DC Comics to reintroduce established character as gay

DC Comics to reintroduce established character as gay

Less than a year after Dan DiDio indicated that DC Comics wouldn't alter the sexual orientations of existing characters in the New 52, the co-publisher revealed Saturday at the Kapow! Comic Convention in London that he's changed his position.

When asked by a fan during the DC All-Access Panel why race or age could be changed in the relaunch but not sexual orientation, Bleeding Cool reports DiDio responded that a previously established heterosexual character will be reintroduced as 'one of our most prominent gay characters.' Bob Wayne, senior vice president of sales, added that like President Obama, DiDio's stance 'has evolved.'

It's a significant shift from July, just before the relaunch, when DiDio told the gay and lesbian magazine The Advocate, 'One of the things we're very focused on doing for these types of stories is rather than [change an existing] character, we want to make sure that this is the basis of who that character is right from the start. So if we're going to introduce a gay character in Teen Titans, we want to make it a new character and make sure that is an iatrical part of who he is, or who she is, right from the start so we can really lean and grow with her or him.' (Note: That's probably supposed to be 'integral,' not 'iatrical.')

The New York Post weighed in this morning, suggesting that DC 'could be feeling the gay heat ' from Marvel, which appears poised to wed Northstar to his boyfriend Kyle next month in the pages of Astonishing X-Men.

Naturally speculation has already begun as to the the identity of the newly gay DC character, with the DC Universe Gays blog floating everyone from Shazam and Kid Eternity to Vibe and Hawkgirl as possible candidates.

9 Comments

Please be Guy Gardner.

At first I was going to make a crack about Batwoman being re-established as a lesbian character, but after reading Nick's suggestion for Guy Gardner ' That would probably be the most interesting turn for any of DC's characters.
So, I second Guy Gardner.

Vibe.

I'm thinking Vibe will be the new Extraño. Ugh. Can't wait.

$10 says this is how they re-introduce any/all of those characters who're missing from The New 52 that people still care about. Thuse it'll probably be Wally West (He's gay! Why'd he be married to a woman and have kids now?), Stephanie Brown (She was never Batgirl, or dated Robin because she's a lesbian!), Donna Troy (Amazons are lesbians, right?), or Cassandra Cain (Do I really need to say it?).

Yeah. Sorry. The fact that you have much loved characters like these who are still missing post reboot, mixed with the fact that DC says they're reintroducing a character and making them gay as part of the 'reboot' kinda worries me. Not because they're being reintroduced as gay, but because of all the other things that they could change as well that would fundamentally alter the aspects of the character (i.e. Cassandra Cain talks non-stop and is a villain! Oh wait, they already did that.)

Yeah. Don't mind me. I'm going back over here and to my Indy comics until both DC and Marvel get their acts together and stop pulling stunts (like having well known characters suddenly revealed as gay, 'epic' line wide crossovers that end up going nowhere like Fear Itself, and of course Reboots) to draw fans in and instead put more of a focus on writing good comics with interesting characters that people /want/ to read rather than feeling like they /have/ to read.

-Magical Mimi

Pretty obvious that it will be VIBE.

Sure, why not? DC already stomped on decades of continuity with the New 52 so why not play the token and change Shazam or someone like that, alienating even more readers. I've nothing against them creating a gay character (though as noted they already did this with Batwoman, though not very well), but are they so creatively bankrupt at DC that they can't spare the time to create a brand-new character? One with a clean slate, no established backstory, that can be created from scratch?

so every move DC makes is now just one PR stunt after another.

Batwoman is already a prominent gay character so I'm going to guess that it will be a male character.

Teen Titans already have whatsisname with the Thing hands and he's hispanic so I doubt it will be Vibe.

Wally West would be interesting.

If the language of the story is accurate, then it seems like someone who hasn't already been introduced in the New 52.

My guess?

Gay Spectre!

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