Feeling GLAAD: DC’s Award-Profitable LGBTQIA+ Comics

Satisfaction Month is a joyful, celebratory event the place for thirty days, each stripe of the queer neighborhood bands collectively to current themselves to the world with out reservation. It’s greater than only a get together, although. It’s an act of self-declaration to a tradition that ignored and resisted them for years. It’s why visibility in media, in literal parades, and sure—in comics—is so essential. Satisfaction Month is designed to point out these struggling to easily be themselves that they aren’t alone, and that the components of themselves they’ve been made to worry are worthy of celebration.

In 1992, the Homosexual and Lesbian Alliance Towards Defamation based a brand new class of their annual GLAAD Media Awards, recognizing achievements within the comedian e-book discipline—and DC acquired the very first one. DC has been within the working persistently ever since, too. For the reason that prize’s debut, the corporate has garnered eleven GLAAD Awards for Excellent Comedian Books, almost twice the variety of another writer. Right here, I’d wish to share the tales of every comedian below the DC banner to win this prestigious recognition to this point.

1992: The Flash

In 1991, Flash author William-Messner Loebs addressed a long-standing elephant within the author’s room: the tendency in media to assign stereotypically gay traits to dangerous guys. In The Flash #53, reformed Flash villain Pied Piper calls this out, whereas confessing to Wally West himself that he truly is homosexual. This open and frank dialogue of sexuality and queer coding in mainstream comics was unprecedented, all whereas presenting us with an brazenly queer character in a hero’s supporting forged. In 1992, the third GLAAD Media Awards ceremony, The Flash gained their first ever recognition for excellent comedian. There have been no different nominees.

1996: Metropolis S.C.U.

From 1993-1995, no additional awards have been introduced on this class, however in 1996, it was taken out of retirement for an additional DC title, with none competitors. Metropolis S.C.U. was a four-issue restricted sequence by Cindy Goff, Peter Grause and José Marzan, Jr., the primary mainstream title to star an brazenly homosexual lady.

The pinnacle of the Metropolis Particular Crimes Unit, Maggie Sawyer was launched into Superman’s world in 1987 with Superman #4. Her girlfriend, reporter Toby Raynes, would debut in Superman #9. In due time, Sawyer turned Superman’s personal Commissioner Gordon, as he liaised with native regulation enforcement to curb super-crime within the Metropolis of Tomorrow. However for 4 points on this restricted engagement, Superman can be taking part in the position of Maggie’s backup. This spotlighting of a queer hero was sufficient to resurrect the award for Excellent Comics for good. Luckily, going ahead, there can be a little bit extra competitors within the discipline.

1997: Demise: The Time of Your Life

Neil Gaiman and Shawn McManus’s The Sandman: A Sport of You was a groundbreaking story in 1991 for its inclusion of a lesbian couple and trans lady in the primary forged—though not with out issues for its age. However as early as 1996, Gaiman was discovering causes to revisit the troubled couple of Hazel and Foxglove with Chris Bachalo and Mark Buckingham in Demise: The Time of Your Life, which brings the 2 again for a misadventure with Dream’s older sister.

This painful story of dying and tragedy introduced a weak relationship which displayed {that a} queer romance is not any much less fraught than any straight romance, and that queerness itself is much from its solely character. Demise: The Time of Your Life gained the class the primary 12 months that the award was aggressive, one of many different nominees being DC’s personal The Spectre.

1999: Supergirl

1998 was a robust displaying for DC on the GLAAD Awards, with all three runners-up to newspaper strip For Higher or For Worse being DC titles (The Flash, The Invisibles, Superboy and the Ravers.) DC returned to the highest in 1999, for one of many strangest explorations of sexual identification in superhero comics to this point.

For his grungy tackle Supergirl, author Peter David reintroduced the Silver Age idea of Comet the Tremendous Horse as a centaur-like angel of affection that was cast from two souls: homosexual stand-up comedian and good friend to Supergirl Andrea Martinez, and genetic experimentation topic Andrew Jones. It’s not an uncontroversial storyline, to make sure, with painful homophobia from Andrea’s mother and father and a rejected romance with Supergirl when she learns of Comet’s advanced gender identification. Nevertheless it’s a narrative that opened conversations which mainstream comics have been nonetheless afraid to even strategy, and even uneasy steps in the direction of progress are worthy of recognition. It’s all a matter of recognizing our personal internalized prejudices and transferring ahead with a extra open thoughts.

2002-2003: Inexperienced Lantern

In 2000, Judd Winick took over writing duties on Inexperienced Lantern for his personal tackle the present torchbearer, Kyle Rayner. Certainly one of his large modifications to Kyle’s life was he received his very personal Jimmy Olsen. Terry Berg, a teenage intern at Kyle’s Feast journal, was working as Kyle’s artwork assistant for his “Metropolis Dwellers” cartoon strip. For Terry, his work amongst artists and creatives on the journal represented an escape from his faculty and residential life, the place he confronted an oppressive ambiance of homophobia.

Terry’s expertise is all too acquainted for these of us who’ve needed to develop up in unaccepting communities and was a relatable face at a time when one might not often be discovered by queer readers. Terry’s welcome presence in Inexperienced Lantern earned DC the GLAAD Excellent Comedian Award two years in a row—incomes it particularly in concern #154, the place a vicious assault forces Kyle to confront the damaging homophobia inside his personal neighborhood head-on. Terry remained a daily within the ranks of Inexperienced Lantern’s supporting forged, till the limelight returned to Hal Jordan.

2004: Catwoman

Author Ed Brubaker’s Catwoman run is commonly thought-about the important phrase on Gotham’s princess of plunder, however the soul of his sequence was Selina’s closest good friend and confidante from Frank Miller and Dave Mazzuchelli’s Batman: 12 months One, Holly Robinson. Previously a intercourse employee, Holly was taken in by Selina and left the road life behind her for plenty of causes—one among which, in all probability, was that she was homosexual. Holly’s queerness, and her relationship together with her girlfriend Karon, are thoughtfully explored within the comparatively quiet however psychologically fraught “No Simple Approach Down,” the place Holly should take inventory of herself after she suffers a traumatic expertise the place she was pressured to take a life. After an action-packed first six points, the transition in each artwork and tone, because of Javier Pulido, is a jarring one—however no much less jarring than Holly’s personal expertise. This mature, contemplative story of Holly’s inside life earned DC the GLAAD Award for its third consecutive 12 months.

2010 & 2012: Detective Comics, Batwoman

Whereas DC would keep a presence on the GLAAD awards for the following six years, it’s a wholesome signal of the trade’s progress that the class has steadily change into extra aggressive. DC earned its subsequent win on the daybreak of the following decade when Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III stormed the flagship Detective Comics title with a brand new primary character: Kate Kane, the Batwoman. In opposition to the unique Batwoman, launched within the Silver Age to current Batman with a extra heterosexual veneer, this new Batwoman was Bruce Wayne’s brazenly queer cousin who was drummed out of the navy below the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Inform” coverage. (I couldn’t be happier that this origin story goes to be more and more outdated as time strikes on. Frankly, it’s an excellent drawback to have.)

Kate ultimately needed to flip the reins of the sequence again over to Batman, however she’d return in 2011 with a comic book e-book sequence of her personal by a returning J.H. Williams III with W. Haden Blackman. This time, Batwoman loved a brand new romance with earlier GLAAD Award winner Maggie Sawyer, now established on the Gotham Metropolis beat.

2019: Exit, Stage Left! The Snagglepuss Chronicles

The late 2010s at DC featured a line of Hanna Barbera cartoon-inspired comics, from a Mad Max-flavored Wacky Races to a Mad Males-flavored Flintstones. However essentially the most stunning of all of them might have been Mark Russell and Mike Feehan’s Snagglepuss therapy, which recast the foppish pink lion as a Tennessee Williams-like mid-century playwright, struggling towards the dual specters of McCarthyist communist looking and the violent homophobic ambiance which led to the Stonewall riots. Below the guise of a cartoon cat, Exit, Stage Left! introduced a real and highly effective narrative of suppressed queerness in America and a message that the one solution to progress is to face and combat in solitude with the following era the place too few stood for the final.

2022: Crush & Lobo

The eight-issue Crush & Lobo sequence from 2021 shined a colourful highlight on the Teen Titans’ Czarnian lesbian catastrophe, Xiomara Rojas—identified to her teammates and treasured few mates as Crush. As a sequence, Crush & Lobo reunited Crush together with her absolute wretch of a father for an intergalactic caper, all whereas figuring out her personal points with dedication and intimacy. It was additionally, fairly notably, one of many first sequence to launch out of DC Satisfaction final 12 months.

Maybe what makes Crush & Lobo so particular is that whereas it could have been born out of a celebratory month for queer voices and views, its continued run represented a promise to maintain that illustration alive all year long. That’s the insidious queer agenda you will have heard about—the grasp plan of the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood is solely to exist in public with out worry and to encourage different members of the neighborhood who might really feel diminished that they’re not alone. It is a trigger that is as important now because it was thirty years in the past, making the GLAAD Media Awards one of many greatest honors on the market. And one which any comedian writer, author, artist, editor and fan can take delight in.
 

Alex Jaffe is the writer of our month-to-month “Ask the Query” column and writes about TV, motion pictures, comics and superhero historical past for DCComics.com. Observe him on Twitter at @AlexJaffe and discover him within the DC Group as HubCityQuestion.