Episode 16: Superheroes

This week on the Petri Dish, we're wearing our underwear on the outside and talking about superheroes.

Science News

Remember This Fact?: What is a mutation?

Science Myth: Can radioactive things give you cancer?

Science Controversy: Designer babies

Film of the Week: Hollow Man

And happy birthday to our producer Kane too!


Further Thoughts
Homosexuality and the major publishing houses for super hero comics do not have a particularly close relationship for most of their history. In fact, the Comics Code Authority forbade any direct reference to LGBT themes until 1989, for fear of corrupting the youth who read the comics.

Despite that, there seems to have been a lot of subtle innuendo in comics before then. Or maybe I just have a filthy mind, or standards of appropriate behaviour have changed in the last 40 years. The relationship between Batman and Robin, for example, has always seemed a little... unconventional, for example. In fact, the character of Aunt Harriet (Dick Grayson's/Robin's aunt) was invented in 1964 purely to reduce the possiblity of "unfortunate implications" coming from an athletic batchelor living with his (batchelor) butler and gymnast ward. But Batman, especially in the 60s, was always very camp anyway. Introducing a maiden aunt character wasn't going to help.

(For some interpretations of this style of comic, and to show I'm not alone in my interpretation of this, see http://www.superdickery.com/. Especially the Seduction of the Innocent and Suffering Sappho! galleries. Really, go and look. They're hilarious.)

Even later, when we returned to the grim-and-gritty Batman of nineties comics, the Tim Burton films or the more recent Christopher Nolan films (starring Christian Bale), the character retained an air of sexuality sublimated into vigilante crime fighting. The Joker has always shown an unhealthy interest in Batman that has sometimes (The Dark Knight Returns or Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, for example) been overtly shown as psuedo-sexual. Of course, the fact that he's a villain is hardly presenting homosexual attraction in a good light.

The first openly gay character in DC was Extrano, which, (insultingly?) is Spanish for "strange" (in fairness though, it may just be a reference to Marvel's Dr. Strange). And what a flamingly gay stereotype he was. Extrano first appeared in 1987. Marvel introduced the character Northstar in 1979, who was intended to be gay from his first appearance but wasn't actually outed until 1992.

Overt lesbian superheroes and supervillains are much harder to find. They're much more likely to be bisexual, and more likely to be villains than heroes. The Dark Queen in Barbarella, Mystique and Destiny in X-Men, and Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy in Batman are all implied to be lesbians (although, since Mystique can change her sex, that's a bit more complex). Perhaps because the authors and readers of mainstream comics are more likely to be male than female, the idea of a depraved bisexual villainess is more appealing than a normal, bi or lesbian heroine? That may explain why there are so many more gay heroes than lesbian heroes too.

Perhaps the earliest oblique reference to trans issues in comic books was Madame Fatal in 1940, a former stage actor who lived alone (which is a stereotype so transparent that it barely deserves the term "oblique reference"). To rescue his daughter from kidnappers, he dressed as an old woman so the criminals would underestimate him. Then he found he liked it, and Madame Fatal's vigilante career was born. Unfortunately, Madame Fatal later died off-screen (after DC bought the licence to the character), and has only reappeared a few times since in joking references to the character's cross dressing.

If there's a common theme running through these characters, it's that most of them, especially in earlier strips, were conceived of as joke or parody characters. Their non-mainstream attributes were used mockingly, or as a symptom of their villainy. Partly this may because most comics are written in America, aimed at adolescent boys, and needs to bypass conservative censors. None of these three groups are well known for their appreciation of LGBT issues.

Even in more politically aware eras, where there are far more gay heroes (still no lesbians though), they do seem to attract more abuse than their straight conterparts. I don't want to seem over-sensitive about this, since superheroes go through some pretty rough experiences generally, but I'm not the only one to have noticed this. Perry Moore (executive producer of the Chronicles of Narnia, amongst other things), was so incensed when Northstar was killed in 3 different continuities in the space of one month, once by the hero Wolverine, that he made a list of all the LGBT characters in these comics and what had happened to them.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/0081728

He also wrote a young adult novel, Hero, trying to present a gay teenaged super hero in a more positive light. Still no lesbians though.