LGBTQ is important, I don’t think that person has to be Clark. But there are multiverses and fanfic and ways to get around that if you disagree.”

Children are the future

Image: Tom Taylor, Daniele Di Nicuolo/DC Comics

On the other hand, for Tom Taylor, who wrote the story bringing Jon out of the closet, youth is less a driving factor than the changing priorities of the characters’ publisher. Although Taylor wanted to create a story featuring an out-queer hero for a long time, DC approached Taylor with the idea of bringing Superman to the open. Taylor was already toying with this notion.

“I’d been working in comics for about 12 years, and I’d had queer characters erased or denied,” Taylor recalls, “so I was a little bit trepidatious. But Jamie Rich, my editor at the time, said to me, ‘Tom, there’s been this idea floating around at DC. How would you feel…?’”

To Taylor’s mind, it’s a reflection not only of a changing readership, but a changing editorial culture over the past few years at the comic company. “We’ve just hit a point in time, particularly at DC, where editors — and everyone above editorial — is so committed to saying, We want the representation of these voices on the pages..”

If that seems like a small gesture, perhaps it shouldn’t. Taylor and Grayson point out that the culture shift Taylor and Grayson have noted comes at an era when politics and acceptance are being pulled backwards with alarming speed. As of the writing this article, there are 28 states that have passed anti-LGBTQ legislation in 2022. Eight have signed these bills into law. Transgender people were persecuted in court of law and criminalized. Queer books were also taken from library shelves.

Today, to be young and queer in America is to seek heroes in a nation that denies heroism every chance of triumph. Although a gay or bi person, ace or trans hero might seem like a cautious gesture, it can have a huge impact on the meaning of every word spoken. Even if these characters are, in fact, young and unsteady, perhaps that is a sign they have to create a new future for themselves.

Superman is out of the closet and there’s no way to put him back in. This is his legacy.