See, Ross isn’t homophobic, he’s just a big fanboy.

Well thank Christ that Andy Mangels didn’t use this opportunity to hype himself at all. Phew!

I agree with Ross that current creators should respect the intent/design of a character based on the original creator. However, with today’s more drama heavy – character rich comics it makes sense that we might see a broader history of a character that was never presented before. Doesn’t mean dissing what came before. Gay or not.

I semi-agree with it is better to have a new character created with specific character elements than to ‘meddle’ with an existing – but then doesn’t creating a Gay character for the sake of gayness setup some ethical delimmas of its own?

It was probably a cautionary move to get the word out not to go after Geoff Johns for comments made by Alex Ross, but I find it disturbing that people might actually be considering doing that.

I wonder what he thinks about Northstar.

“He’s not a flamer, he’s a faerie! GET IT RIGHT!”

Alex’s apology was a mature one; I just hope that we don’t have to feel that our comments are being scrutinized by the political correct cops.

Somewhat off-topic, Andy Mangels has the awesomest mustache I’ve seen in years.

No…I believe that Andy used the “I’m gay and he’s my friend” card more than Alex used the “my friend is gay” card.

Being gay, I wasn’t offended at Ross’ comments. I can understand how he’s upset if a character he’s known for a while is written to be gay because it’s trendy and adds diversity. It’s better if the characters are established as gay like in Young Avengers, Runaways, Ultimate X-Men, etc.

I just fear that once a writer like Allan Heinberg creates a gay hero, he has to realize that other straight men will be writing his character and will probably handle their relationships poorly, using stereotypes because of lack of knowledge of gay issues, or ignore them altogether.

Northstar doesn’t really have any depth, I just remember some gay jokes between him and Juggernaut

Sal ! For shame ! You are playing the ” I am gay and this does not bother me at all ” card ! Don’t you know this is the internet ? You are not supposed to make sense…

I think that it’s a horrible mistake to think a character can’t grow and change away from what their creator intended, but it has to be gradual and logical and story driven.

It’s fine if we’re talking about The Spirit or The Phantom or a character in The Walking Dead. They probably shouldn’t change much past the creators’ intentions.

It’s not so fine if we’re talking about someone who exists in a shared universe.

The real strength of these characters are in the different take.

And the real strength in the different takes is that they should grow organically from what came before.

But if you look at a character now as opposed to 30 years ago, he SHOULD be very, very different, because he should have grown and changed a little bit every issue.

The trick of it is to grow from what’s on the paper, as opposed to retconning and rewriting. Taking a pen to extend lines is great. Taking an eraser to them isn’t generally all that great. Unless it’s real minor things that are getting in the way of a great story, and then it should be done by committee and with a ton of care and an attempt to explain it without interfering with the story if at all possible.

Making it so Hal snaps at what happened in Coast City and takes his fearlessness another level in defending his actions by knowing he’ll make everything right in the end.. fine.

Pretending that never happened.. not fine.

Coming up with a goofy explanation with a yellow bug.. slightly better than pretending it never happened.

And I think you can read Infinity Inc and see a real possibility about Todd’s sexual preference (especially during and after that incredibly positive relationship with Harlequinn II).

—-
Anyway, I sort of figured that Alex’s comments weren’t homophobic, just fanboyish, but given A) the poor way he worded them and B) the fact that he was hammering on Andreyko and Manhunter, and a possessive need (probably as just a bad a fan as Ross is) to defend the book and the work done there.. well I’m glad to see an apology and that he’s at least given a little more thought to things, as opposed to seeing “CHANGE” and immediately thinking “BAD!”

My concern is this:

Geoff has a rather bad track record with gay characters. I realize Marc says he’s not homophobic and that’s fine but he seems like he’d rather kill a character, drive a character to insantity, or “straighten” a character than write a realistic, “normal” gay character. I can understand the arguement that some writers may have intended to make Charles McNider gay but they never did so it’s not established but I’d have to say it’s a little more complicated than that.

For one, we’re talking about an era in comics (starting in the 1940s and actually going through most of the 80s) where it would have simply been unacceptable to show him in bed with another man, much less kissing one. There are dozens of books written about, seminars talking about, and articles dedicated to explaining that some writers (whether they be movie writers, novel writers, or comic book writers) had to allude to a character’s sexuality without showing it straight forwardly knowing that most people wouldn’t see it… and the ones who did were probably the ones looking for it.

The situation is also more complicated in that it isn’t only 1 or 2 situations where Geoff has done things to make gay characters nuts, dead, or straight.

Obsidion had long been hinted about and, while it wasn’t set in stone in Justice League America, it certainly was brought up as a topic. Geoff got his hands on him and made him insane (which I have to say seems like far worse “molestation” than making a character a happily-coupled, well-adjusted gay hero).

Charles McNider was implied to be gay by several of his previous writers dating back to his original days even. Granted, it was never confirmed but in his case that wouldn’t be where I run into a problem. The problem is how Geoff confirmed his straight-ness. In a story where there was really no point at all in saying anything about it (since it didn’t advance the story at all) he had Pieter say that he knew something that few other people knew… that he and Myra Mason had a relationship. So explain this to me: None of the rest of the JSA have ever mentioned this… few people knew about their relationship… but for some reason a guy who was an medical intern under him knows that they had a deep and meaningful relationship! A guy who, by his own admission, had a superficial-at-best connection to his heroic namesake. And he just happens to mention this in a story where it has no real impact. Are you gong to tell me that Geoff didn’t put that statement in there for no other reason than to squash any thoughts of someone ever expanding on other writers’ intensions to make him gay?

Or how about the Pied Piper? Here’s a character who not only was portreyed openly and unquestionably as gay… he was probably one of the gay pioneers in comics, getting the role long before many other writers dared to openly show a homosexual character in their book. So when Goeff was writing Flash, what was one of the very first things that happened when Piper appeared? He went crazy and became creepy. Granted, Geoff kinda sorta lifted the “spell” right at the last second before his run was over… but it was a pretty convenient way to make sure you didn’t have to write one of the only strongly established gay male characters in the DCU as gay.

I haven’t read the most recent issue of Green Lantern yet, but I hear there’s another interesting example of Geoff writing a gay character in that book. Tasmanian Devil, who has been established as being gay (at least in current continuity) is brainwashed and attacking Hal. Granted, I should (and will) wait until I read the issue to make a judgement on this, but from the description of the issue it sounds like Goeff says that Ralph and Wally used to tease Hal about how Tas had a crush on him. On one hand I’m surprised to see Goeff actually do something that states that the character is gay but on the other hand the fact that he’s doing it in a way that implies that Ralph (who had always been shown to be fine with Tas’ sexuality and who was a friend of Tas) and Wally (who had the Piper as one of his best friends) would probably be the last to make Tas the butt of their jokes, even if Hal IS a homophobe.

Finally there is Sand who, like Charles, never was shown “on-screen” to be gay, despite comments by James Robinson that he had intended to make him gay. Fine, who ever writes him gets to do what he wants with him… but one of Geoff’s first acts in the JSA book when he didn’t have a co-writer (ie, the first issue that Robinson and Goyer had nothing to do with) he has Sand randomly end up making out with Kendra! That’d be fine if the story went somewhere I guess… but it ended up not going anywhere at all. They didn’t date… they didn’t have a relationship… after a while there wasn’t even a mention of them being attracted to each other. So yeah, Geoff was writing the character so he could do what he wanted… but are you telling me that the timing and circumstance of this wasn’t at least odd?

I’ll wait to see I guess, but I have a feeling I’d be pretty offended if I heard the inside scoop of what went on between Johns/Ross and Andreyko. You can’t tell me that Marc didn’t have further plans for the character with the way he was developing him in Manhunter… and you can’t tell me that the comments we’ve heard so far make it sound like they have big future plans (secruity guard?) for Todd.

Additionally, I don’t see how this is “retroactive” to Todd’s characterization. I dated girls through the first couple years in college before I came out. Todd dated girls through around the same point in his life. I even *liked* the girls I dated (though not quite the same way) and if you read his situations, he wasn’t really very happy in his relationships with girls he dated. Just because someone dates girls and suddenly is dating guys doesn’t mean that they’ve been “retconned”… I don’t think my orientation had anything to do with Superboy-Prime punching on the walls of reality.

“This is like that time on THE APPRENTICE when one (white) woman was called a racist because she said, “That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” to another (black) woman.

People only hear what they want to hear.”

Shut it, honkey.

Ross’ comments may not have been homophobic but they are heterosexist in the sense that the presumption is that a character is straight – unless the original creator of that character deliberately intended for them to be gay.

But the vast majority of characters created in the past decades could not have been intentionally created as gay. First of all you had the Comics Code Authority which clamped down on any hint of “sexual deviance” in comics and then you had the fact that openly homosexual characters would never have been accepted by a mainstream audience anytime except in the most recent past.

So you have a situation where no character created in the Golden, Silver, or Bronze Age, or even more recently than that, could ever conceivably “come out of the closet” under Ross’ standards.

Ross’ attitude is essentially, I have nothing against gay characters, just don’t make characters out to be gay who were never originally written or intended that way by their creators.

Ross probably fails to see why his attitude could possibly be perceived as heterosexist, but imagine the reaction of someone where to say regarding the recent revelation of The Thing’s Jewish heritage: “Stan and Jack never explicitly wrote The Thing as Jewish, and never intended him to be so. Therefore, making The Thing Jewish is a grave disservice and creative molestation of the character. that said, I have nothing against Jews and I’m not anti-Semitic.” Don’t you think someone might conceivably see those remarks as at least inadvertently offenisive?

-Stephen

Bah! It’s not enough! He’s offended the PC of America and like Mel Gibson and other public figures, must beg on hand and knee for forgiveness from those he’s wronged!

Uh, no seriously, it’s not a big deal people. Sorry. Stop trying to make everything in existance about one of the axis your life revolves around once in a while eh?

I don’t know why people keep saying this isn’t a big deal. Sexuality and race are two things that you must be careful about. There’s so much hatred and stuff out there that you really DO need to be careful about what word choices you make. Alex Ross even acknowledges that his choice of words or whatever is okay. And yes, he’s a public figure, so he should address the potentially offensive nature of his speech. I’d expect people in my day-to-day interactions to apologize or explain themselves if they made comments that could be interpreted as talking bad about Mexicans that I didn’t really appreciate.

I also don’t know how you could defend his position and say it fundamentally alters a character to just ‘randomly’ make him gay and how it messes with the original intentions of the original stories. Like someone mentioned above, the big yellow bug of fear that made Hal crazy wasn’t originally intended and I would argue that it totally undermines the entire arc that Hal Jordan went through. He’s been essentially exonerated of any wrongdoing because it wasn’t him at all. It renders his entire ten years or whatever as being Parallax/The Spectre pretty pointless. Does ‘making’ Obsidian gay do the same thing? I don’t really think so. It doesn’t change any of the old stories in any terrible way.

Todd was written as a dark character with a bad temper. He was written as having been in an abusive situation with the parents that raised him (not saying sexually, necessarily, but they established he had a crappy upbringing). His going crazy was MUCH more firmly rooted in his history than being made into a gay character. I read all of the Infinity Inc issues…there was no obvious build up for him being gay there. Gerard Jones decided to go with that idea with little previous support.

And I love how people are criticizing Alex’s “don’t make changes that are counter to the creators’ original intentions” in this case, but can see other cases where it makes sense. Be honest, then…it is all a matter of where you want to pick and choose to apply that. Just be fair to the guy: he threw a similar hissy fit about Aquaman’s PAD changes.

KHuxford,

I don’t know how many gay men you personally know in your life but many of them would tell you that they didn’t come bursting out of the closet wearing a tiara and cha-cha heels when they turned 13 years old and hit puberty.

For many – I would argue most – gay men coming out of the closet usually involves a long degree of psychological turmoil and introspection. I’m in my late 30s and I didn’t fully accept my homosexuality until I was in my mid 20s. When I started coming out to family, I’m sure they too thought it was shocking with “no obvious buildup” to prepare them for that revelation.

Yeah, maybe Andreyko could have shown that inner turmoil in the pages of MANHUNTER. But Todd isn’t the star of that book. And maybe he just felt that kind of presentation is all played out and just wanted to show a healthy, functioning gay relationship. Now THAT’S something we don’t see every day!

Do you get just as upset when a heterosexual character in a comic suddenly reveals they have a crush on another character? Do you get your panties in a bunch and say, “Where was the buildup? I find this sudden expression of romantic interest completely implausible!”?

If not, maybe you should question why you hold homosexuality to some kind of different standard as heterosexuality.

Between this one and other threads I have seen lately (the white tiger one, the Chuck Dixon one, etc), it seems like people scourge the internet to be offended. Race, sexuality, everything is a good excuse just to vent how offended we are. And even when the truth is pretty obvious, or a consensus is reached, STILL some posters go out of their way to ignore all this and start again. The internet is a wonderful thing, but if it’s really a mirror of our life, then I am very sad.

Not to be accused of being homophobic but:

“Even though my career has veered outside the realm of comics these days and into best-selling novels and directing documentaries, I still have feet in the comic world;”

What an a-hole thing to say.
Is Mangels a character in a Christopher Guest film?
(Or as he would apparently put it, “the world of box office smash Christopher Guest films”?)

Pack: I’m with you on that point if it were that situation alone. Honestly, if it he had said “Booster and Beetle” instead of “Wally and Ralph” it wouldn’t have even popped up on my radar at all. Look, I’m probably coming off right now as if I go around hunting for this stuff and that’s not the case. Things happened (not necessarily in comics) that made it easier for these things to stand out when reading his books. One of these cases.. or two… or whatever… by themselves, I’d never even question it. And as I’ve pointed out, generally if I simply don’t like a comic I don’t read it and just be quiet about it knowing that I read them to enjoy them… and that someone else is probably enjoying the comic I’m not… and I’m happy for them.

In this case, though, it hits on an issue that’s close to home… and takes a character out of one of my favorite books where I felt he was being fleshed out in a suprisingly positive way… to, at the very best, put him in a cast of hundreds where he’ll have to fight for face time… and at the very worst, was put there because the writers involved didn’t want the things that I liked about the character to see any further advancement in that direction because they didn’t want to see “their” character gay and happy.

That’s pathetic that Ross needed to hear from Roy Thomas, Mike Machlan and Jerry Ordway. To tell him that “Obsidian’s being gay was not necessarily inherent in the character from the beginning, but it’s not offensive or ill-suited to who he was.”

I know very little of the Obsidian character, and its pretty much common sense not to assume shit like Ross did.

Who Cares

Um, Tasmanian Devil was “outed” about 15 years ago.

Heh.