Fan Commentary: Apollo and Midnighter:
the significance of the "World's Finest" couple, page 1.
My name's James and I'm a 24 years old gay guy.
Most of my life I've known I'm gay, and most of my life I've been a comic book reader.
As any gay person will tell you, one of the most difiicult parts of growing up when you're gay is finding positive images of gay men or women that you can identify with in the mass media. On television shows, in movies, music, greeting cards, school books, everyone's straight. The credit card commercial aways shows this handsome guy with his beautiful wife and kids. In popular film, the guy aways gets/wants/lusts after/is rejected by/whatever the girl... you get the picture. You find out pretty soon that, as far as the media is concerned, the entire world seems to be exclusively straight.
Worse, the only portrayals of gay people you see are (or at least the first ones, unless you're very lucky), are lousy role models. Everyone's familiar with the stereotypes: the effeminate man or the butch woman that serve no purpose other than being ridiculed, or posing as the comic relief for any situation. Worse yet, not only are these the most common images of gay people in the media, they often have no trace of personality other that the outrageous exagerations of stereotypical gay persona. As gay teens grow up, they learn that the world is not like this, that there are all kinds of gay people, and even those that resemble the stereotypes are real people, with multi-faceted personalities and feelings, not the human cartoons presented to us in television comedies.
As I got older, and more aware of my own sexuality, I found that the situation in comics was just as bad as the electronic media, if not worse.
While mainstream superhero comics were, and remain my favorites, there were no gay characters whatsoever. .I recall reading once that one of the reasons for the success of the Spiderman character was that "teens everywhere" could relate to Peter Parker's problems. This didnŐt ring true to me, 'cause I would never see Peter and Flash Thompson get together. Nor I would see the X-Men's Cyclops on a date with his Warren Worthington (given the implied anti-discrimination message fo the title, was even more disappointing ). It was like I didn't exist, you know?
As the years passed, we slowly began to see glimpses of gay characters in the super-hero genre. I still regard Alpha Flight's Northstar as a first, even though Marvel royally mishandled this character years later, -
Special Crimes Unit Officer Maggie Sawyer was the first gay woman I noticed comics, although she was killed off soon after her "outing" in Superman Comics. There have been a few characters since: members of the Legion of Super-Heroes; the Pied Piper, a recurring character in the Flash, Hector in the Incredible Hulk, and Sarah Rainmaker in Gen13. For the most part, with the exception of Northstar and Rainmaker ( another horribly mishandled character indicating a lack of confidence, or cowardice on the writer's part), gay characters were relegated to small support roles in a particular hero's universe. They were hardly ever the focal point of any story. For the most part, with the exception of Northstar and Rainmaker ( another horribly mishandled character indicating a lack of confidence, or cowardice on the writer's part), gay characters were relegated to small support roles in a particular hero's universe. They were hardly ever the focal point of any story.
Then Warren Ellis introduced Apollo and the Midnighter.
As soon as I started reading the Authority, I found myself wishing that those two were gay (These days I often find myself looking for gay characters in all the comic books I read . Yeah, I want some compensation. Sue me if you don't like it). Then Jack Hawksmoor said something in the first storyarc caught my attention: "Midnighter finally spoke to someone besides Apollo or Jenny". I'm not sure why but that really got me thinking.
Months later, in issue #8, I got my wish, as Apollo kissed the Midnighter good-bye. (I still think they should have been depicted kissing each other on the mouth, knowing that this could've been the very well be the last time they were together.) -
To me, this moment represented the end of a very long wait, a weird sense of validation. I finally got to see, in a super-hero book, openly gay characters that:
1. Were among a titles major characters, and not sporadically appearing supporting characters who were rehashes of the old stereotypes, but actually kicked serious ass almost every issue!
2. Didn't live in perpetual angst over their sexuality. Apollo and the Midnighter seemed to 100% sure of who and what they are. It's not, "Why am I so cursed?" but rather, "Whose ass do we kick today?"
3. Are completely accepted by their peers; and -