Sometime at the end of next month, Terry Berg, a young gay man, will be horribly attacked by three men and left for dead in an alley. He will be discovered by his friend and boss, the cartoonist Kyle Rayner, who vows revenge against the queer bashers. This Matthew Shepard-like story is already making headlines, with coverage in the New York Times and discussion on Donahue. But the issue under debate isn't violence against gay people, it's the appearance of gay characters in comic books: Terry and Kyle are major characters in the strip Green Lantern.

Predictably, the right-wing, anti-gay Family Research Council (FRC) condemned the new comic book (as well as the entire plot line that began last April with Terry coming out to Kyle, the mild-mannered cartoonist who leads a double life as the Green Lantern and derives extraordinary powers come from his magical emerald ring). Less predictable, however, is the fact that many Green Lantern readers have chimed in with their displeasure with, and in some cases hostility to, this turn in the plot. If the backlash to the new gay themes in Green Lantern feels sort of retro, though, that's because it is. The public pronouncements of the FRC are a complete replay of the anti-comic-book hysteria that gripped the country in 1954, when the publication of Fredric Wertham's best-selling Seduction of the Innocent (Rinehart & Company) "exposed" the dangerous sexual subtexts of comic books and prompted Senate subcommittee hearings on juvenile delinquency. The negative reaction among Green Lantern readers, however, is an unexpected twist -- one perhaps more shocking in these allegedly more-sophisticated times than the appearance of queer comic-book characters themselves.

IT'S NO SURPRISE that comic books are under scrutiny. Children's literature has always been a -- if not the -- prime arena for the culture police. Books from Heidi to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Everyone Poops have been considered dangerous to kids. Most manifestations of mass culture, such as movies, television, rock and roll -- and comics -- have long been suspect for their potential to deprave innocent children. Stir homosexuality into this already-potent mixture and you have a bubbling cauldron that would be at home in any mad scientist's laboratory.

That said, the emergence of pivotal gay and lesbian characters in comics is nothing new. In 1993, Northstar, of Marvel Comics' X-Men, came out; the relationship between Mystique and Destiny in the same comic had clear lesbian overtones. Lee and Li, ancillary characters in Green Lantern, are openly lesbian. In fact, Bob Schreck, the editor at DC Comics who oversees Green Lantern, had planned Terry Berg's coming-out story nearly three years ago (and won an award from Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, or GLAAD, when it hit newsstands last year in Issue #13). Ron Marz, the writer who was working on the concept, left, but Schreck hired Judd Winick -- who was a cast member on MTV's The Real World in 1994 -- and worked on both Terry's coming-out and the queer-bashing story lines with him. It was a likely choice because Winick had been close friends with Pedro Zamora, a Real World roommate who later died of AIDS, and wrote Pedro and Me (Henry Holt, 2000), a graphic novel about their relationship.

But homosexuality in comics goes back even further than that -- as does the notion that comics corrupt children. The comic book was invented in 1933 when Max Gaines and Harry Wildenberg, two sales employees at the Eastern Color printing company in Waterbury, Connecticut, discovered that a weekly comic strip could easily be printed and rebound in book form. The product sold well enough until writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Schuster, working in a strong tradition of Jewish liberalism, invented Superman, which they sold to DC Comics for $130 after it had been repeatedly turned down by syndicates as a comic strip. The Man of Steel immediately took off and sold 1.3 million copies per issue. It vastly outstripped the average 200,000 to 400,000 copies of other comics sales, essentially creating the comic-book business. Superhero comics proliferated: Batman arrived in 1939, the Green Lantern in 1940, and scores of others, including Captain Marvel, Doll Man, Plastic Man, the Flash, and Dr. Mid-Nite.

These superheroes were crime fighters who targeted corrupt politicians, unscrupulous bosses, racists, and -- during World War II -- warmongering dictators. They were, in essence, progressive New Dealers. Originally, comic books were liberal propaganda. As the comic-book industry grew, its repertoire expanded to include books dealing with crime, romance, and jungle tales. In 1946, Publisher's Weekly reported that 540 million comic books were sold each year.

By 1947, a backlash had amassed. With estimates by the Catholic National Organization for Decent Literature that 90 percent of all US kids read comic books, many police organizations, educators, clergy, and morality watchers decided that comic books would be the ruin of America. An anti-comics fervor swept the country, calling for everything from boycotts of news dealers who sold "crime" comics to the notorious "comic-book burning" that took place on December 10, 1948, at St. Patrick's grade school in Binghamton, New York, where students -- under the guidance of parish priests, teachers, and parents -- publicly burned 2000 comic books.

The fear prompting this hysteria found warrant in Fredric Wertham's 1953 Seduction of the Innocent, which became an instant bestseller. Wertham, a liberal psychiatrist, blamed comics for everything wrong with America: juvenile delinquency, crime, race hatred, violence, the incipient rise of fascism, hatred of women, rape, and -- of course -- homosexuality. He was the star witness at the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, convened on April 22, 1954, and fully endorsed the idea (also a source of Cold War-era paranoia) that children could be "brainwashed" by comics to become antisocial and even criminal.

In his book, Wertham quite specifically detailed comic books' homosexual content, noting that "the muscular male supertype, whose primary sex characteristics are usually well emphasized, is, in . . . certain stories, the object of homoerotic sexual curiosity and stimulation." He noted that "only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and psychopathology of sex can fail to realize the subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures of the mature `Batman' and his younger friend `Robin.' " Indeed. As Wertham writes, sometimes Batman "ends up in bed injured and young Robin is shown sitting next to him. At home they lead an idyllic life. They are Bruce Wayne and `Dick' Grayson. Bruce Wayne is described as a `socialite,' and the official relationship is that Dick is Bruce's ward. They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in his dressing gown. As they sit by the fire the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: `Something's wrong with Bruce. He hasn't been himself these last few days.' It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." It is easy to disagree with Wertham's anti-homosexual attitudes (commonplace in the culture of his time), but in essence, he is completely right: Batman and Robin are "the wish fulfillment of two homosexuals living together."

Wertham's insight into the comic is completely in sync with the ideas of many scholars now working in the fields of queer studies and popular culture. And it is no accident that in the 1990s, ACT UP printed and distributed T-shirts with images of Batman, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batgirl engaging in various sexual acts to promote safe sex. As much as he would have hated these later developments, Wertham opened the closet door for superheroes.

Although Wertham's denunciations of the homosexual "seduction" of children (he also describes Wonder Woman as a vicious, s/m-oriented, man-hating lesbian) were only a small, if vividly evocative, portion of his book, they were the most potent and caused the most furor. If homosexuality was a disease -- and for Wertham it was -- then it was contagious and spread through comic books. In the sexually obsessed culture of the1950s, homosexuality was breaking out everywhere. Wertham certainly found it in comics.

OF COURSE, the irony is that while Seduction of the Innocent was a mostly crackpot-conservative call to arms to protect children, Wertham was right about the homoeroticism pervading comic books. Superheroes are idealized images of masculinity presented as heroes for young boys. They have little to do with women -- except to rescue them or be chased by them. (Did Lois Lane ever stop pursuing Superman?) And they did often sport cute young boy-toys: Batman and Robin, AquaMan and AquaLad, Captain America and Bucky, Green Arrow (whose real name is Oliver Queen) and Speedy. Not only that, but the art work in comic books was often highly eroticized, as Wertham notes: "Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discretely evident." And all superheroes live outside of society -- often they have been driven out or hurt in some manner for which they are compensated with super powers. They are, by definition, not "normal," and their desire for justice and to help people is almost always driven by their outsider status. With few exceptions, their interest in heterosexuality or heterosexual relationships is (for a variety of reasons) verboten, beyond them, or simply a matter of indifference.

Although Wertham was wrong in suggesting that superhero comic books were turning boys queer, he was surely correct in pinpointing how their unspoken and lightly coded homoeroticism was an essential part of the sexual imagination and psychological make-up of young boys. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when the homosexual subtext becomes more explicit -- as it has in recent issues of Green Lantern -- those once-innocent and unspoken male-male fantasies have become more troubling not only to morality watchers, but also to some of the male readers themselves.

While Peter Sprigg, of the Family Research Council, reiterated the most banal anti-gay sentiments à la Fredric Wertham on Phil Donahue's new show -- claiming that homosexuality led to AIDS, that homosexuals were more likely to be battered by a partner than to be queer-bashed, and that Winick was not "doing homosexuals any favors by saying it's okay for you to engage in homosexual behavior, when it leads to [AIDS]." This, of course, is what we have come to expect from the Family Research Council. But the anxiety about Terry Berg's homosexuality runs in deeper cultural channels than the FRC's knee-jerk political posturing.

The letters column following the Green Lantern issue in which Terry "came out" was filled with cranky missives. And the Green Lantern message boards are full of anti-Judd Winick sentiment. A man responding to a news story about Green Lantern dealing with hate crimes asks, "What's really behind all of this?" before answering his own question: "It's the gay strategy of moving towards thought control. With Hate Crimes legislation, anyone could be cited for even saying that the gay life style is wrong! That person could be accused of stirring up violence against gays, which is baloney." Another messenger writes, "I'm not [going to buy these issues]. As a matter of fact, I dropped Green Lantern from my pull list with this issue. Winick can push his views on someone else." And another has this advice for Winick: "I have a challenge for you. I want you to stop pigeon-holing your stories. Stop seeking the praise of any one interest group by pandering a story to them. I know that your editor is Bisexual, and encouraged you to do this to face down his own past demons, and I know that GLAAD absolutely adores you, but you need to be less `realistic' in your
stories, especially since statistically there's not a lot of realism in a poor gay kid
getting his teeth kicked in by angry straights. Unfortunately, most crime in NYC still involves drug addicts and other miscreants attacking folks for money. I should know, I live there." The problem, according to another writer, is that identity politics has ruined America: "I find that this `grouping' in America, this catering to identity groups and not individuals, to be a dangerous thing. Let's not get all political, but I get nervous when group issues, and not individual issues, move to the fore."

Reading through the message boards, you can't help but be struck by two themes: the conviction that serious issues ruin comic-book stories, and the fact that deep-seated anxiety about male homosexuality is still with us. The first concern is disingenuous: from the beginning, comic books have consistently reflected social concerns. Not only were the original superheroes all Roosevelt liberals, but in the 1970s, the comic-book industry dealt with a full range of topical issues, including racism, civil rights, the Vietnam war, government corruption, urban crime, and environmentalism. In a 1970 Captain America comic, the very nature of a superhero is questioned. "This is the age of the anti-hero. The age of the rebel and the dissenter," muses the disconsolate patriot. "And in a world rife with injustice, greed, and endless war, who's to say the rebels are wrong? I've spent a lifetime defending the flag and the law. Perhaps I should have battled less and questioned more!" In this tradition, dealing with queer bashing makes perfect sense.

But beneath the letters and the messages is a deep anxiety about the very presence of open male homosexuality in the story. Once the specter of homosexuality is taken out of the coy and coded, the subtext of Batman and Robin has to be faced more forthrightly. This is threatening because so much of Western culture is founded on the (mostly suppressed, usually desexualized) myth of male/male romance. From the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh and the Arthurian stories of the Knights of the Round Table to The Last of the Mohicans, Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, and Lethal Weapon, chronicling the adventures of two guys on their own has been a compelling narrative to men of all sexual orientations. That is one of the superhero comic books' great sources of appeal and one of the reasons why they have been so successful with both little boys and bigger boys. This is not to say that comic books and superheroes are about nothing but repressed homosexual longings. Such reductionism would be silly. One of the pleasures of reading comics -- or any literature -- is that they give way to a multitude of readings that inspire a wide range of insights. But because we live in such a homophobic culture, the homoeroticism in comic books is always going to be one reading that raises anxiety as well as hackles.

ONE OF THE REASONS Fredric Wertham's analysis of the homoeroticism of Batman and Robin was so potent in the 1950s is that the culture was at a critical turning point: Kinsey had broken the silence about the prevalence of male homosexuality in society, youth culture posed a looming threat to adults, and psychoanalysis had become part of mass culture, giving Middle America a new lens through which to view behavior formerly regarded as completely "innocent." But Wertham's "outing" of homoeroticism, which made such an impression in the 1950s, has essentially been lost because he has been written off as a crackpot who was on a silly, even dangerous, crusade against comic books. Except for a few essays that now take seriously his work on topics such as the role of German psychiatrists during the Holocaust and the psychological harm caused by segregation (used in the 1954 landmark Supreme Court school-desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education), as well as his work helping to open mental-health clinics in Harlem during the 1940s, he is generally known as a crank and a fool. But while his belief that homosexuality was a mental disorder was wrong, his analysis of the homoeroticism in comic books was astute.

It is ironic that by making the incipient homosexuality in superhero comic books more visible -- and giving it a contemporary political context -- Judd Winick prompted a backlash far more complex than the one faced by comic books in the 1950s. For today's angry response is coming not just from self-appointed moral crusaders like the Family Research Council, whose threadbare, laughable arguments have been around since long before the '50s. Now the antagonism to gay content springs from the readers themselves, who apparently cannot bear the anxiety that open and honest portrayals of homosexuality arouse. To quote that other great, if nebbishy, comic superhero, Walter Lenz's Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Michael Bronski is the author of The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (St. Martin's, 1998). He can be reached at mabronski@aol.com.

Issue Date: August 9 - 15, 2002