IN the politically-charged environment within which we live today it seems everyone is concerned with being viewed as being as politically correct (sic) as the next guy. There is certainly no shortage of people who really don't give a rat's ass about the topics society as a whole seems to be concerned with, not the least of which today is same sex gender equality. The religious right wants us to believe that homosexuality is demonic while pro-gay groups seem bent upon telling us if we aren't in favor of gays we are just as doomed as the religious right says gays are.
In just such a malicious environment Marvel Comics Group recently stated they were making a superhero gay (X-Men Northstar will soon be marrying his boyfriend) and DC Comics naturally reacted (not responded, which is a key point here) by stating that one of their heroes would soon be anounced as being gay. Thus, a retired Justice Society member, the original Green Lantern from the "alternate Earth" wherein reside all the superheroes from the 1940s who subsequently were shelved once the Golden Age of comics met its demise at the end of the same decade, was ordained to be the one to "bite the bullet" and become gay. Alan Scott, even though he has been shown to be much older than the Silver Age heroes (those from the 1960s), including his Green lantern counterpart, Hal Jordan (most recently of movie-flop fame), and has a daughter in the comics universe (Jennifer Lynn Hayden, aka, Jade), who has served, among other things, as the first female Green Lantern of Earth.
It seems that in its eagerness to be viewed as "equally PC" as Marvel, DC has injected homosexuality into a character that has such a well-known and definitive heterosexual persona. Those in charge at DC obviously felt they were under the gun, so to speak, in getting a gay hero out front so all could see they were not lagging behind anyone when it came to "being sensitive" to the gay issue, but the best they could do was to reboot one of the most decidedly non-gay heroes they have ever had (Okay, I could see where Superman would be out of the question), but wouldn't it have been better had they introduced a new character or at the very least taken one of their newer heroes who was already enjoying popularity among the younger readers of today, rather than "outing" an old geezer like Alan Scott, even if they did magically rejuvenate him in their newly rebooted DCverse? Certainly there are many heroes out there who could easily fit the bill better than one created over seven decades ago.
My views on this was that DC wasn't and still isn't actually interested in having a gay hero (anymore than Marvel is, but that's another issue - no pun intended), they simply didn't want to be viewed as not being interested. Their grade on this reboot?
"F" for FAIL!
No comments:
Post a Comment