I said most people, not all. Also, its not a "strawman". Alan Scott was not a gay man from his first appearance in 1940 until September 2011. He had a long history and a family that precluded being anything but a heterosexual guy. He literally went to hell to get the soul of the love of his life, his wife, back. This isn't Iceman, who had a multi decade history of lackluster romance and basically no consistent romantic partner. This is like if the New 52 Superman got together with Batman instead of Wonder Woman and it stuck.
But some things we're just not allowed to criticize, I guess. To be clear I 100% support more diverse characters in comics, I just don't believe in doing it through retcons of long running characters, especially ones whose whole history precludes the retcons.
Okay, you did say "most people that defend the Alan Scott retcons". How many of those are we here? Which ones of us are those that weren't fans of Alan before the retcon? And how do you know? Because, there are not that many of us in this thread even having the debate, so even fewer defending the retcon, and I don't know who of those were or were not fans of Alan pre-retcon, and I certainly don't know how you know.
And THAT's what I meant by "Strawman". You tried to paint anyone arguing the opposing viewpoint with the same brush that you hoped would disqualify us from even participating in the debate, the SAME brush, btw, you previously tried to paint writers like Tom King with ("he doesn't even like the characters"). It's also the kind of "true fan" gate-keeping that has no place in serious discussion
As for criticism, there actually are legitimate and illegitimate criticisms. "i don't believe in doing it through retcons of long running characters" is a legitimate criticism. One that is certainly debatable, because I obviously disagree, but it is legitimate. "... whose whole history precludes the retcons", however, is illegitimate, at least in this case, because as I and
@theenglish have repeatedly pointed out it actually reflects situations that occur in real life.
And, just to point that out as well, I probably would need time to adjust were Clark Kent to come out, but I would adjust. Because the same was true for Alan, my first gut reaction (as I am a fan, after all) was "DON'T CHANGE THE CHARACTER I LIKE!".
Which is also my gut reaction with any big changes.
"DON'T MAKE BATMAN A FATHER!", "DON'T BRING BACK JASON TODD!", "DON'T ADD EVEN MORE HUMAN GREEN LANTERNS!", "DON'T GIVE WONDER WOMAN A DAUGHTER!".
As a fan of certain characters since childhood, there is that first gut reaction to change that says "This is wrong!". But after that, I reflect on it, my brain kicks in and asks "Is it?". Usually I wait for the change to come and then decide. Most of these things changed characters fundamentally. And my big question is "for the better, or for worse?". And that is a matter of execution. Most of the above examples were changes that I ultimately decided that they made the characters better. There are examples of fundamental retcons I didn't like, for example giving Barry Allen the trauma of a murdered mother (not only falling into the modern trope of "every hero needs a trauma", but also picking the laziest, most played-out trauma of them all), but even in that case it didn't ruin the character for me.
1. Yeah, I'm aware that Tim was retconned to be bisexual. But that's the thing; prior to that retcon was there ever one single indication that he was attracted to men?
Does there have to be? I recently listened to Michael Rosenbaum's podcast Inside of You, where he had Cassandra Peterson on. She came out a while ago, and has been in a same-sex relationship for about two decades now. Rosenbaum asked her when she found out that she was attracted to women, and she responded that she wasn't attracted to any women until she met the woman she is in her relationship with. So, even if Tim wasn't attracted to any boy or man before he met Bernard, so what?
I have to put on the disclaimer that, while I consider Tim Drake my favorite Robin (I like Dick better as Nightwing), I also made the conscious choice several years ago to not follow any of the Bat-books, for money- and (more importantly) time-saving reasons. My favorite era of the Bat-books would be the time when Denny O'Neil was editor.
2. I don't doubt what you say about Thomas. I've maybe read a couple of comics from him if that. He seems like he does have a bit of homophobia going on (although in the interview I read, he said he has nothing personal against gays). It's probably largely a generational thing. Speaking for myself, I admit, growing up, although I wouldn't say I was homophobic, I will say I was not overly sensitive and/or insensitive about LGBTQ+ folks. That changed in college when I had some as friends and now. They are our brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and they should be welcomed in society and treated in every way as equals and not shunned or persecuted.
And, relevant to this whole debate, they're also our fathers and mothers.
3. Yeah, you're right about retcons. Every single DC reboot like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint, Doomsday Clock, and Death Metal (haven't actually read the last two yet, but I got them all, right?), allows DC's publishers and creators to make some changes and they have. Usually, these changes are to reconcile past events and the like, clean up continuity errors, bring back dead characters, and, yeah, make tweaks to character origins and the like. Superman, Wonderwoman, Hawkman, and some others were obviously rebooted and old continuity and the like cleaned away, but the core of all those characters was pretty much the same. The New 52 Superman that Grant Morrison created was kind of shocking to me at first. It was kind of deviation to what John Byrne did for Superman's post-Crisis origin, where he made Superman more human and more as a refugee escaping a very dark and sterile Krypton. Morrison's Superman was less optimistic and more alienated and much more brash and a social justice warrior, which is actually what the character was initially.
And, of course, James Robinson's reboot of the JSA characters on Earth 2 was far far more drastic than anything done in the Earth Prime DC books. And, again, I felt, due to the nature of that book and the deconstruction or re-interpretation or reboot what have you that was it's vision or mandate, that that was all fine. These were new characters that had the names and some of the elements of the original JSA characters, whose most distinctive characteristic perhaps was that they were all tethered to the time they were created, the pre-War late 30s.
But changing the sexuality of a character is a very extreme retcon imo. The original Golden Age Green Lantern was not an LGBTQ+ character. He was made one because the Earth 2 character was gay and that character was in comic book limbo while the GA GL was coming back. And the only reason the Earth 2 character was gay was because the Obsidian character, the gay son of the GA GL, was put in comic book limbo to begin with. So, really, James Robinson and Dan Didio (twice) were responsible for making the GA GL gay, something he never ever was before.
Is it as extreme a retcon as Alan Moore's "Anatomy Lesson"? The Swamp Thing isn't, and never has been Alec Holland, but is a conscious plant being who thought it was Alec Holland, and there is no hope for ever becoming the human Alec Holland "again".
Or Paul Dini's retcon of Mr. Freeze as being a tragic man mourning the death of his wife.
Or Conner Kent's human DNA coming from Lex Luthor.
Or Hal Jordan being possessed by the Parallax entity and not being responsible for all the death and destruction he brought on the universe.
These are very fundamental changes. In case of Hal Jordan, admittedly, it was a retcon to change him back to his pre-Emerald Twilight self, but still very extreme.
Also, I didn't think the retcon really followed logically from Doomsday clock anyway when they brought the JSA back from being written out by Dr. Manhattan. Why would re-inserting the formative event and reinserting the missing 10 years alter Alan's sexuality? It's akin to Simon Pegg's lame explanation that the change Nero made in the Abrams ST films went backwards in time to make Sulu gay after George Takei unequivocably said the character he played in the original Star Trek and the films was straight. But, y'know this is par for the course, as you said, for comic books. Sequential logic and especially science (king of drives me crazy as an AE sometimes to see how many writers and artists don't even bother to check some basic things out) are completely secondary to the story and the changes you want to make in a reboot.
If I remember correctly, Alan came out due to having to leave Earth for some cosmic job or something, and he didn't want to leave his children without telling them the truth. I could be wrong, it's been years since I read the story.
But I don't quite understand your assertion that the retcon was a result of the events of Doomsday Clock. I don't think that was ever the intention.
4. When you say "grounded" do you mean like the Batman street level characters and the like?
I always thought Dixon was a solid writer and I certainly enjoyed his work on Detective Comics and Robin (I collected a lot of his run there and the start of Nightwing). I don't know much about the man in real life. I've read an interview with him, and, IIRC Denny O'Neil (RIP). Dixon said that while they were on completely opposite sides politically, they respected and liked each other and that he thought O'Neil was a great editor and boss.
I think I heard that he was part of that Comicsgate group. I've always been a moderate dem. I'm married to a Mormon Republican and we have more in common than not as far as our values. And, honestly, as a Catholic neither party maps on with my faith's social teachings, and, for that matter, even I don't subscribe to all my faith's teachings either. There are some things I agreed with in the old Republican party, particularly fiscal responsibility (although that is obviously not a priority anymore with them). So, I don't have a problem with people having a difference in opinion on public policy. I do have an opinion on how we should treat others as people and some of this Comicsgate stuff (and a lot of other more current stuff) I've read about is reprehensible and shameful. Threats, trolling, personal insults, sexism, racism, homophobia, just hatred, blanket statements and condemnation, from one side or the other, that's where I get off. It's wrong and it's incredibly damaging and we're living it right now in this country and were all weaker and poorer because of it.
Yeah, Dixon was a great writer for characters like the Bat-Family, the Punisher over at Marvel, even his early work on Marvel's Conan and Kull comics. And I totally forgot his work on Alien Legion, so yeah, it's not just street-level characters he used to be good with.
But even his personal views aside, his more recent work just isn't as good anymore. I was very hyped for his and Graham Nolan's reunion on that Bane maxi-series a few years ago, but it turned out to be a huge chunk of "meh!".
As far as that Kinsey scale stuff, I've heard about it. My wife is the PhD psychologist so she knows more about it than me, but I'm not really interested or arguing about the plausibility of these changes based on psychology. I know there's supposed to be this sorta scale, but I just don't think it can be used to try to explain in some way, that the original GL AS or even Tim Drake were always LGBTQ+. To me, Alan Scott and Tim Drake were both straight white males based on how they were written and how the ones most responsible for developing them wrote them and I think that should have been honored and respected. Again, that said, I also think that Tim Sheridan's story was certainly worthwhile and legitimate one to tell (and I've read considerable praise about it). I just don't think there's any way to reconcile this depiction of Alan Scott with the pre-Death Metal/Doomsday Clock/Flashpoint version (where exactly did the gay GL AS appear? Did it happen after he returned with the JSA in Doomsday Clock on, or was it after Death Metal?).
just googled it, I remembered he came out officially in one of those one-shot anthology specials, though I couldn't remember which one. Apparently it was Infinite Frontier #0.
As for the nature of the retcons, of course, Alan Scott and Tim Drake were both previously written as straight white males, nobody is denying that. it was almost the exclusive way to have a heroic character in mainstream media until very recently. We are talking about fictional characters, so obviously, for real world purposes, prior to the retcons both of these characters were straight white males - Wait, how did the "white" get in here? That's not part of the retcons - , or rather they presented as straight, because they are neither gay nor straight, as they are not real. As fictional characters, they literally only exist through observation, through the information we actually real people learn about them. So, basically, the retcons are simply new information. It is in-universe where the characters have always been gay and bisexual respectively. It is in-universe that the Kinsey scale applies, because only in-universe are these characters real to begin with.
True that you do have the romantic history that Roy Thomas developed for Alan pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, a history that was continued at least all the way up to Flashpoint.
But those heterosexual relationships with the two women he married haven't even been touched on in this new iteration, have they? At all?
And if being a GL is all about honesty and bravery, did Alan go into both those marriages honest to his spouses? He knew he was gay, right? At that point, he wasn't in denial, was he? Neither of those women, from what I know, would want to be in such a relationship, so I guess they'd have to be redefined as well.
In any case, from what I've read about the new Alan Scott series, it's all about his past before he got married anyway, so I don't think that was the reason Tynion pushed Didio to retcon the Golden Age Alan Scott as gay. I think it just came down to Didio already signing off on the Earth 2 version, which, probably primarily being due solely to the GL name, was a small coup for the LGBTQ+ community and progressives, which is what Robinson probably wanted to when he made the Earth 2 Alan Scott gay. There was nothing about Alan Scott being closeted or conflicted in that book. Tynion, from the comments I read, just wanted to make sure that since the Earth 2 version was going away that they'd continue on by having the Golden Age GL gay as well.
And, since they haven't even really broached Alan's prior marriages yet (which they might, of course, in the future), why not just use Midnite or Johnny Thunder who other readers speculated could be gay to begin with? The only reason that I can see for retconning Alan that they did, is, again, that it had already been done with the Earth 2 version, and, from what Robinson said, only because the original Golden Age Scott had a gay superhero son Obsidian who was consigned to comic book limbo. The other reason is that Alan Scott was a more important character for years after Midnite and Johnny Thunder were killed and aged about in Zero Hour. Alan Scott and Jay Garrick (and Wildcat as we found) continued on to be the representatives of the original JSA when Robinson started the series again (and it is a great series). Those 3 became the elder statesmen of the JLA (again Johns says you can't have the JSA without Green Lantern and the Flash).
Now, having said that, I still think using Johnny Thunder, MidNite, or some other Golden Age character would have worked. Why? Because this Alan Scott story necessarily was told in the past of a closeted gay man during the 30-40s right? Well, Doctor Midnite was alive during that time as well as many others of the JSA. No problem there at all.
Number 2, with regard to the character history, wasn't a lot done with Ted Knight's Starman after Zero Hour? Didn't James Robinson really fill in a lot of his personal life like Roy Thomas did with Alan Scott? If that's the case, why couldn't that have been done with MidNite, Thunder, or a lot of those other characters from Robinson's classic The Golden Age? The only downside, it just seems to me, is that these are lower tier characters compared to Jay Garrick and Alan Scott. But I still think it could've worked.
Come to think of it, what about Wesley Dodds Sanman? Was that whole romance with Diane Belmont developed by Matt Wagner in Sandman Mystery Theater?
See, this is the legitimate criticism I was talking about at the start of this post. Moving beyond the coming-out part, and into how it is actually presented. And you know what? I actually agree. They haven't dealt with Alan's homosexuality in context of his previous marriages enough. They barely even mentioned that Alan and Molly got divorced. I would totally welcome more stories dealing with this, and hopefully the new JSA book will deliver.
But again, having Ted Knight or one of the lesser developed JSA heroes come out would not have had the same impact as doing it with Alan, and that is his iconic status that goes beyond the JSA fandom. The only other option for that kind of impact would have been Jay Garrick.
As for the Tim Sheridan series, well, yes, that story would probably would have worked as well, or similarly, with a different Golden Age JSA hero. But that supposes that Alan coming out was to have that particular story published, and that has it backwards (no dated pun intended). They had Alan coming out way back, before the pandemic. It was probably more the situation of "Okay, Alan is gay now. What can we do with this?".
This is one of those things where you don't have to agree, but if you don't you'd also just be wrong and ignorant about the research behind the subject. And yes, our knowledge as with anything grows and develops over time (which was kind of one of the points I was making).
). In the end, I guess it doesn't matter. DC is in the trash and its sales numbers reflect that, they let idiots like Tom King just do whatever he wants and when they somehow manage a decent book every few years the ruin it with a shitty event within a few months.
