GLR July-August 2023

ESSAY

We’re Heroes, We’re Queeroes... A NDREW W HITE

I N THE THIRD DECADE of the 21st century, DC Comics superheroes—the subject of many a queer kid’s incipient desires—have burst free of the Kryptonite closet. Batman’s current Robin, Tim Drake, tends to Bat man’s mental health while guarding Gotham and going on his first date with a boy. Aquaman coaches the gay Black son of his enemy Manta to be the next super-steward of the oceans. And Superman and Lois’ bisexual son Jon bears Dad’s name, cape, and responsibilities while Superman père flies to other galaxies. Rainbow flags ripple over Metropolis, Atlantis, and Gotham City, and in the hearts of gay superhero fans everywhere. Whether your Justice League memories are of comics, cartoons, TV, or movies, the origin story of most superheroes is in comic books, and—like muscles in spandex— comics are where queer representa tion dwells and swells today. This is new for us lads; gay women in DC Comics broke the lavender ceiling before we did. Wonder Woman’s bi sexuality was never really hidden, and Batwoman Kathy Kane has been out since 2006—with arcs in Bat woman: Elegy , Batwoman: Rebirth , and a delightful outing in Bomb shells as a Women’s League baseball player with a girlfriend who looks like Lana Turner. Two decades ago, trans lesbians had a promising start at DC when trans writer Rachel Pol lack created Coagula—whose name referenced the alchemical maxim solve et coagula , or “melt and meld,” reminding us that the human body, like metals, can be disassembled and remade to order. Sadly, Coagula’s run was only two years, though she recently made a cameo in DC’s Pride special, one of June 2022’s top-selling comic books. To trace the odysseys of the new boys in the DC gaybor hood—Jon Kent as Superman, Jackson Hyde as Aquaman, and Tim Drake as Robin—three trade paperbacks tell their tales. (For those of you who aren’t genre geeks, trade paperbacks col lect individual comic issues into full stories to satisfy Aris totelian notions of plot, character, and theme.) Your best Andrew White, based in Philadelphia, works in libraries, museums, and sometimes at the zoo. Now and then he publishes a short story.

introductions to bisexual Superman and Robin and gay Aqua man are Superman: Son of Kal-El; Aquaman: The Becoming; and DC Pride: Tim Drake Special . Tom Taylor, Brandon Thomas, and Meghan Fitzmartin are the writers here, and each tells a story far better than, say, the recent crop of DC movies (though Henry Cavill’s adamantine beauty aside, that may be setting the bar a bit low). Jackson Hyde, the Black gay Aqualad-cum-Aquaman in Aquaman: The Becoming, is as fervent, conflicted, and com pelling as James Dean—and handsome beyond the dreams of

pornography. Opera fans will find much to like in Aquaman: The Be coming, which would be a perfect li bretto for Verdi in his dynastic melodrama mode ( Il Trovatore , Don Carlos ). As Aquaman-elect, Jackson Hyde struggles to resolve the legacy of being the son of a super-villain (Manta) while attempting to unite the kingdoms of Atlantis and Xebel with out damaging the fragile alliances be tween his own Atlantean and Xebeline families. By comparison, Bonnie Prince Charlie had it easy. In DC Pride: Tim Drake Special, DC assembles the development of Tim Drake’s Robin so that fans can read his arc in one place instead of sifting through back issues of Bat man: Urban Legends , where Robin initially came out. Tim Drake is one of many “Robins” to work alongside Batman and the first to be canonically queer. Drake looks like that sweetly bland boy from your hometown that you only learned was bisexual years after you moved away. His presence in Batman’s life is an object lesson on how out queer men erode the patriar

Tim Drake as gay Robin has inhabited numerous DC covers..

chal bonds that constrain our straight male friends. When Bruce Wayne becomes more “broody” than usual, Tim intuits that something has “gotten through the kevlar.” A populist mob con fronts Batman; Tim reminds him that he hasn’t been himself lately and counsels self-care. Instead, Batman shocks him—and the reader—by defusing the mob leader’s anger with a hug. Solve et coagula ; DC’s renovated queer supermen illustrate how the liberation of one group liberates all. But when jingoism and hierarchy are seen as integral to na tional identity, liberation can be threatening. One crack in patri archy’s wall allows all manner of wokeness to scrabble through.

TheG & LR

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