Northstar, Earth-2 Green Lantern Here, Queer, Get Used to It

Here’s some recent news we’ve neglected to mention: Marvel and DC have both had a character come out of the closet as gay, drawing the attention of the major news outlets. The group One Million Moms has come out against the decision, saying children should not have gay superheroes as role models, which has naturally drawn protest as these things naturally do.

While I’m glad comic books are recognizing homosexuality, I can’t help but feel that it’s not making a real, tangible effort: Northstar, as a longtime member of Canadian superteam Alpha Flight, is not exactly a top-tier character, and nowhere near as big a statement as having, say, Wolverine or Spider-Man out as gay could be, making it smack some of tokenism. Ditto for Earth-2 Green Lantern — if it were the more mainstream Green Lantern, I would be a whole lot more supportive, but I don’t think the average comic book reader really knows a whole lot about or has a strong rooting interest in Earth-2.

Baby steps, I suppose.

About the Author

Benton Sartore has been reading comic books off and on since his age was in single digits, and playing RPGs since college. He enjoys a variety of comic books, TV shows, and movies, and he's a little too proud of his DVD collection. And for some stupid reason, he can't let go of Star Wars, no matter how much dumb stuff the franchise does. Benton is also an acting editor at In Genre.

http://ingenre.com Merin

Northstar has been openly gay since the early 90′s… this isn’t new. In fact the character was more or less created to be gay but the CCA and Marvel’s own bigoted policies prevented the writer of Alpha Flight, Mr. Byrne, from revealing Jean-Paul’s sexuality. The news for Northstar (who’s part of the current Astonishing X-Men team, so he’s a lead in a book – and has been an X-Man before) is that he’s getting married to his lover (Steve I think his name is) in an upcoming issue.

Alan Scott is actually my favorite Green Lantern… and he was the first Green Lantern (chronologically as well as real world time line)… so while not as big as, say, Hal right now, Alan was here first. He’s not as shiny, but he’s a big character and this is kinda big. Robinson’s reasoning on choosing Alan is that, since the Earth 2 recreation in the New 52 reboot will have the JSA all be new, young heroes – there’d be no children for the twenty-something year old Mr. Scott. Meaning his twin children, Jenny and Todd, don’t exist – and Todd (Obsidian) was a gay comic character, so Mr. Robinson felt it appropriate to fill that void.

That said, gay characters in Marvel and DC aren’t new – the “controversies”, as they are, is about 1 – gay marriage appearing and 2 – retconning a classic DC character of over seventy years into a different sexuality. The former is ridiculous – the latter is, at least a tiny bit, more understandable if not still overblown. Again, it’s the wedding and the retcon that has the internet buzzing – not characters being gay. Shrinking Violet of the LOSH has been “gay” since at least the early 90′s, it’s been close to ten years for the current Question, former Detective Montoya of Batman fame, being out, and there are Grace and Thunder of the Outsiders from the early 2000′s – and that’s all just DC.
Benton Sartore

Dang, I defer to your superior knowledge on this then. Most of my comics knowledge fades out in the late ’90s, not exactly a golden age to begin with.