Atlanta’s Southern Voice looks at reaction to Buffy’s recent romp with a fellow slayer, and talks with journalist Andy Mangels and series editor Scott Allie about the depictions of gays and lesbians in mainstream comics:
… Lesbians in comics are much more visible sexually than gay men, Mangels says.
“Gay male characters exist as political statements, a victim, or sexless. There are the rare exceptions,” he says. “Lesbians are allowed to be sexy, ultraconfident, emasculating or be in a relationship.”
And, yes, there are transgender characters, but often they are tokens and exist to make a statement, according to Mangels. Rarely intrinsic to the story, trans characters “are an unusual addition to the storyline,” he says.
Allie, the Dark Horse editor, says comics like his exist on the fringe, which allows a certain freedom.
“We can do what you can’t do with Superman or Wonder Woman,” he says. “They gotta sell lunchboxes.”
The newspaper also interviews Buffy artist Georges Genty and Gay League‘s Joe Palmer.
March 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Hmmm… well, if there’s one thing I’ve seen aplenty, albeit from parousing places like scans_daily an other blogs, in superhero comics is how lesbianism is, more often than not, there to be used as titillation and a statement of how modern and tolerant a company is (I’m looking at you, DC and Marvel). They’re just there with all the flash and no substance and just as easily taken out of the picture.
DC in particular seems to have a big problem with this, hyping the new Batwoman aplenty and then knocking her out with a stab to the heart. Knockout got killed, the pairing in the Outsiders didn’t exactly have a good time under Batman’s new leadership, and even in Marvel, in the Runaways, the lesbian pairing there is seen as okay because one is a Skrull that can change gender, when, so far as I can remember in my reading of Fantastic Four, there were males and females. And then there’s the treatment of Northstar, who had been handled quite fairly in Alpha Flight’s original run, only to be killed three times by Wolverine in some stupid affair, and Freedom Ring’s shredding by the evil Tony Stark clone.
The writer above does have a point in how Darkhorse can do more about this, and that scene in particular is notable because the characters actually talk in the aftermath about what they’re going to do, rather than having this teasing buildup.
Still, would we get this if it had been two male characters? Would gay men have this chance at character development, even in a Darkhorse title?
Sadly, I’d have to say no because gay, in the wide spread media, is still seen as something comedic rather than normal or serious. I can recall quite a few movies over the years where this was taken as such.
I don’t mean to mix mediums of entertainment here, but I still feel that they’re intertwined, in a sense of how certain demographics of people are treated.