Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Is the Legion series homophobic?

I can't belief that in this day and age we still aren't seeing at least one gay Legionnaire. Don't you think it's about time? Do you think the writers are homophobic?


[Edited title: I don't like or condone condemning people for some people's personal perceptions that might not be shared by others. Thanks!]

Certainly not! The Legion has always been a step ahead of the rest of the industry in adding gay characters, as Vi & Salu, Jan Arrah, Mekt & Holt and others have shown.

If anything, the Legion has suffered from a constant need to reboot the franchise which kind of limits its ability to grow the series with new characters and diversity.

Perhaps now with a semblance of the old franchise restored and what appears to be a firm committment on DC's behalf to move the series forward without turning back, the time is ripe for a homosexual character to appear in the LSH on an ongoing basis without fear of s/he dissapearing the next time the franchise has its continuity changed?

(I'm personally hoping Vi & Salu emerge as the couple they were in TMK very quickly).

Edited title since not everyone shares your perception.

The LSH franchise as a whole is about as homophobaic as I am. And I ain't scared of no homos at ALL-- bring it ON, sissies of ALL varieties-- I'm not going to condemn you... but what you're WEARING might be target of some bitchy barbs!

Seriosuly though, so many things come into play here... the writer's wishes, the editor's wishes, the P'sTB wishes...

Sexuality was just comics taboo really in the 60s, 70s and 80s... wasn't until the grim -n- gritty 90s that this subject would or could really be on the table for mainstream DC/Marvel.

And, as Cobie states, reboot after reboot and regime change after regime change didn't exactly help LSH be able to maintain any longterm gay characters but in general I think LSH has been fairly (or at least semi) cutting-edge about it for a mainstream superhero team.

With Mr. Levitz now firmly in place and norms of the day a lot different than they once were, it will be interesting to see what happens now.

With it's well-documented history of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender characters, the Legion series is of course not an example of homophobia at work.

However - all of those characters were introduced/revealed post Five Year Gap, correct? That's therefore a loooooonnnng period of time where DC/Paul (as the team's longest writer) could have introduced a non-straight character into the universe but didn't.

Times were obviously different back then but still - the Legion really should have been on the forefront of books introducing sexual (and all sorts of other) minorities considering its progressive, futuristic setting and all. Marvel was way ahead of the ball than DC on this topic I think.

I have no idea what Paul's stance on this subject is but I hope we do see a gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender Legionnaire soon - though not at the expense of good story-telling of course (not that it would be).

I believe the Lightning Lord is gay idea was based on a fan slash pairing. It showed up in V4, but so did lots of fan stuff.

Element Lad is theoretically based on an old Jim Shooter letter from 1975, but if you actually read it you'll also find a reference to a threesome between Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Dream Girl. Funny how everyone ignores that part.

Ayla/Violet does seem to be legitimate.

No it's not.

They don't need to have a gay character to be fun reading. And that's what this LSH is about- fun reading.

I'd really like to see somebody "out" in the future. By that, I mean a couple that can hold hands, embrace, kiss, use the "L" word if it suits the story.

The trouble with having nobody like that in the future is that there are already "out" DC characters in the present continuity. What does it say that there are no LBGT characters in the future that we can discover through anything but innuendo and subtext? That same-sex attraction was just "a phase" for Humankind and in Utopia it will disappear?

Not good.

Hey, I like playing "Who is? Who isn't?" as much as the next person, but that's not a real substitute for having continuity reflect the wide range of fans and readers that really exist.

I'd like that, too, but even if they were exes, I'd like for it to be okay to refer to them as such.

I think this whole thread topic is a non issue. As so many have stated above the Legion has proven that it is not homophobic in the least, given its past relationships (ie: Vi/Ayla).

The idea does not need to be forced in order to make a point either. If it flows naturally from the ongoing story, great! If not, so what? What would that prove or not prove to the fans reading a fictional, superheroic futuristic team comic anyway?
Let it go people ... it's just a comic book.

[snip]

Ken Arromdee:

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...Funny how everyone ignores that part...

If it's anything like the interview posted on this board, I prefer to ignore anything Shooter says about the characters', uh, social lives. Seriously, the guy should've taken a cold shower before giving that interview. That was WAY more insight into his mind than I wanted, Thanks.

I think the Vi/Ayla pairing occurred before the Five Year Gap. I had dropped the book when the Five Year Gap started.

Cleome, I couldn't agree with you more.

Hey, thanks for the agreement above, fk, but...

[snip]

future king:

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...Let it go people ... it's just a comic book...

I always wonder why that line is used to explain resistance to change, but never to explain why resistance to change is kind of ridiculous, given how amazingly selective it is.

There can be forty-four kajillion deaths in comics, some extremely graphic. There can be sexual assault and "fridgings," because that makes comics more "adult." But there can't be a same-sex couple kissing.

Uh, yeah.

Real nice.

I'm pretty sure Levitz only intended for them to be "close friends" in v3, though some fans interpreted this otherwise. They weren't really a couple until 5YL.

It was overt and undeniable in 5YL, but strongly hinted at in Levitz' v.3. In fact, at one point, someone at DC (possibly Levitz himself) insisted they were just close friends, nothing more. It was the 80s, after all... public figures could be as obvious as Boy George, as long as they denied it.

How on Earth can a "series" be homophobic?
What's with all the anger, Bouncing Bear??

To be fair to BB, he said that the writers (or maybe editors...I don't recall) were homophobic. I changed it to be less slanderous.

Historically, the Legion has been out ahead of the pack when it comes to depicting gay (or at least, possibly gay) characters. As has been pointed out in this thread, before the '80s, the sexual lives of comic characters was not something that companies could depict. It was actually kind of shocking in New Teen Titans #1 (the baxter series) to see Dick Grayson in bed with Koriand'r. The whole "Northstar is gay" thing didn't happen til a couple of years after that.

Even today, there are very, very few prominent openly gay characters in mainstream comics. Off the top of my head I can only think of Batwoman and Renee Montoya. There are some other supporting characters, but can anyone name any other major league heroes?

Finally, I really don't think it's apt to call any series "homophobic" unless the writers actively set out to denigrate gay people in the book. Over the years, the writers of the Legion have done anything but.

It's been downplayed lately, but Obsidian is arguably one of the most visible gay characters in the DCU.

to be fair to Paul Levitz, he did introduce the strong hint that there was a relationship between Invisible Kid and Chemical King.
i was always a bit peeved that Paul explicitly did NOT want Element Lad to be gay and thus created Shvaugn Erin. just as Mark Waid gave threeboot Invisible Kid an "out of character" crush on Supergirl to dispel the gay rumors. it seems almost every creative team takes a step towards establishing someone as gay then the next creative team steps back. it's bit silly since LSH has a large gay following.
heck , even Archie comics now has a "gay".

I never knew Jan was supposed to be gay, and I liked his relationship with Shvaugn.

For a series set 1000 years in the future, it was conceived of and mostly populated with extremely conservative white straight people, with the only the 'aliens' (Shady and Cham and Brainy) being 'colored,' before the eventual introduction of Tyroc (eighteen *years* later!).

Shooter got flak for attempting to make Ferro Lad black, after all, so it's hardly a shock that his musings on whether or not Jan would be gay were soundly ignored until the reboot (and even then, the 'gay' tag was dodged by making him express total indifference to whether or not Sean/Shvaugn was an innie or an outie).

I was kinda hoping that Waid would pick up that missed opportunity, and portray the teenagers of the 31st century as being blithely unconcerned with gender stereotypes, and for sleeps-around characters like Ayla or Jo to have some same-gender flings that nobody on the team seems to regard as being at all out of the ordinary, but he also shyed away from that, and, despite having a plethora of sexual relationships (during the series and alluded to as past affairs, like Val/Shady, Ayla/Jo and Ayla/Dirk), he didn't name-drop any same-sex hook ups, which, IMO, seemed a little unrealistic, considering the level of sexual freedom they were displaying.

Indeed, while I will rag on Geoff John's shortcomings as a Legion scribe to the end of time, he went and depicted Dawnstar as having been in a relationship with a Thanagarian woman, one that mattered enough that even when her memories returned and she had to leave, she left the woman her Flight Ring to remember her by.

I love the Legion, but the classic team has never been a dazzling beacon of enlightened inclusion, either racially or sexually.

I'd *like* to see more ethnic diversity, more non-humanoid aliens and more funky future relationships (do Carggites have triple marriages, each 'self' marrying a different individual, making polygamy the standard? for taht matter, is Carggite masturbation a 'team sport?' do hyrkrains have the same concept of fidelity as dolphins and consider intercourse about as meaningful as shaking someone's hand? are all durlans non-gendered, reproducing parthenogenetically, and is Gim happily married to someone that is not and never has been 'female' in any meaningful sense of the word?). But that ain't happened yet, and there are a *ton* of straight white characters that, no matter that they are relics of a less inclusive age, I still kinda love and want to see more of.

I also love ice cream, but it's never gonna taste like steak or curry.

I accept that not everything I like is going to do everything I want.

^ I think the Dawnstar = lesbian/bisexual thing was actually Brad Meltzer, Set.

Though, since they wrote that arc together who knows what plot point belonged to which writer?