My History Month Talk – LGBT Superheroes

This has been announced on Facebook, so I guess it is OK to mirror it here.

Anyone old enough to remember the Adam West Batman TV series will know that it would be hard to imagine anything more camp. And yet at the same time superhero comics were strictly controlled with regard to content for fear of corrupting the youth of America (and doubtless the rest of the world as well). A lot has changed since the 1960s, and occasionally the mass media gets all excited about a superhero coming out as gay. But do those men in tights still expect us to believe that their dress sense is purely utilitarian? And how about the rest of the LGBT spectrum? Do they get a look in? Cheryl Morgan takes on a tour of a world in which we have been asked to believe that a man can fly, but not that he might fall in love with his teen sidekick.

Sunday, 23 February, 2.30-3.30pm, M-Shed, Bristol

And can I say that I am having huge fun researching this. 🙂

Sadly I won’t be able to podcast it because it has lots of illustrations.

6 thoughts on “My History Month Talk – LGBT Superheroes

  1. Ooo! Ooo! Must promote my favorite anime superhero! Well, that page isn’t a terrific introduction to him, but it’s the best I can find with a quick search in English. Anyway, he’s that show’s best approximation to Bruce Wayne, only queer and with an actual superpower. (And he’s my favorite because he’s the intelligent and mature one in that superhero group.)

    Let’s see… talking LGBT anime characters, there’s also O.D. the 300-year-old gay half-alien superhero from Gatchaman Crowds, which is allegedly available to the UK free on Crunchyroll. (And which is really, really good, and eligible for this year’s Hugo ballot!)

    1. Oh yes, and in Sailor Moon in the original Japanese, Sailors Uranus Neptune are girlfriends. The English dub of the anime changed them to cousins. Although maybe that’s well-known enough by now that I don’t need to mention it.

    2. Sadly I won’t be talking about Japan. Firstly, if I did, we’d be there all week trying to cover it all. And secondly, I don’t understand Japanese culture well enough to talk about what all of that gender play actually means to Japanese people.

  2. Oh man, I really want to see/hear/whatever this… I don’t suppose the images-with-commentary, or script-with-illustrations, will end up posted here?

    1. Sorry, no. While the vast majority of the images are sourced online, putting them all in one place is asking for trouble, especially if you may make the occasional critical remark about comics companies in the process.

Comments are closed.