LNH/ACRA: The Legion of the Net. Heroes Vol. 2, # 10

[martinphipps2 at yahoo.com]

Tom Russell wrote:
> Saxon Brenton wrote:
> > Off the top of my head, the most prominent RACC works that treat
> > homosexuality
> > seriosly would be some of Dvandom's stuff - such as Aaron and Paul and in
> > Academy
> > of Super Heroes, or going back *much* further, Greymask and, uh, Defender?
> > <googlegooglegoogel> no, sorry, Greymask and Beacon in The Machine for the
> > Patrol imprint.
>
> And when it is a major character, like Frat Boy (if he could be called
> a "major" character in the scheme of things), chances are at the end of
> the story status quo is reaffirmed so as not to alienate the fans.  I'm
> not sure how strong the fandom of Frat Boy is, or how much affection
> people have for him, so I don't think there would be that much of an
> uproar about it.  But I thought it'd be funnier to make fun of the
> convention than to defy it. :-)

Um, if any of the guys here have affection for Frat Boy then they would
probably consider making him gay a good thing.

> The thing that always bugs me about the few gay superheroes in
> mainstream publication, is that such a big thing is made about it.
> Maybe not by the writers themselves or the publishers, but the readers.
>  There are great strides made in all media towards diversity or
> what-not, but it's like the old joke, if you have to count how many
> black friends you have, or you know the number, then you're no friend
> at all.  If one has to say to the GLBT (what is that, some kind of
> sandwich? :-) ) community, look!  Northstar is gay.  And so is the Pied
> Piper!  And, ooh, look at this guy! or this chick! then no service is
> really being rendered to them at all.

With the LNH, it is a bit different.  I mean, if an author creates a WC
for the LNH and the author was gay then surely the character IS gay but
we don't know for sure and can't out the character without getting
permission from the original writer.  So some members of the LNH are
gay.  Deal with it. :)

Likewise, Northstar was created as a gay character by John Byrne, not
that John Byrne is gay but rather he created a character who was a
French Canadian skiier and thought "Gay gay gay" and he always wrote
the character that way even if it wasn't obvious to straight people.
(Gay men on racmu usually praise Byrne for NOT outing Northstar.  Truth
is, Marvel never realized that they had a gay character until Mantlo
announced privately that he was going to out the character: the editor
then told Mantlo to instead write Northstar out of Alpha Flight.
Ironically, when Northstar finally was revealed to be gay, Marvel got
press for being so politically correct!)

Similarly, I've considered outing a couple of LNHers but, given that we
can't be sure if the characters were originally meant to be gay, I
chickened out.

> Anyway.  We've come a long way since the woody scandal. :-)
>
> Though, admittedly, that was before my time.  Hmm.  Wonder what would
> have happened had I written Speak! in 1992.

"Why are you touching Dr. Metronome's breasts?  This is misogyny!  And
what's that you've got there?  A woody?"

I think you know better than to use words refering to genetilia in your
posts. ;)

Martin