I can't belief that in this day and age we still aren't seeing at least one gay Legionnaire. Don't you think it's about time? Do you think the writers are homophobic?


[Edited title: I don't like or condone condemning people for some people's personal perceptions that might not be shared by others. Thanks!]

Certainly not! The Legion has always been a step ahead of the rest of the industry in adding gay characters, as Vi & Salu, Jan Arrah, Mekt & Holt and others have shown.

If anything, the Legion has suffered from a constant need to reboot the franchise which kind of limits its ability to grow the series with new characters and diversity.

Perhaps now with a semblance of the old franchise restored and what appears to be a firm committment on DC's behalf to move the series forward without turning back, the time is ripe for a homosexual character to appear in the LSH on an ongoing basis without fear of s/he dissapearing the next time the franchise has its continuity changed?

(I'm personally hoping Vi & Salu emerge as the couple they were in TMK very quickly).

Edited title since not everyone shares your perception.

The LSH franchise as a whole is about as homophobaic as I am. And I ain't scared of no homos at ALL-- bring it ON, sissies of ALL varieties-- I'm not going to condemn you... but what you're WEARING might be target of some bitchy barbs!

Seriosuly though, so many things come into play here... the writer's wishes, the editor's wishes, the P'sTB wishes...

Sexuality was just comics taboo really in the 60s, 70s and 80s... wasn't until the grim -n- gritty 90s that this subject would or could really be on the table for mainstream DC/Marvel.

And, as Cobie states, reboot after reboot and regime change after regime change didn't exactly help LSH be able to maintain any longterm gay characters but in general I think LSH has been fairly (or at least semi) cutting-edge about it for a mainstream superhero team.

With Mr. Levitz now firmly in place and norms of the day a lot different than they once were, it will be interesting to see what happens now.

With it's well-documented history of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender characters, the Legion series is of course not an example of homophobia at work.

However - all of those characters were introduced/revealed post Five Year Gap, correct? That's therefore a loooooonnnng period of time where DC/Paul (as the team's longest writer) could have introduced a non-straight character into the universe but didn't.

Times were obviously different back then but still - the Legion really should have been on the forefront of books introducing sexual (and all sorts of other) minorities considering its progressive, futuristic setting and all. Marvel was way ahead of the ball than DC on this topic I think.

I have no idea what Paul's stance on this subject is but I hope we do see a gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender Legionnaire soon - though not at the expense of good story-telling of course (not that it would be).

I believe the Lightning Lord is gay idea was based on a fan slash pairing. It showed up in V4, but so did lots of fan stuff.

Element Lad is theoretically based on an old Jim Shooter letter from 1975, but if you actually read it you'll also find a reference to a threesome between Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Dream Girl. Funny how everyone ignores that part.

Ayla/Violet does seem to be legitimate.

No it's not.

They don't need to have a gay character to be fun reading. And that's what this LSH is about- fun reading.

I'd really like to see somebody "out" in the future. By that, I mean a couple that can hold hands, embrace, kiss, use the "L" word if it suits the story.

The trouble with having nobody like that in the future is that there are already "out" DC characters in the present continuity. What does it say that there are no LBGT characters in the future that we can discover through anything but innuendo and subtext? That same-sex attraction was just "a phase" for Humankind and in Utopia it will disappear?

Not good.

Hey, I like playing "Who is? Who isn't?" as much as the next person, but that's not a real substitute for having continuity reflect the wide range of fans and readers that really exist.

I'd like that, too, but even if they were exes, I'd like for it to be okay to refer to them as such.

I think this whole thread topic is a non issue. As so many have stated above the Legion has proven that it is not homophobic in the least, given its past relationships (ie: Vi/Ayla).

The idea does not need to be forced in order to make a point either. If it flows naturally from the ongoing story, great! If not, so what? What would that prove or not prove to the fans reading a fictional, superheroic futuristic team comic anyway?
Let it go people ... it's just a comic book.

[snip]

Ken Arromdee:

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...Funny how everyone ignores that part...

If it's anything like the interview posted on this board, I prefer to ignore anything Shooter says about the characters', uh, social lives. Seriously, the guy should've taken a cold shower before giving that interview. That was WAY more insight into his mind than I wanted, Thanks.

I think the Vi/Ayla pairing occurred before the Five Year Gap. I had dropped the book when the Five Year Gap started.

Cleome, I couldn't agree with you more.

Hey, thanks for the agreement above, fk, but...

[snip]

future king:

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...Let it go people ... it's just a comic book...

I always wonder why that line is used to explain resistance to change, but never to explain why resistance to change is kind of ridiculous, given how amazingly selective it is.

There can be forty-four kajillion deaths in comics, some extremely graphic. There can be sexual assault and "fridgings," because that makes comics more "adult." But there can't be a same-sex couple kissing.

Uh, yeah.

Real nice.

I'm pretty sure Levitz only intended for them to be "close friends" in v3, though some fans interpreted this otherwise. They weren't really a couple until 5YL.

It was overt and undeniable in 5YL, but strongly hinted at in Levitz' v.3. In fact, at one point, someone at DC (possibly Levitz himself) insisted they were just close friends, nothing more. It was the 80s, after all... public figures could be as obvious as Boy George, as long as they denied it.

How on Earth can a "series" be homophobic?
What's with all the anger, Bouncing Bear??

To be fair to BB, he said that the writers (or maybe editors...I don't recall) were homophobic. I changed it to be less slanderous.

Historically, the Legion has been out ahead of the pack when it comes to depicting gay (or at least, possibly gay) characters. As has been pointed out in this thread, before the '80s, the sexual lives of comic characters was not something that companies could depict. It was actually kind of shocking in New Teen Titans #1 (the baxter series) to see Dick Grayson in bed with Koriand'r. The whole "Northstar is gay" thing didn't happen til a couple of years after that.

Even today, there are very, very few prominent openly gay characters in mainstream comics. Off the top of my head I can only think of Batwoman and Renee Montoya. There are some other supporting characters, but can anyone name any other major league heroes?

Finally, I really don't think it's apt to call any series "homophobic" unless the writers actively set out to denigrate gay people in the book. Over the years, the writers of the Legion have done anything but.

It's been downplayed lately, but Obsidian is arguably one of the most visible gay characters in the DCU.

to be fair to Paul Levitz, he did introduce the strong hint that there was a relationship between Invisible Kid and Chemical King.
i was always a bit peeved that Paul explicitly did NOT want Element Lad to be gay and thus created Shvaugn Erin. just as Mark Waid gave threeboot Invisible Kid an "out of character" crush on Supergirl to dispel the gay rumors. it seems almost every creative team takes a step towards establishing someone as gay then the next creative team steps back. it's bit silly since LSH has a large gay following.
heck , even Archie comics now has a "gay".

I never knew Jan was supposed to be gay, and I liked his relationship with Shvaugn.

For a series set 1000 years in the future, it was conceived of and mostly populated with extremely conservative white straight people, with the only the 'aliens' (Shady and Cham and Brainy) being 'colored,' before the eventual introduction of Tyroc (eighteen *years* later!).

Shooter got flak for attempting to make Ferro Lad black, after all, so it's hardly a shock that his musings on whether or not Jan would be gay were soundly ignored until the reboot (and even then, the 'gay' tag was dodged by making him express total indifference to whether or not Sean/Shvaugn was an innie or an outie).

I was kinda hoping that Waid would pick up that missed opportunity, and portray the teenagers of the 31st century as being blithely unconcerned with gender stereotypes, and for sleeps-around characters like Ayla or Jo to have some same-gender flings that nobody on the team seems to regard as being at all out of the ordinary, but he also shyed away from that, and, despite having a plethora of sexual relationships (during the series and alluded to as past affairs, like Val/Shady, Ayla/Jo and Ayla/Dirk), he didn't name-drop any same-sex hook ups, which, IMO, seemed a little unrealistic, considering the level of sexual freedom they were displaying.

Indeed, while I will rag on Geoff John's shortcomings as a Legion scribe to the end of time, he went and depicted Dawnstar as having been in a relationship with a Thanagarian woman, one that mattered enough that even when her memories returned and she had to leave, she left the woman her Flight Ring to remember her by.

I love the Legion, but the classic team has never been a dazzling beacon of enlightened inclusion, either racially or sexually.

I'd *like* to see more ethnic diversity, more non-humanoid aliens and more funky future relationships (do Carggites have triple marriages, each 'self' marrying a different individual, making polygamy the standard? for taht matter, is Carggite masturbation a 'team sport?' do hyrkrains have the same concept of fidelity as dolphins and consider intercourse about as meaningful as shaking someone's hand? are all durlans non-gendered, reproducing parthenogenetically, and is Gim happily married to someone that is not and never has been 'female' in any meaningful sense of the word?). But that ain't happened yet, and there are a *ton* of straight white characters that, no matter that they are relics of a less inclusive age, I still kinda love and want to see more of.

I also love ice cream, but it's never gonna taste like steak or curry.

I accept that not everything I like is going to do everything I want.

^ I think the Dawnstar = lesbian/bisexual thing was actually Brad Meltzer, Set.

Though, since they wrote that arc together who knows what plot point belonged to which writer?

I'll take your word for it, as my comics are carefully sorted by 'stuff I got this week goes on top' and I'd probably need a couple hours to see who wrote that.

Perhaps Dawny didn't even notice, she was just turned on by the wings?

She's totally wing-sexual!

I have never liked Dawnstar, yet I found myself wanting to like her when she was in that relationship--for a couple of panels. Then they went and ruined it by having her trot back to Wildfire so he could whine at her some more. Boring!

On my list of things that I didn't much like there, was that they go through the trouble of introducing an aged 'adult Legion,' and then regress several of the characters into roles they'd outgrown (Brin & Ayla and Drake & Dawny, in particular, but also Garth-as-hothead).

Behold the shocking future of the Legion, where everything new is old again!

Everyone else has already said it, but I think the Legion is traditionally one of the MOST open-minded of mainstream comics.

I would love to see the Vi/Ayla relationship happen again, though even if that doesn't happen I think Ayla and Brin being together again is a horrible step back for BOTH characters.

The original Light Lass was one of the characters I hated most in the Legion because all she ever did was hang off Timber Wolf's arm and smother him. Then the amazing happened and she evolved into a character (quite organically!) that became one of my favourites. And now, with no explanation, she's suddenly back to being Timber Wolf's 1950's gal again. Meh.

I didn't really like the Shvaughn Erin/Sean Erin reveal, but at least it was an attempt to portray a positive transgender character, which is more than 99% of other mainstream comics have ever done. I won't be too upset if Shvaughn remains Shvaughn, but I do applaud the creators for at least trying.

Which interview was that?

I was referring to this:

http://interlac.us/legionnaires.html

Ken, I was referring to the excerpts here .

And Shooter got a couple of knuckle-raps from Amazing Heroes back in the mid 1980s for some nasty stereotyping of gays in some of his other work.

Ah. That's the same one.

Wow. I have never read these creator descriptions about our Legionnaires before. I found some of it quite disturbing and dissapointing, on both Shooter and the Bierbaums' assessments of each character. To think these are the people writing the stories for these heroes and having such a low regard for too many of them, well let me tell you it is a huge downer to read for this fan.

Damn!
I honestly don't know what more to say.

I've heard some people say much of the Silver Age DC, including the Legion, was created by 'conservative white males'. And while they were mostly white and male, the conservative part is not true!

Otto Binder, Ed Hamilton, Jerry Siegel (and for that matter John Broome and Robert Kanigher, who didn't write the Legion) were all liberal writers! Their sci-fi stories (and in Kanigher's case, his war stories) show this time and time again. Simply put, they were liberal for the 1950's and early 1960's.

Saying their outlook was biased or something is just plain wrong; it was a product of the times. Times have changed and its time to include more diversity in the Legion. Otto Binder would be proud to see it as such.

I think we at last have an opportunity for the Legion to grow where characters can be introduced with real staying power. Hopefully that happens!

(Some may compare them to the super-liberal Silver Age Marvel of Stan & Jack, but that's not totally fair either as that firm liberalism in Marvel's stories happened more towards the mid-late 60's when Hamliton & Binder were no longer at DC).

If my post above made it sound like the Legion was *created* by 'conservative white males,' that's my bad.

I meant that the Legion itself was heavily loaded with clean-cut preppy looking white faces, with only Shady, Brainy, Cham (the *aliens*) being non-white. This was a team where a woman had to cheat to become leader, and where it was 'too soon' to introduce a black Ferro Lad. (And when a black Legionnaire, Tyroc, did join, yowza! Hardly a shining beacon of enlightened inclusion...)

Future Shock, the classic Legion stories ain't.

I have no idea about the writers. I mean, I vaguely know that a bunch of the 'old school' are Italian and / or Jewish, based on their names, but I never really thought much about the ethnicity or politics of the writers.

They lived when they lived, they wrote the stories that worked for that time period. I throw no stones at them for that.

i believe it's because i

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">am gay, in the parlance of you ancient types.</span></span>


<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">surely you did not think i was going to kiss and tell in tawdry little 'spoiler' tags?
</span></span>


i'm also red-headed, left-handed, and a solo winathian. sweet creator!

I'm a gay left-handed twin. Maybe we should hook up and make some sparks.

I had never read that before, and my feelings about it are very similar to yours. Whereas I don't necessarily agree with the Bierbaums' assessments, I can respect them. But Shooter's... they just feel dirty and unrespectful in addition to plain wrong (see for example Dream Girl, Brainiac 5, just about every female in the team). I fully agree with you, Cleome, that was way more insight into Shooter's mind than I ever wanted. I think I need a shower now. Yuck.

To be fair to Shooter, I think those were from the late 1970's and he was actually embarrassed by them years later.

I'm serious. There was a fan in Klordny APA who liked to slash Lightning Lord and Nemesis Kid. I believe that is where the idea of making Mekt gay in V4 came from.

Really? I thought he repeated many of them in one of Glen Cadigan's recent compendiums.

hart druiter? in the parlance of your time: gross.


jimgallagher, on the other hand...why don't you come up to the 31st century sometime and see me?

As soon as my time bubble gets out of the shop.

[young folks around the world faint, upon being informed that people their parents' age know what "slash" means]

Good. Embarrassment is best when shared.

Wolfman's behind-the-scenes speculations on Jericho's sexuality were similarly off-putting to me.

As a writer, I totally get that those considerations need to be made, but I really don't want to hear them, in my prudishness.

Add superhero characterization to sausages and laws on the list of things I really don't want to know too much about the making of...