In praise of gay Superman

For most little boys of my generation, and several before, the only man who could conceivably have beaten up their father was Superman. Which is why now discovering that Superman is sexually attracted to men is so brilliantly subversive. It’s like discovering Mount Everest is gay.

Back in August, DC Comics artist Ethan van Sciver first broke the news that Superman was coming out, although then it sounded as if the plan was for him to be fully gay, and not just bi, during a YouTube livestream. ‘I guess Clark Kent is going bye bye,’ he said. ‘Superman is effectively gay everyone. He is gay.’ Now the first images have been released of the new Superman – Jonathan Kent – deeply French kissing his boyfriend Jay, of all things a journalist.

Does it matter if your dad loses in a fist fight to a man who kisses other men? Well, no. At least, not in any way that can be sensibly justified as an adult. Which isn’t to say it wouldn’t have mattered a very great deal in the playground. Back then, when comics mattered and we didn’t really understand that being gay was anything other than an insult to be levelled at all things considered weedy and undesirable, it would have been shattering.

And that’s of course why it’s so clever – a giant advance in the ever more rapidly executed campaign to precipitate a nervous breakdown in the collective western male consciousness, by forcing yet another unwelcome reappraisal by middle aged men of something fundamental and previously taken for granted. 

It feels like only yesterday we had to deal with the information that lonely cowboys are sometimes into other cowboys, unapologetically delivered by Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. They’ve made Batman’s sidekick Robin gay, too. And now this. How much less equivocal and confusing the Man of Steel’s famous mantra ‘for truth, justice and the American Way’ seemed in the 1980s. That’s been changed, too. Now it is ‘for truth, justice and a better tomorrow.’ Is that progress? 

Still, I’m enormously looking forward to seeing a bisexual, or better still, a gay Superman in the cinema. It’s exactly what Hollywood needs, hamstrung as it has been since the turn of the century by grinding political correctness and, as a result, capable seemingly only of churning out a never-ending succession of stultifying duds for fear of causing anyone anywhere offence, contrived or otherwise. 

Yes, bisexual Superman is not the Superman of old. Rather, he’s his son. But the genre is about nothing if not taking cultural stereotypes to their limit. 

Back when Superman was only into chicks like Lois Lane and defeating bad guys, the whole point was he was every inch the square jawed, unflustered, dependable apogee of the heterosexual ideal – admittedly in tights – the exact opposite in everything but sexuality to his alter ego Clark Kent, also a caricature, who was nerdy and easily led, a man of little agency beyond a winning smile.

If LGBTQI+ Superman is to carve out his own cultural space, which is presumably exactly what the blue-haired folk at DC Comics who have created him would like him to do, then there is no point in him occupying the same characteristics as his father. A new stereotype is required, and a new paradigm – one surely that has fun through exaggeration with society’s perceptions of bisexuality and homosexuality. When he arrives on the silver screen, will the new Superman be camp, for example? Or waspish? Or disarmingly effete? Too dull, surely, to make him just a quietly determined, well dressed graphic designer capable of flight. 

I asked a thoughtful gay friend what superpower he would most like this latest Superman to have. ‘Truthful answer’, came the immediate response, ‘the ability to sniff out whether a straight man is open to a gay experience.’ 

He also offered an alternative that he considered more woke, if less truthful. ‘The ability to manipulate the emotional literacy of adversaries, for example by provoking a state of tolerance.’ Both options would surely would presage a brilliant new direction for this most beloved of the superhero franchises. 

But does the LGBTQI+ community even want a co-opted Superman? After all, he’s an unapologetically mainstream, establishment figure – a Judeo-Christian construct to the tips of his tungsten-like fingers. After the battles it has fought and won over the last century, gay culture deserves not a Superman-lite, but a more anarchic, and therefore interesting, superhero of its own. Isn’t the opportunity to be considerably more original being missed? 

Depressingly, the early signs are bi Superman is not quite as fun as he might be. He’s been featured in comics hanging out with activists and rescuing migrants. But he’s still young and idealistic. The possibilities are boundless. 

The suspicion lingers that they’ve given Superman gay tendencies simply because they can, and they know how to cause a row on social media and generate new interest in an old superhero. In DC comics’ defence, however, the job of popular culture is not just endlessly to reflect back at us our own worldview, but also to drive progress by challenging us entertainingly. 

Superman fans have debated endlessly over many years under what circumstances he would break his famous ‘no kill’ rule, if the killing served a greater good. Now we have far more difficult questions to ponder. A Superman who goes to bed with other men puts to death a billion childhood certainties by making us consider anew what really goes on in those tights. 

Your dad might not have liked it, but what exactly is he going to do about it?