Ten days into the “lesbian Batwoman” story, the initial torrent of media attention has slowed to a trickle, giving way to reaction roundups, satires and the occasional think piece.

The toast of the Internet

At CBSNews.com, “Blogophile” writer Melissa McNamara notes that Kathy Kane’s lesbianism “was one of the most talked about news stories on the blogs this week.” Glancing around the Internet, McNamara gauges reaction from sources like Out.com, Dorioo and — wait a second. What’s this?

“Consider ‘lesbian Batwoman’ as this season’s Brokeback Mountain, only on a smaller stage,” Kevin Melrose at The Great Curve says.

I’ll be signing autographs from 2 to 3 p.m. in the mezzanine.

A ‘bold step’

The always-hysterical The Onion checks in with opinions from the person on the street: “I applaud DC Comics for taking the bold step of introducing a voluptuous, beautiful, girl-kissing superheroine,” ship builder “Liam Pierce” says. “I only hope DC’s legion of chronic masturbators will accept her.”

Just who’s making a big deal about it?

I’ve been meaning to link to this, but I’m only now getting around to it: At the always thought-provoking Written World, Ragnell responds to online grousing that DC Comics is making a big deal about Batwoman’s sexuality:

Here’s the thing, I read the interview with Didio. I read the original article. Despite myself, I was intrigued by the story. She sounds pretty cool and interesting, at least from the start. And Didio’s “I didn’t realize it would be this big as deal” thing may be a lie, but I’m leaning towards truth here. They have other gay characters, have had gay characters for years. Batwoman is a relatively minor character. They were asked to produce a list of diverse characters for a New York Times article on diversity in comics. They gave up their history with Milestone, a Hispanic teenager, and a lesbian socialite. It’s not that they’re considering gay people a sudden novelty right now. It’s that the article was specifically about characters that are not white heterosexuals, like we traditionally see in superhero comic books.

It’s a lengthy post, with plenty of quotes to support her position. The responses to the essay are well worth reading, too.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 10:07 am and is filed under DC Comics, Internet, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.