Barbelith Underground > Comic Books

I, for one, would like to see 'Sociably Responsible Ennis' writing. Because it would scare the crap out of me.

Troubled Souls. A bit preachy, but certainly socially responsible.

It's not the Ennis can't be socially responsible, it's more that he chooses not to be - which is fine. Hitman, for example, showed that he can do gross-out funny, violent, tasteless humour without becoming either hopelessly obssesed with showing the other boys how far he can pull his arse open (Dicks) or utterly up his own vanity-project see previously referenced (Preacher). There are plenty of other people who can be socially responsible.

The issue here is possibly more about whether an inept handling of homosexuality leads to a bad Midnighter comic. Not entirely surprisingly, in the hands of Mark Millar Apollo and the Midnighter became two very good friends who also happened to be a therapeutic device to explore the author's issues about anal penetration. If I recall correctly, even taboo-busting Ellis, happy to show other superhero combinations in bed with each other, had his big moment being the Midnighter... kissing Apollo. For two people who have been in a relationship for presumably about a decade, this is not a huge shock. From what I've read of Garth Ennis' Authority, Apollo and the Midnighter's relationship is mainly used for comedy value - the Midnighter is butch, Apollo prissy. Lots of people, including the Midnighter, talk a lot about them liking sex with men, but they don't actually have it.

And, because Ennis characters express either their heroism and/or their villainy by being ornery and prejudiced or posh and prejudiced, everybody is constantly calling the Midnighter a poof. In the course of "The Magnificent Kevin", the Midnighter is abused on the grounds of his sexuality (and solely on the grounds of his sexuality) by

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The eponymous hero, the eponymous hero's villainous ex-chum, the children he is rescuing, other members of the Authority IIRC and, in fact, pretty much everyone he encounters.

Of course, you can say that Kevin is an antihero - a largely cowardly and often morally dubious everyman, as well as a basically parodic representative of working-class English culture (we see him, in flashback, having sex in a back alley with an overweight woman who upbraids him for making her drop her kebab with overenthusiastic coitus), so of course he will be prejudiced. However, it does seem too be the only thing Ennis can think of to do with the Midnighter (along with "ah-hah! Your combat enhancements have been disabled! Now, despite your special forces training and decades of combat experience, you are just another queer... to be BASHED!"), and in particular the Midnighter's sexuality, is to have other people talk about it, and aggressively nudge-nudge-wink-wink-Cassidy-Cassidy deny that it is theirs or that they want to hear about it. I can't imagine that will change significantly in the course of this series.