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Underground > Comic Books >

Superman: If he can fight for the south or be a communist, why can't he...

  
  

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Alex's Grandma
11:45 / 04.08.04
Stoat,

Ok, consider it done.

What would be funny is if five or six other people have got too much time on their hands/can't be arsed to do any work at the moment/are too hungover to function properly, and Celiberal.com is inundated this stuff.
 
 
gridley
12:26 / 04.08.04
[threadrot]

So, he wouldn't do a what-if where Clark was black, or asian, or furry, or whatever?

Now you're really on to something. What if in the 1930s, a superman landed in America (I'd probably make it the rural south) and he was black. Think of the stories you could tell. It would put a whole different spin on any number if African-American experiences of the past century (lynchings, segregation, wars, civil rights movement).

[/threadrot]
 
 
Lord Morgue
13:03 / 04.08.04
Heh, I think the two basic responses we got were: Byrne forum: "Superman wouldn't be gay because he just WOULDN'T, alright?! He's got D.N.A. and I said so."
Millarworld: "Huh huh. Superman is gay.

Hey, remember that old Phillip José Farmer essay, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", on the physiological difficulties of Lois and Clark consummating their relationship, what with a Kryptonian prostate presumably having the power of a small railgun, and Kryptonian sperm able to both fly and drill through titanium in search of female ovum. God, I just had a "Filth" flashback.
Well, I don't think Batman, Jimmy Olsen, Lex Luthor or Perry White would want the equivalent of a claymore mine going off in their bottoms, do you? Or conversely, I can't see any of them putting their tubesteak anywhere near a sphincter that could turn a coal enema into diamond crap.

Just a thought.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:19 / 04.08.04
Even skipping over the role of the prostate, I never really bought this logic, assuming as it does that Superman's body functions just like a normal person's body but much more so. This is pretty clearly not the case. As Stan Lee comments, "he's a little obsessed with superheroes' penises, but that will pass".

I'd be more curious about how he feels pleasure when it appears that he is largely unaffected on a sensory level by, for example, machine gun fire? Didn't somebody (Byrne, who is of course the brother of RTE legend Gay Byrne) suggest that his invulnerability was in fact somehow psionic? Certainly his body becomes more vulnerable as his solar energy is expended... maybe he is (ironically) only really up for the yoghurt and ostrich feathers when he is utterly knackered?
 
 
_Boboss
13:44 / 04.08.04
yeh i never quite got that. superman's powers aren't about him being mad strong, they're about him always getting everything right. a super-shagstyle wouldn't be at lightspeed and capable of cracking meteors, but just the right swurve for maximum lois pleasure and babies at will, surely.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:15 / 04.08.04
Dagnabbit! I've just changed my name and can therefore not be the Haus of Maximum Lois Pleasure...

Ah well. This would also explain how he could experience passion also - he is able to feel when he wants to, which you can explain either as physiological (some sort of bodily threat reaction makes his skin harder), psionic or just about moving energy around. I don't think the physics, or the biology, of Superman have ever really been satisfactorily explained...

Byrne doesn't seem to be homophobic, per se - more bewildered ("but Superman isn't gay.. so how could he be gay?). He is also probably reacting to the idea of "Homosexuality is a lifesdtyle choice" in a specifically American way - that is, he sees the phrase as a tool used by the religious right to accuse homosexuals of indulging in a personal choice rather than being "born that way", and of claiming that one can "stop being gay", with all the misery that involves... So, it's maybe not such an irritating stance. His science is wobbly, mind.

I think that superhero sexualities are usually played out thrugh their gay chums being bashed (Green Lantern) or killed (Black Lightning) - so, one can show heroic gay people, but not gay heroes. Also, it is heroic *victimhood*... not a very "Super" trait...
 
 
Alex's Grandma
15:10 / 04.08.04
Oh dear. Well after being told I " must have had problems as a child, " I've now been banned by Celiberal.com, so we can probably assume those guys just aren't ready for a gay Superman.

And I thought my pitch was quite subtly done as well. I mean I made it clear it was an Elseworlds project, and everything.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
15:50 / 04.08.04
I wonder whether superhumans can have a conventional sexuality. We like to put neat labels on things, so we tend to try to box ordinary humans as 'gay', straight', or 'bisexual' - even here, where there have been any number of discussions about queer and non-standard genders and their related sexualities, proclivities and so on. With superhumans, surely those terms are of even more questionable relevance?

Brian Michael Bendis wrote a speech for his coroner in Powers which basically pointed out that superhumans aren't even close to baseline human. They can fly, they don't die if you shoot them in the head, and so on. He often can't figure out why they died because they have the wrong organs or extra ones whose function he can't guess. So what traction can an abbreviated human sexual lexicon of uncertain merits hope to get on Superman and his fellow overfolks? Wonderwoman is supposed to be human, until you realise that she's a theoretically part of the Greek mythological continuity, which is rife with (to say the least) non-standard sexual liasons.

And one of the main things about sexual definitions is power - whoever has the power makes the labels. Superhumans have power in spades. They are - as we have been told endlessly by Alan Moore and everyone else since, the de facto new rulers of the world. They can make the terms.

(So much to say, so many different worlds... stopping now.)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:09 / 04.08.04
Wonderwoman is supposed to be human

Way-ull, no. She's (a) a goddess and (b) a statue, depending. I'm not sure what those elements wudl do to her sexual self-perception. I *would* suggest that a lot of "non-human" superheroes, like Superman, Wonder Woman, even after a fashion the Martian Manhunter or similar, make a deal whereby they tak e on elements of humanity that they do not strictly speaking need in order to be unthreatening to humans and to their own self-perception.

However. There is a moment is Starman where Mikaal Thomas has told Jack Knight that he dreamed of his old nemesis killing his dead lover, Lyssa. JAck takes a while to catch on, but eventually says that he thought Mikaal was -

"Gay? I'm alien, Jack."

Mikaal has just been getting on with what is natural to him, in this case seeing a man, and Jack has put him in a suitable human box.

So, if Kryptonians don't really make the sex, as I believe that they don't in the current vision of what Krypton was like, then sexual desire of any kind - the desire to make with the maximum Lois pleasure - was presumably in some way learned behaviour...
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
16:19 / 04.08.04
So, IJGU Dave, I'm guessing you were How late it is, Dave?

Damn.

Good try, though. I owe you a beer. Didja get any responses or was your thread just deleted?

Fucking libertarians. Always with the restrictions.
 
 
FinderWolf
16:51 / 04.08.04
>> the guy who spent years trying to sneak gay and lesbian characters into mainstream comics (Northstar in Alpha Flight, Maggie Sawyer in Superman, Headhunter in Namor),

Headhunter was supposed to be gay? That villain was so bizarre -- but I don't remember indications that Headhunter was gay.

And thankfully, Greg Rucka & Ed Brubaker have since used Maggie Sawyer very well in GOTHAM CENTRAL (and even back in Rucka's DETECTIVE run), in addition to revealing that Renee Montoya is gay as well.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
17:18 / 04.08.04
I yield to your superior Wonderknowledge. I had this vague idea that the Amazon colony was sort of uber-human ladies hanging out. Hence "You are a wonder, my daughter".

I love the Starman thing. I haven't read that bit. Cooooool...
 
 
FinderWolf
17:27 / 04.08.04
Also, George Perez hinted in his run that many of the Amazons on Paradise Island/Themisycra were lesbians.
 
 
A beautiful tunnel of ghosts
17:39 / 04.08.04
I've enjoyed reading these threads immensely: the Celiberal .com reaction notwithstanding, the discussions here and on Byrne Robotics have been extremely thought-provoking, although I haven't read the discussion on MillarWorld, because I don't want to register. "...Woman of Kleenex" is by Larry Niven, IIRC.

Byrne's reaction on Byrne Robotics, IMO, was surprisingly rational, given his irrational reactions to other posts, and is JHO (Just His Opinion), as is his choice to believe the genetic theory of homosexuality. I don't know enough about either the nature or nurture theories of homosexuality to have an opinion, and I'll be reading as much as I can to be better informed in any further discussion. I'm disappointed that Byrne's opinion also excludes other examinations of the character, but there are other and more influential writers that could explore other ideas.

The concept of a black Superman has been examined to an extent in "Truth", Robert Morales and Kyle Baker's Marvel miniseries about the black predecessor to Captain America; they explore the idea of a black superhuman in a predominantly white environment and his experience as a superhuman member of an oppressed minority.

I'd like to read a Superman story in which he was gay, as I agree that, as discussed in Kill Bill Vol. 2, Clark is the alter-ego and Superman is the personality. The secrecy that Kal-El maintains would have an additional dimension: would he extend his sexuality to the alter-ego of Clark, or would he present as heterosexual?

A relationship with Bat-Man would be similarly interesting: Bat-Man is emotionally dysfunctional and would have difficulty in reciprocating Kal-El's feelings, but their relationship could provide emotional support for Bat-Man or could alienate him further.

Mink, I was very interested in your comment about sexuality and gender labels with regard to superhumans, including aliens; I believe that these are concepts that we or our descendants will have to explore in a post-human environment and it's a thought-provoking subject. I'd agree that the labels we use to define concepts of sexuality and gender are proving to be limiting our discussion of and understanding of these ideas, and again these are subjects I believe of which there needs to be greater discussion. How does a super-human experience the environment around them? What psychological differences do differing physiologies produce?

*lights 'Jolly Good' ("The Gentleman's Smoke") brand cigarette* Do continue, please.
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
22:23 / 04.08.04
What if in the 1930s, a superman landed in America (I'd probably make it the rural south) and he was black. Think of the stories you could tell. It would put a whole different spin on any number if African-American experiences of the past century (lynchings, segregation, wars, civil rights movement).

It's been done. It was ICON, part of the Milestone line.

/+,
 
 
Lord Morgue
10:39 / 05.08.04
Oh yeah, I was just going to mention Icon, the whole Dakota universe was pretty cool.
Headhunter's gaiety was pretty clear to me, Byrne was practically semaphoring it from the top of Four Freedoms Plaza- the suit, short hair, cute female secretary/ plaything that he ALWAYS gives his hetero male villains, and the line, when Phoebe Marrs was trying to get her brother back out of her "brains trust", when she asked wasn't there AAAAANYTHING she could do, Headsy just kind of took Phoebe's chin in her hand and said "Well, there just might have been, sweet thang..."
Headhunter was sooo cool. She hasn't appeared since, has she?
And Phil Foglio, in whose stories, even the mainstream ones, sexuality is always addressed as an issue (hell, even Stanley's Monster had a perverted B+D demoness ex-girlfriend) put forward that Amazon strength has a psychological safeguard against hurting a loved one- hence to breed, an Amazon must be "conquered", not by force, but by love.
Byrne's redux Supes has a force-field aura at skin level. Presumably it drops so he can bathe, or he'd be Stinkyman. Maybe his strength also ramps down when he's playing "boom tube" with Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lora Li, Leta Lal... What is it with Clark and the initials L.L.? Hold on, Supergirl's name was Linda Lee... Dude! That's your cousin, you farmboy superfreak! Oh, now I'm worried about Little Lotta, Lash Leroux, Lil' Lobo...
 
 
gridley
12:29 / 05.08.04
But wasn't Icon just a joke comic? I only read issue, but it was pretty silly, parodying Hank Pym and his superhero incarnations.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
10:24 / 06.08.04
I wasn't sure, reading the responses on both forums, whether the responses were typical comic readers negativety towards anything or intellectualised homophobia ("B-but SUPERMAN can't be gay!"), I tend to feel it's a valid point to say a story based around Superman being gay wouldn't be in itself particularly interesting, but JB's semantic quibbles over what the rules for 'Elseworlds' were supposed to be seemed a curious way to say no to the idea...
 
 
Haus of Mystery
10:46 / 06.08.04
ICON wasn't a joke comic - it was part of a line of comics that not only attempted to portray multi-racial superheroes in a 'realistic' and relevant manner, but also give work to up and coming black and asian creators. All in all it was an admirable move that produced a number of excellent comics (Static, Xombi,Icon), some OK ones (Hardware, Blood Syndicate) and some bad (I can't remember off-hand, but they were generally part of the 'killer' trend of 'gritty' 90's comics). Believe it or not, they had concerns other than that of parodying the Avengers, and having black characters with 'Black' as aprefix to their character names.
 
 
Lord Morgue
11:09 / 06.08.04
There's a Static cartoon, isn't there? It was the only Dakota spinoff as far as I know, but it occasionally used stuff from the larger Milestone continuity.
Ohhh, hey, semi-offtopic here, but if you wanna see a comic that REALLY charges headon into racial and sexual issues and pulls no punches, check out "Elitists" at this link. The other two comics, "Caine" and "Genexorcists" feature some extremely heavy explorations of religion and biblical themes. The funny loader the artist uses for the pages doesn't seem to work the way he says, so you have to click the links to load the next page manually. Ghod, I'd love to see this maniac write for Marvel or D.C.. He likes ISSUES!

GenXorcist.com

Great pull quote:
"You're going to hell, if you get there before me, drop me a line, and in the meantime, this is f***ing sweet."
--ReaperCB919
 
  

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