Bisexual Superman: The New Man of Tomorrow
If you’re a superhero lover, you’ll know that in recent months, comic book writer Tom Taylor’s adaptation of Superman has gained lots of publicity. Superman’s civilian persona is Clark Kent, but recently he has been out of the picture and his son, Jonathan Kent has stepped up to take on the mantle. Tom Taylor’s series Superman: Son of Kal-El follows Jon’s adventures and on October 11th, national coming out day, Taylor posted to his Instagram that issue five of the series would reveal the character’s relationship with his lover Jay Nakamura.
Taylor isn’t the first to integrate a queer storyline with a very famous superhero. This summer, Mehghan Fitzmartin wrote a storyline for Batman: Urban Legends where Batman’s teenage protégé, Robin, comes out as bisexual. Robin, or better known as his civilian persona Tim Drake, is a character that has existed for decades, and many felt as though making old characters come out as queer is a more relatable approach to making the superhero community more LGBT friendly than creating new characters from scratch.
Despite the overwhelming support for both of these characters, the world is not as accepting to queer superheroes as we think. Many people took to twitter to support their dislike of queer superheroes, stating that this is only to support a leftist agenda. One of these people was Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers. Overall, all of Taylor’s series offer a more open-minded approach on life with his adaption of Superman supporting refugee and climate change protests. Moreover, Taylor’s adaption of the superhero Nightwing has superhero Dick Grayson funding social programs with his immense wealth and his series Dark Knights of Steel, a medieval alternate universe about DC Comics favourite heroes introducing a romance between Wonder Woman and Supergirl.
If you hadn’t been able to notice, I’m a huge Tom Taylor fan and love his approach to real life problems into a fictional world. I think that pretending queer people are not superhero fans is outdated and sometimes people forget the immense power that representation has. Despite popular belief, turning superheroes that have been around for decades into queer icons doesn’t change them all that much, they are still the same characters that we have always loved. This time though, they just mean so much more to people who have regularly been discarded from society. If this is something you’re hearing for the first time, I highly suggest checking out these comics, you won’t regret it.
By Isabella Del Grosso
