So, after a long hiatus from buying any comics from Archie, I decided to take a look at the introduction of Kevin Keller, Riverdale’s first openly gay character. News of the characters introduction got quite a bit of attention back in late April, including the expected “think of the children” nonsense you usually see on the internet.

The story and art is by Dan Parent, one of the better writers and artists working at Archie these days, with inks by Rich Koslowski. It’s stylized, cartoony work that adheres to the Archie house style without being a slavish recreation of it, leaving some room for personal style. I haven’t been the target audience for an Archie comic in quite some time, so honestly, I was most surprised to open up the book and see slick paper and full-bleed artwork. It’s good work, but it took some getting used to, as subconsciously I pretty much expect an Archie comic to look like Dan DeCarlo drew it.

The story is fairly typical of Archie comedy, with Jughead deciding to prank Veronica for slighting him. Only the form the prank takes is Jughead manipulating events so that Veronica spends her time attempting to attract Kevin’s interest, which is never going to happen because Jughead knows that Kevin is gay. After twenty pages of misunderstandings amongst the cast, Veronica finally learns the truth and those who need to get a comeuppance receive theirs.

My primary curiosity about this issue was how a company perceived as so archly conservative as Archie was going to handle introducing a gay character. I had no real concern over the portrayal being offensive; the only thing that would have meant more controversy for the publisher than introducing a gay character would be introducing an offensive portrayal of a gay character. Kevin is a cute, smart boy who likes comics and can go stomach-to-stomach with Jughead in an eating competition. In other words, he’s just rounded enough to hang a story hook on to him, but bland enough to avoid controversy. I generally rankle a bit at bland, inoffensive gay characters in movies and television shows who only exist to play lip-service to diversity but are completely neutered in order to avoid making anti-gay audience members uncomfortable. But this is a comic whose primary audience is preteen girls. Even a fairly bland gay character is pretty ground-breaking, and that Parent even managed to go beyond that and make Kevin sort of appealing is praiseworthy. I’ll admit, Parent draws him a fairly snarky smirk that would be meltingly hot if it was on a real person.

What I’m especially glad to see is that my one, big fear about the way the set-up for the issue was introduced was resolved in an appropriate manner. The premise, that Jughead is using the “secret” of Kevin’s sexuality to play a prank, has the potential to be offensive if mishandled. It makes homosexuality a bit of a punchline, not an aspect of Kevin’s character. Instead, once the truth is revealed, Jughead is scolded by Kevin, and quite rightly, for using him to take advantage of Veronica in an attempt to make her look foolish. The end result is to actually drive Kevin away from Jughead and towards Veronica, ironically the opposite of Jughead’s intent.

Do I expect Kevin to stick around? It would be nice. As I said, he’s an appealing character, and is already slated to make a return appearance. But the last character to be introduced into the Archie universe and demonstrate any staying power was Cheryl Blossom, and even she took a ten year hiatus. The odds are stacked against him, but he does bring something to the Riverdale dynamic that no other character does, so even if he only survives as, inexplicably, the only gay teenager in the Archie comics world, that’s not so bad.

Also, for no good reason, this panel cracks me up:

Given the backwards-looking nature of much of Cooke’s work, I can’t say I find his objection to a lesbian Batwoman terribly surprising. Disappointing, but not surprising.

While some may be outraged by Cooke’s statement, for myself I’m not sure his statement deserves a response above the level of “heavy sighing.” His statements seem to fall along the same level of disagreement that Alex Ross had with making Obsidian gay. I don’t think either Cooke or Ross are homophobes, I just think they’re a bit too blinded by heterosexual privilege to realize how what they’re saying can sound homophobic.

There was, however, one note that didn’t quite ring true.

Yeah, it’s just a joke…but it’s a joke about a subject that ruins peoples lives and that ideological doctors are actually pursuing.

So maybe a conservative straight guy who occasionally writes for right-wing blogs isn’t the one who should be making jokes like that, is all I’m saying.

Still, the good thing about this is that this was what was passing for gay humor in 1972 in “liberal” Mad magazine.

Yeah, I’ll take the conservative who means well over the liberal bigot on this subject, any day.

Oh, come on, you didn’t think I’d let that pass without comment, did you?

• It’s nice to see an acknowledgment that the Hercules of myth had an eye for the fellas as well as the ladies.
• It’s especially nice to see it after the “eromenos” jokes in earlier issues.
• A significant portion of an Uncanny X-Men storyline focused on Northstar’s crush on Iceman. After that, it’s hard to see how having sex with Hercules could be seen as an embarrassment.
• Yes, it did occur to me that revealing this after killing off Hercules is convenient timing.
• (No, I don’t really think Herc will stay dead long. Or that this will ever be addressed again.)

Justice League: Cry For Justice #3. Gay man killed, and skinned, to make us think that a super-villain, one who single-handedly took out the Justice League once for God’s sake, is scary and important.

These incidents probably wouldn’t stick in my craw except, well, twice in one series? And at a company where the only other gay male character of significance*, Obsidian, just got turned into an egg after several years of doing nothing much but hang out literally as a shadow in the background. And if killing the faggot wasn’t such an old and monumentally stupid cliche in genre fiction.
When Marvel, the company that gave us the historic “Hulk gets raped” comic and the “Lol, fag” version of Rawhide Kid, is doing a better job by their gay characters, something has gone wrong**.

*_{I don’t count Mikaal as a gay character, as “aliens who don’t perceive gender and sexuality as we do” was last excusable as a metaphor for homosexuality in The Left Hand of Darkness.}
**_{Yes, Rucka’s Detective Comics run with Batwoman is brilliant and remarkable, and DC should be lauded for it. But if you think that the prurient interest many straight men have in lesbians didn’t play a role in getting it published you’re delusional.}

Which all made the meltdown over the third series, broadcast over five nights as a mini-series, so interesting. Given it’s biggest audience and biggest venue yet, the show performed very well and attracted critical acclaim.
And fans raged.

As for the praise, it was well deserved. “Children of Earth” was a fantastically plotted, amazingly acted television event. A frequent point of criticism for the series is that, while it aspires to mature story-telling and was presented as a more “adult” take on Doctor Who, producers and writers seemed to think that all you needed to make a sci-fi series mature was add in lots of swearing, violence and sex. It’s a partly valid complaint, and the unevenness of the first season is testament to that. But by the second series most of the tonal problems had worked themselves out and the show was able to balance a sophistication in story and character with a self-deprecating sense of humor. That frequently focused on sex. This third series continued that evolution even more, and it’s probably telling that shortening the series to one story told over multiple episodes allowed for a more carefully crafted and thoughtful approach to the series than the need to get out thirteen weeks worth of episodes out the door.

The regular cast do a remarkable job, with Gareth David-Lloyd in particular turning in a excellent performance, and Eve Myles stepping up and showing us a Gwen that wasn’t quite always there in previous seasons but comes to the fore remarkably as well. The supporting cast, particularly Peter Capaldi as ill-fated civil servant John Frobisher, do excellent jobs as well. It’s a terribly well-acted show, and writers Russell T. Davies, James Moran and John Fay should be congratulated for giving such meaty roles for strong actors. If there is a fault to be found with the show, it’s in the rather laggy pacing, particularly in “Day Five”, which frequently felt like a thirty-minute story padded out to sixty.

There are some nice nods to the wider universe the show appears in as well, with Gwen making a fairly convincing case as to why, in certain times of deep crisis, the Doctor doesn’t appear on Earth. It’s a telling indictment, since for those who have been watching the new series of Doctor Who, a significant part of the problem faced here can be traced back to the Doctor upsetting history by removing Harriet Jones from power. And, of course, even if it is slightly selfish praise, it is nice to see a big, mainstream, action sci-fi show headlined by an openly gay man that places one of its heroic leads in a same-sex relationship.

And now, for those of you wishing to avoid spoilers, don’t read past the uncomfortable looking gentleman…

And so, if the show is so good, why did the fans rage? Well, to be fair, only a small subset of fans raged. To be specific, the fan entitlement and the “shipper” crowds were enormously upset that LAST CHANCE TO AVOID SPOILERS in the fourth hour of the show, Ianto Jones dies in a failed attempt to stop the aliens, known only as the 456, from taking 10% of the Earth’s children as a kind of tithe. It’s a heart-wrenching moment, and it’s beautifully acted. Story and plot wise, it’s crucial. It emphasizes in a very real and personal way the stakes of the danger everyone is facing. Ten percent is just a statistic. That Ianto, a character who has grown to occupy an essential place in the show and amass a considerable fan following, can be casually disposed of, as an afterthought, by the 456, brings home how severe a menace they really are.

But now the people who were only watching the show to watch two men make out or to find inspiration for their racy slash stories felt like they were kicked in the face. Because they mistook their enjoyment of the show for ownership of the show. This is a fairly common problem with fans who become overly emotionally invested in their entertainments, but it bears repeating: being upset because Ianto dies is a perfectly acceptable response; not caring to watch a potential fourth series of Torchwood without Ianto in it is a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face, but it’s not an unreasonable response; planning to pelt Russell T. Davies at Comic-Con with coffee bags (yes people online have talked about doing this) and accusing him of being a homophobe (yes again) is utterly insane.

The reaction also displays another common failure of many fans online: an inability to “read” media. You see it all the time with comic book fans who mourn the death of a character. Death in comics is meaningless. Utterly. It can always be undone and it happens so frequently as to have no impact. Let’s look at the character of Ianto and the nature of Torchwood for a minute. It’s emphasized, many times, that Torchwood employees tend to die young. Hell, they killed Owen and Suzie twice. That’s a strike against him. Ianto is a secondary character in an action show. Secondary characters are always expendable. They’re created to be killed. That’s a second strike. To top it off, Ianto is a secondary character in a relationship with a lead character. Let’s face it, he’s had a big bullseye on him for quite some time. It was painfully apparent that eventually someone would take that shot. And I’m glad that it was Ianto’s creator, Russell T. Davies, who took it (though John Fay wrote the actual episode). It’s a needed reminded that, while an audience can and should have an emotional connection with a fictional character, they are in the end only playthings of their creators, to do with as they wish.

And, let’s be honest here. Ianto died on a science-fiction program…that deals with time-travel and parallel worlds. The first episode of series four could open with the Cardiff Rift opening and the Ianto of Pete’s World stepping through to stop the new menace. It’s the easiest thing in the world for a writer to bring him back, should they choose to.

I’d also like to spend some time discussing the banality of the the 456 and what they want children for. It’s the kind of jaw-dropping revelation that makes for fantastic television. It’s both shocking, genuinely, and rather bold. And utterly, utterly banal and petty. It drives home the theme of the series as a whole, one that is frequently visited on both Torchwood and Doctor Who, that as scary as the universe is, it’s humans, more often than not, that are the real monsters. The villains of the piece aren’t the 456. They’re merely taking advantage of a situation. The villains are the world’s governments and militaries, who are willing to sacrifice their children, lie to their citizens about why, over something ultimately stupid and trivial, in one of the better handled Iraq War metaphors to come along. That it takes an equally monstrous act to solve the problem keeps us in this morally defunct universe, as even good people must do terrible things for what they can only hope are the right reasons.

Television, lately, has been giving me many such opportunities. Some shows I can come to an internal accommodation with. My Name is Earl, for example, could be easily criticized for the use of the Kenny character, a hysterics prone, effeminate gay man. But other characters on the show treat Kenny with respect, every other character on the show is cartoonish in some way, and Kenny’s relationship with ex-cop Stuart is played very sweetly by both Gregg Binkley and Mike O’Malley, that I tend to forgive the queenier moments the writers give Kenny. (Hell, I think Kenny and Stuart are one of the very few gay couples on television that actually appear to have a sex life, so that’s worth a few points anyway.)

More recently, two new show launches have brought up this trend once again. Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, for example, wants to be a broad farce, but is somewhat constrained by how naughty it can be by the standards people over at Comedy Central. A co-production with the BBC, it’s possible that the overall quality of the show might be improved by seeing it in the original, unedited form, but as it stands now it’s the sort of show that manages only one, maybe one-half of a good joke for every dozen groaners it throws out there. And most of those good jokes are, frankly, not so good, and are saved primarily through the delivery of the actors.

It’s the character of Bruce that I feel that I should be upset about, and to tell the truth, if the show were better, I probably would be. Marques Ray plays the character as chirpily upbeat, so it’s hard to actually dislike Bruce, but he’s also played as a sex-obsessed, shallow stereotype. The character’s introduction is even part of an extended “prison sex” joke, and the show’s promotional materials have referred to the character as a “queen.” But to complain about Bruce is to miss the larger picture, that no character on the show comes off in a particularly positive light and it’s a much deeper problem that, at the end of the day, the show simply isn’t very funny. To single out the character of Bruce for criticism feels like laughing at the guy who just fell and broke his arm.

By coincidence, another show that debuted the same night as Krod Mandoon is the cop-drama Southland. At first glance, it’s your typical cop ensemble, and it owes much to Homicide, including a distracting and intrusive over-use of musical cues. But it’s a very well-acted cop ensemble show, and Michael Cudlitz’s Officer John Cooper is particularly note-worthy because with this character we’re actually seeing something quite revolutionary for American television: a gay character who gets to be the hard-nosed cynic, and a bit of a macho bad-ass. It’s not clear, after two episodes, how much of Cooper’s personal life is know to the other officers, and the revelation of the character’s sexuality, a last-minute pan-out in the premiere episode to show him in a gay bar, was shot in such a way as to suggest that his sexuality is meant to be a secret or somehow “shocking” to the audience, but it’s strongly refreshing to have a gay character who doesn’t fall into any of the usual paradigms for gay characters on television. He’s not the butt of an easy joke and he’s not there to be a sexless neuter solving all the straight people’s problems for them.

Lest you think there’s not a “Bad Homosexual” angle here, because when word got out that Cudlitz was playing a gay character, there were multiple reactions in the gay-blog world along the lines of “why couldn’t the hot one be gay?” Which floored me, for two reasons. First of all, for gay men to be judging the merit of a gay character based purely on the character’s attractiveness pretty much confirms some of the worst stereotypes of the superficiality of gay men. And secondly, and most importantly, Cudlitz is most definitely the “hot one.” His partner on the show is cute enough, but he’s a child, while Cudlitz is both ruggedly handsome and mature.

Oh, who am I kidding…if Krod Mandoon keeps giving us shirtless Sean Maguire, I’ll keep watching…

Renaissance man and gay porn icon Jack Wrangler died today of complications from lung disease. He was truly amongst the greats, bringing a sense of humor, masculinity and versatility to his erotic roles, in addition to his talents as an actor and director. Those wishing to learn more about his fascinating history should seek out the documentary Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon

Another shot of Jack, in all his glory, is below the cut.

Take, for example, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. It’s not quite as good as the original film, and that’s being kind to a fault, but it was certainly a…continuation of the kinds of humor and situation that the first film dealt with. Fairly early on in the film, there is a sequence in which Harold and Kumar narrowly escaped being raped by the prison guards at Guantanamo Bay. And, as you would expect, the point of the scene is to fear the 18-25 male target demographic with revulsion at the thought of a straight man being forced to perform oral sex on another man. Now, personally, I think that it’s a sign of deep sickness in our society that we make jokes about rape being “okay” because it’s happening in prison. But the way the scene is played in the film is slightly more nuanced than the usual “guys get raped in prison” gag. The guards, of course, are laughably homophobic. Yet they’re the ones seeking sex with other men.

This is offensive humor, but to complain about this particular joke, and gloss over the numerous jokes about race, religion and Appalachia is to miss the larger point, which is that the film is one of those all too rare “equal opportunity” offenders when it comes to offensive humor. In fact, if one takes the approach that the prison rape jokes are really centered around the irony of the abusive, homophobic guards secretly craving sex with men, rather than the usual “its funny because they’re faggots” than it becomes notable that gay people are not singled out for ridicule. And yet, this is the film that I saw bloggers, apparently in all seriousness, implying that Neil Patrick Harris owed the world some justification for appearing in.

Along similar lines is the film Sex Drive. It’s actually a fairly superior example of the “teen sex comedy” genre, with a bit of a bildungsroman lurking beneath the surface (and it doesn’t hurt in the slightest that in, oh, say five to ten years, lead actor Josh Zuckerman is probably going to be making all those “handsomest men alive” lists). The plot is typical: nerdy teen is on a quest to lose his virginity, chaos ensues, social order is restored when he realizes that love is more important than sex. What elevates the film is that, unlike most examples of the genre, its actually funny, with some good performances and the right air of plausible absurdity. But it has two gay jokes that stick out and seem to have aroused the ire of many gay critics. The first, is a man who attempts to solicit Ian, the character played by Zuckerman, in a men’s room. As much as I personally try to remind people, when the topic of men’s room sex comes up, that the kind of men who most frequently engage in it tend to think of themselves as straight, as far as the general public is concerned it’s still a “gay” thing. To the film’s credit, the scene in question is not played as Ian being preyed upon, but rather as Ian being naive and accidentally sending out the wrong signals, but overall, yeah, let’s call that a point against the film.

Interestingly, to me anyway, was that the character that really seemed to bother people was Ian’s older brother, Rex, played by James Marsden. Rex is a sadistic bully and virtually every line out of the character’s mouth is a homophobic taunt of his younger brother. Incessantly. To the point where other characters begin to comment on Rex’s seeming obsession with gay sex. And the pay-off, of course, for all of this is that Rex is revealed to be gay at the end of the film. His homophobic insults were a cover. What critics who objected to Rex seemed to miss is that at no point in the film is Rex a sympathetic character. Even after coming out he’s somewhat of a bully. To object to Rex is to object to homophobic characters as much as homophobic jokes. It’s dangerously close to arguing for no gay jokes whatsoever in popular films, even as a sign that the character making the joke is to be viewed with disdain.

The flip side of these types of characters and jokes has been the slightly older aimed films like I Love You, Man. While being, in general, a very good film, it was highly praised by many gay critics and bloggers, and the film itself seems to pride itself in its lack of offensive jokes simply for the sake of having offensive jokes. But it is also the recent film that I had the most problems with when it came to the portrayal of gay men and the use of gay-aimed humor. First, there is the Thomas Lennon character, Doug, who goes on an ill-fated “man date” with Paul Rudd’s Peter, who has managed to reach his mid-thirties with no male friends. When Doug is introduced, he’s played as a regular guy, not totally dissimilar to Peter. He even checks out their waitress at dinner. At the end of the dinner, however, he kisses Peter, and we find that Doug is gay. The kiss itself is drawn out to mine humor from the (supposed) uncomfortableness the audience will have with watching two men kiss. Later, Peter goes home to his fiance and tells her what happened. He then brushes his teeth, multiple times, and jokes about cleaning his mouth with detergent. The set-up for those jokes is that Doug is a smoker, but the notion of Peter going to such extremes because he kisses a man is not going to escape the audience. That ambiguity is compounded later in the film when Doug reappears, and he has gone from a regular guy to an over-emotional, prissy queen. It’s as if the film-makers, having now identified the character as gay, felt the need to resort to a tired, effeminate stereotype to prolong the joke.

More bothersome and problematic for me, however, was the role of Peter’s brother, Robbie, played by Andy Samberg. Robbie, the clearly preferred son by their father, is a macho, guy’s guy kind of fellow, who happens to be gay. The film takes great pains, in fact, to make sure that we understand that Robbie is a really cool, macho, masculine guy. It’s almost an over-reaction, a deliberate attempt to forestall criticism about the portrayal by making him the most stereotypically straight-acting character of either gender in the entire film. What makes me uncomfortable about the character is Robbie’s assertion that he’s only sexually attracted to straight men. The makers of the film are presenting a gay male character as a lech who pervs on straight men, and presenting it as a positive portrayal of a gay man. It’s one of the oldest and most tired of all anti-gay stereotypes, the gay man who sexually obsesses over straight men, and I’m frankly astonished that in 2009 it can appear in a film without attracting more conversation.

What makes all of these films and characters worth discussing to me is that, with the exception of Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold and Kumar films, none of these films feature openly gay actors, or to the best of my knowledge, are made by openly gay writers or directors. While I’m not suggesting that only gay men should be allowed to make gay jokes, it does tend to beg the question for me: are these straight men laughing with gay men at homophobia and gay caricatures, or are they simply exploiting their audience’s homophobia to dress up a “it’s funny because he’s a faggot” joke in slightly more politically correct clothes. A good example of this “are they or aren’t they” problem occurred recently on Saturday Night Live, again with Andy Samberg:

The satire in that skit works beautifully, because the films being parodied are, by any possible standard, homoerotic to the point of satire being nearly redundant. However, the skit does dance around the issue of whether or not we’re supposed to laugh because the films in question contain unacknowledged homoerotic undertones, or are we supposed to laugh because Samberg and Seth Rogen are two guys who look like they’re about to kiss. That area of ambiguity seems to be the zone in which most contemporary comedies are addressing gay issues.

Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That
A pivotal moment in the “Watchmen” plot has Nite Owl and Rorschach hacking into Ozymandias’ computer. Keep a close eye on his desktop, and you’ll see an ominously titled file folder. “Adrian’s sorta like very asexual, but he’s possibly a homosexual,” grinned Matthew Goode, referring to a long-held suspicion among “Watchmen” fans. “There’s a very small thing in his file window, and it just says, ‘Boys.’ Which is very funny, and that’s the kind of detail that Zack works with.”

Added by Zack Snyder? The devil you say!

This movie is going to suck on a scale heretofore never imagined, isn’t it?