Issue 182: It gets gayer! Podcasting about the gay green lantern *swish!*
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"My weakness is wood. Tee hee!"
After receiving some geek gifts, Scavenger, SaroSpice, Legion Tony L, and Steele! talk gay, gay, and gay! The DC “iconic” main stream character would come out as a “male gay”. Who could it be?* Plus the Northstar Nuptials and which X-Man is trying to steal their gay thunder. Also we ask the ever pressing question: “is Doop gay?” and we ruminate on who should be gay and who should not. Also, what about trans characters. Hmmm. Lots to discuss…
*Spoiler alert, it’s Alan Scott the lavender lantern on Earth 2. Wait…Earth 2? All gays are now relegated to an alternate universe? We’ll see about that!
About The Author
Steele
Comic newbie. Loves all things Whedon, THE FLASH!, Aquaman, masturbating, Spider-man, Fringe, Guiding Light, pouring chocolate chips into jars of peanut butter and going to town!
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Loved the podcast! I had a thought for an interesting situation/storyline. If they were to introduce a Trans character in the Marvel Universe, it’d be neat for the character to be a mutant. There could be drama/issues of how their power/physiology effects the possibility or success of reassignment surgery. Just a thought I had.
Good discussion. It will be interesting to hear what you thought of this week’s Earth-2 #2.
My favourite episode so far of CBQ Next Gen.
Starting to get to know you guys
One bit in the podcast jumped out at me:
Having read it only recently, I remember this one time they talked explicitly about sexuality in the 30th century, and it was basically the same as when it was written, except with better technology. It was during the 5 Years Later Bierbaum/Giffen period. It was the issue where Shvaughn Erin went off her transsexual pills (which must be nice to have) and Element Lad is all like, “I totally don’t care that you’re a guy, but also, fuck you, for ill-defined reasons of personal autonomy.”
It’s basically about how the only “male gay” (that was the best line, btw) in the Legion and maybe the DC Universe, up to that point, was a dude who pretended to be a chick to bang another dude who it turns out would have banged him anyway.
The story itself, less some of the offensive implications (which actually can be argued away), was still pretty good, and I guess it did make a nice point about not pretending to be a transwoman if you’re just gay. That’s advice roughly as profound as “don’t put a plastic bag over your head if you like breathing,” but maybe in 1994 or thenabouts it was more important to say that transsexuality and homosexuality are not the same thing. Maybe it is still important, if you take a wider view; and we should airdrop ten thousand copies of LoSH v.4 #31 on Iran so that they can uncover that nugget of wisdom too.
It does make me wonder what they’ll do when/if Shvaughn/Sean comes back. Regular gay guy Sean? Or Shvaughn as actual transsexual? In any event probably not just a gay guy who thought he could get more action with a pharmaceutical vagina.
Though for whatever reason I can see Sun Boy taking a box of Profem and a long weekend. Maybe that’s just me.
I am glad everyone liked the podcast. Scavenger and I will have some additional thoughts to add to the next podcast when we discuss Earth 2 issue 2.
Thanks for all the nice comments this episode. We all will have lots to say about the actual issue for Earth-2.
Mikoyan, we could have an entire episode on the sexuality politics of that Issue of the legion. For me it was a case of “nice try/no dice” from the writer almost entirely due to the text page journal entry from Sean. Ultimately though, wasn’t the entire run just “argued away” first by zero-hour then by the post-infinite crisis removal of the Mark Waid threeboot and the zero-hour team.