Green Lantern is Gay

[Easton Dark]

Snip

Dude, Booster Gold? Booster Gold gets all the ladies of the future past, because he's fuckin' Booster Gold.

OT: I thought Aquaman...

 

[Amnestic]

Snip

Dude, Booster Gold? Booster Gold gets all the ladies of the future past, because he's fuckin' Booster Gold.

He's the greatest hero you've never heard of.

I love Booster Gold. I'm not really a big comic book consumer but I absolutely tore through his stuff and enjoyed pretty much all of it. I was mostly making a jab at how fab]ulous that picture makes him look.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

He always seemed they gayest, to me. But then, I've never paid any attention to the Flash.

 

[Easton Dark]

Snip

Dude, Booster Gold? Booster Gold gets all the ladies of the future past, because he's fuckin' Booster Gold.

He's the greatest hero you've never heard of.

I love Booster Gold. I'm not really a big comic book consumer but I absolutely tore through his stuff and enjoyed pretty much all of it. I was mostly making a jab at how fab]ulous that picture makes him look.

I didn't like him before, you know, all the gloating and stuff. But then I watched The Greatest Story Never Told and wow, I liked him a lot more after that.

 

[likalaruku]

I see I'm not the only one who bet, my money was on Alfred.

I bet on The Joker, because the friend who told me never specified that it was a hero.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

snip

I agree on this and do believe in either giving everyone domestic partnership or saying that marriage as it is covered in government is not the same one covered in any religion.

I do think however it depends on what sect of a religion you're in for whether or not a Catholic gay person should get married in a church or not. If someone is gay and religious and their sect supports them I think they should be able to get married in their church and the churches that don't want them getting married don't get a say as it's not their church.

Also, I'm sorry for my other reply to you since I think I may have fundamentally misunderstood some of the things you were saying and my reply is probably very confusing.

I generally agree with small one caveat: it's fine as long as the sects are autonomous, but in cases where they are subsections of a larger entity it gets a bit more complicated. (This probably isn't really even a caveat considering you seem to have implicitly acknowledged it with the statement "not their church".)

For instance, one particular Catholic diocese might decide to perform gay marriages such that the Vatican might try to make the Bishop in charge step down but the Bishop refuses. Who should the government favor? I'm not sure that anything like this has ever happened, but my intuition is that it would probably come down to who legally owned the Churches and resources used by the diocese. If it was the Catholic Church the government would probably rule that the Vatican has the final say over how people use their property, and that there's nothing stopping the members of the diocese from going off and forming its own Church. It would get even more complicated if the diocese was financially independent of the Vatican and used its own money to build its Churches, but the property of the diocese was licensed under the Catholic church.

But a lot of that just boils down to zoning laws and issues of ownership rather than religious freedom. So on the whole I agree: Churches and other religious organizations definitely do not have a say in what separate religious entities do.

(Oh, and I don't think there was any confusion on my part. I didn't assume that you belonged to any of my hypothetical groups and I was arguing against them, not you. I tend to argue in hypotheticals, which often gives people the mistaken impression that I'm committing them to a straw man position when I'm actually just trying to elucidate all the possible positions one might take in an argument. I'm certainly not assuming that you would want the government to rule in favor of the diocese in the example I just gave.)

 

[sunsetspawn]

I was pulling for Aquaman or Batman. Green Lantern was always up there in my list of likely candidates, but I just thought Aquaman, Batman, or even Flash might have been better. Still, it's DC's game.

To be fair, Aquaman is still pretty gay.

 

[zombiesinc]

"It's Green Lantern!"

"Oh wow, cool! You could've fooled me, what with Rya-"

"No, not that Green Lantern. The other Green Lantern."

"... oh."

 

[ResonanceSD]

Dear DC:

A) we don't care that much, if at all.

B) WE KNEW ALREADY -_-

C) Like it matters.

Escapists! Pick one.

"It's Green Lantern!"

"Oh wow, cool! You could've fooled me, what with Rya-"

"No, not that Green Lantern. The other Green Lantern."

"... oh."

I thought the exact same thing.

 

[LadyRhian]

So what does this mean for his wife, and his kids.

That's the thing about changing the sexuality and/or race of a established character, it creates ripple effects that force the change of other characters. I have no problem with gay characters I just wish they wouldn't change already established characters to add more "diversity". If you need to have a character to be gay create a new character, like Obsidian.

Also look at it from the reverse can you imagine if someone decided to change an established gay character and make them straight?

Being gay does *not* mean you cannot have kids, guys. Do I really NEED to say this? Or cannot marry a woman, for that matter.

 

[General Vengeance]

Now the big question is will this actually help sales of the Green Lantern comic book? Or if sales slip even further, with this just turn out to be a dream in a alternate universe.

 

[faefrost]

So they retconned out a long standing Gay character and then simply turned his father, the traditionally more right wing and conservative type, gay in their new incarnation? Wow! That's just wrong in so many ways. regardless of which side of the political spectrum you reside.

At least over at Marvel Northstar being gay was organically built into the character from pretty much the first panel he ever appeared in. (not kidding about this). It wasn't blatant. It wasn;t out of the closet, but it was there. In much the same way that the Thing, Benjamin Jacob Grimm was created as a jewish character. It was a part of how the writers envisioned the character but it was not a core of the story. When the subject finally came up, you could easily look back and see how it was there all the time.

The same was true with Obsidian, the gay son of the conservative Green Lantern. It was subtle. It was occasionally painful, but it felt a hell of a lot more real then this "beating the audience over the head with a bat to make some politically correct point" crap. And I just don't understand? It literally gained DC nothing on any front. Yes they proclaimed a gay character. But by doing so it insures that their more longstanding gay character no longer exists. so an even trade. They sought to have a "major" superhero come out of the closet. But really? Alan Scott? He hasn't been a major superhero in almost 70 years. readers of the books know who he is, but no one outside of a comic shop would ever recognize his costume or know his name. So mainstream attention, zero beyond some artificial and pointless outrage for a week or two. And at the end of the day the contrast between the older 1940's era "old school" superhero struggling to come to terms with his gay superhero son, was a much more interesting story than 'OMG the old Green Lantern is Gay!!!" could ever be. It felt more real, and not simply a retread of a 4 color version of a Glee story.

 

[spectrenihlus]

So what does this mean for his wife, and his kids.

That's the thing about changing the sexuality and/or race of a established character, it creates ripple effects that force the change of other characters. I have no problem with gay characters I just wish they wouldn't change already established characters to add more "diversity". If you need to have a character to be gay create a new character, like Obsidian.

Also look at it from the reverse can you imagine if someone decided to change an established gay character and make them straight?

Being gay does *not* mean you cannot have kids, guys. Do I really NEED to say this? Or cannot marry a woman, for that matter.

Did I say it did? No it creates inconsistencies with the established lore. Yes it is a reboot however they still use the previous background for his character and besides it all just feels forced on him. Here is a writer on the best way to write a gay character

I didn't want to make a character gay unless it felt organic. So, the list was pretty short. Then I remembered when Obsidian was in the JLA years ago and Gerard Jones, the writer, danced around the issue. I went back and read all my Infinity, Inc.'s and although Todd dated women, it was always a mess. Andreyko said that DC was supportive, wanting a "visible gay character" and that it was "a general void in the DCU that needed exploration". Geoff Johns, longtime writer of JSA, also stated his support for the idea.

That is describing Green Lantern's son obsidian. He was written from his inception with the intent of making him gay. Here however I will describe Alan Scott's marriage

Years later, after the death of his first wife Rose Canton, Alan Scott realized that he had loved Molly all this time and they got married. As the years passed a problem developed for the two; the Starheart (which gave Scott his powers) had reversed his aging processes, so he was physically a young man while Molly had since aged into an old woman. In despair over the rift this had caused between them Molly sold her soul to the demon Neron in return for youth in Underworld Unleashed: Abyss - Hell's Sentinel #1. Her body became that of a young woman (who had the power to create nightmares) but her soul remained in the underworld. Scott fought his way through Hell to obtain it and, with the help of the young Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, returned it to the Harlequin's body. This resulted in re-aging Molly, but making her whole once again. Some time thereafter, Scott himself was returned to his true physical age, as well. Mayne and Scott remain happily married to this day.

Does this sound like someone confused with their sexuality to you? No. This is pure a simple a gimmick.

 

[spectrenihlus]

So they retconned out a long standing Gay character and then simply turned his father, the traditionally more right wing and conservative type, gay in their new incarnation? Wow! That's just wrong in so many ways. regardless of which side of the political spectrum you reside.

At least over at Marvel Northstar being gay was organically built into the character from pretty much the first panel he ever appeared in. (not kidding about this). It wasn't blatant. It wasn;t out of the closet, but it was there. In much the same way that the Thing, Benjamin Jacob Grimm was created as a jewish character. It was a part of how the writers envisioned the character but it was not a core of the story. When the subject finally came up, you could easily look back and see how it was there all the time.

The same was true with Obsidian, the gay son of the conservative Green Lantern. It was subtle. It was occasionally painful, but it felt a hell of a lot more real then this "beating the audience over the head with a bat to make some politically correct point" crap. And I just don't understand? It literally gained DC nothing on any front. Yes they proclaimed a gay character. But by doing so it insures that their more longstanding gay character no longer exists. so an even trade. They sought to have a "major" superhero come out of the closet. But really? Alan Scott? He hasn't been a major superhero in almost 70 years. readers of the books know who he is, but no one outside of a comic shop would ever recognize his costume or know his name. So mainstream attention, zero beyond some artificial and pointless outrage for a week or two. And at the end of the day the contrast between the older 1940's era "old school" superhero struggling to come to terms with his gay superhero son, was a much more interesting story than 'OMG the old Green Lantern is Gay!!!" could ever be. It felt more real, and not simply a retread of a 4 color version of a Glee story.

Exactly, could you imagine if they did the reverse and made Obsidian or Batwoman straight? If that's not ok then changing a character who has always been written as straight should not be ok either.

 

[cainx10a]

Congratulations are in orders. Why wasn't it Superman???

 

[NeutralDrow]

Really? Alan Scott?

Good. I'd certainly call the original Green Lantern "iconic," but he can still certainly use the exposure boost. He's awesome enough to deserve it.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

My thought process:

Green Lantern is Gay.

Wow, never would of thought Hal Jordan - O wait, it's not that one.

Well, this will be interesting to see how DC does John Stewart as - O, not him either

It's Alan Scott... ok, so its Green Lantern but not the Green Lantern of the movie or the Justice League cartoon.


Is it just me or does this feel like DC was trying to promote the whole "iconic" part too much. If there are two renditions of the hero, both of which appear in broader media, then how iconic is this one? Especially if DC has other versions to fall back on if the story doesn't pan out.

 

[duchaked]

*looks at the Green Lantern voiced by Nathan Fillion*
naaahhhh

*but then looks at the Green Lantern played by Ryan Reynolds*
oh okay

still, I was thinking Robin heh
but honestly this hardly rocks the boat at all, DC. but it's one way to get some attention I suppose

 

[NeutralDrow]

Is it just me or does this feel like DC was trying to promote the whole "iconic" part too much. If there are two renditions of the hero, both of which appear in broader media, then how iconic is this one? Especially if DC has other versions to fall back on if the story doesn't pan out.

I can think of two possibilities.

1) DC legitimately equates the word "iconic" with "long-standing part of DC comics," and Alan Scott is the original, Golden Age Green Lantern. He's almost as old as Superman and Batman, and he was introduced in the same year as the golden age Flash (Jay Gerrick, rather than the more well-known Barry Allen).

2) They were playing it up to get peoples' attention, knowing the choice would create controversy and anticipating that the response would be "Alan Scott? Who the hell pays attention to Alan Scott, any more? What's he even up to?" *reads*

Personally, I think it's the first one, though I'm probably biased.

Besides, Alan Scott is the other rendition of Green Lantern. Hal Jordan and John Stewart are in a way the same rendition (Green Lantern Corps members, with a specific version of the ring) with different characters, same with Kyle Rayner (who I knew about long before Stewart) and Guy Gardner.

 

[Dylan Voyda]

So he is gay and he is losing the green and purple outfit.

As much as I love the old golden age characters, as awesome as Earth2 is as a book. As much as I can't wait to see this new version of the character shine his light in the darkness. As Iconic just about all the imagery surrounding the JSA can be at times. I still feel I missing something.

And to everyone who is saying that Alan Scott is not an iconic character. There would be no Green Lantern Corps without first having Alan Scott and his magic ring.

I even like is saying more "And I shall shine my light over the dark evil, For darkness can't stand the light, The light of the Green Lantern."

He is iconic in his own way and in a way that fits the more literal version of the word iconic.