Chip Zdarsky defends Batman's sexuality
Can't a guy just like fetish wear?
Friday nights are "me time." I like to curl up on the couch with a big bag of shelled nuts and watch Ghost Whisperer with my cat, Monster Truck. Once that's over I bundle all of my rage at how terrible that show is, put on my leather pants and PVC mask and head to a local club where I flog strangers with a variety of fun instruments. Jennifer Love Hewitt's face floats in front of me, like the type of ghost that whispers to her every Friday night, and I heed her call with another paddling. Now, my outfit may be outrageous, and my beating of grown men and women masochistic and my cat is actually a teenage boy, but I am not gay. And neither is Batman.
For more than 70 years, people have misconstrued Batman's living situation and exploits as evidence of homosexuality, the main trigger in this gay gun being Robin, Batman's youthful, plucky sidekick. But the introduction of Robin stemmed not from a deep-seated (ho ho!) desire to make Batman gay, but to create a relatable character for the boys reading these adventures. Making Robin a fellow orphan was the easiest way to go. Was Batman supposed to pull up to Robin's parents' house every night and honk his Bat-horn, signalling another night of danger? Preposterous. And it would be poor manners for the uber-wealthy Bruce Wayne to let young Richard Grayson stay in a dingy orphanage while he sipped aged ginger ale and ate delicious candied yams in the opulence of Wayne Manor. Adopting this orphaned young man just made sense.
I think, "Putting Dick in harm's way" is my most favorite euphemism ever.
Note: Comments have been deactivated on this post due to spam.
Comments
As a kid who shared Robin's name (though I was always "Richie" and would not answer to "Dick"), I was naturally taken by the comic when I discovered it as an 8yo in 1959. (Of course I started collecting comics wildly back at the start of the Silver Age and the DC's reintroduction of Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, JLA (JSA), etc. And then Marvel came along...
Anyway, the TV series was big in around 1965-67, when I was in high school. By then I had long been aware of Dr. Frederic Wertheim's book "Seduction of the Innocent," in which he called the comic "a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." (He had similar comments about Wonder Woman.) Of course the TV series, and the comic with it, then introduced Aunt Harriet to presumably police everyone's behavior.
I never saw the comic as remotely gay, even though by then I was pretty sure I was gay. I still don't.
Of course, there's no reason to presume that a gay man taking in an orphaned male teenager posits a sexual (predatory, which it would be given the age difference) relationship between the two. Most adult gay men, like most straight men, either don't find teenagers attractive (just teach high school and you'll learn that!) or simply know that exploiting minors is wrong.
After all, today there are gay foster-parents and parents who have children of the same gender.
Your comment about why Robin (and other teenage sidekicks) was introduced is exactly right. Except that, if you read comments by people like the great cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer in his introduction to 1963's "The Great Comic Book Heroes," many teenage readers found Robin utterly annoying -- because he was too perfect, that he didn't behave like a normal kid. And by "normal" here, I mean getting into trouble, throwing tantrums, having school and friend problems, etc.
Of course the adults in DC comics back then didn't have problems, either, but we kids assumed they were mature because they were older (and superheroes). We knew a kid would never be as perfect as Robin, so he grated on our nerves.
Posted by: Richard Grayson (my real name) | July 17, 2008 01:42 PM
Hey Richard,
Very nicely put, and your final point is, I think, why Spider Man worked so well, being as he was a real kid.
I wonder if you've ever read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. If not, its set during WWII (the golden age!) about two guys who (among a lot of other things) write comics. One of them is, in fact, gay and has a penchant for putting sidekicks into books.
My very lame description does not do the book justice at all so I'll just finish by saying it won the Pulitzer Prize.
Posted by: kilian | July 17, 2008 05:07 PM
Kavalier and Clay is my summer reading. :-) Never in a million years could I write that well. It resonates eerily with my Czech heritage (by way of Chicago).
An excellent non-fiction tour through the early history of comics is Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones (2005)
Other summer reading: The first four Tom Strong collections, both Los Bros. Hernandez "Love & Rockets" giant reprint hardcovers, and Ellen Forney's "Lust."
Yeah, I'm liking comic books a lot.
-A-
Posted by: Alan | July 17, 2008 08:57 PM