Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman… and he has just announced to the world he is bisexual.
According to a report in the New York Times, the new Superman, Jonathan Kent — son and heir of Clark Kent and Lois Lane — will soon begin a romantic relationship with a male friend, DC Comics announced Monday.
“The idea of replacing Clark Kent with another straight white savior felt like a missed opportunity,” Tom Taylor, who writes the series, said in an interview covered by the newspaper. He said a “new Superman had to have new fights — real world problems — that he could stand up to as one of the most powerful people in the world.”
The concept of a new all woke Man of Steel and or associated comic character(s) is not new.
As the NYT reports, Batman’s sidekick, Robin, recently acknowledged romantic feelings for a male friend (not Dick Grayson — who was Batman’s partner for over four decades — but Tim Drake, a later replacement; there are multiple Robins just as there are multiple Supermen).
The issue of geo-politics has also been broached by the character when in 2011 DC decided Superman would no longer stand for the United States but would become a “citizen of the world.”
In “Action Comics” #900, the man who once stood for “truth, justice, and the American way,” dropped the “American Way” part of his mandate by renouncing his American citizenship because he was unhappy with (real life, not comic book) U.S. foreign policy.
Though Superman is not the first or last comic character to reveal a hitherto hidden sexual identity, comics experts claimed something particularly momentous about him making the announcement.
“It is not Northstar, who your aunt has never heard of,” said Glen Weldon, the author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, and the co-host of the Pop Culture Happy Hour on N.P.R. “It’s not Hulkling. It’s not Wiccan. It’s not Fire and Ice. It’s not Tasmanian Devil. It is Superman. That counts for something — just in terms of visibility, just in terms of the fact that this is going to attract attention.”
The Superman character previously made headlines in 2017, as Breitbart News reported, when he stepped in to defend a group of illegal migrants in an edition of the comic book.
The issue of Action Comics #987, entitled “The Oz Effect,” features Superman putting himself between a gun-toting white man wearing an American flag bandana and a group of helpless illegal immigrants. The Kryptonian then intervenes to stop the man from shooting the illegals for taking his job.
Superman blocks the bullets from the evil white man’s gun and commands him to “Stop this!”
In 2018 DC Comics again drank deeply from the well of political correctness, taking to Twitter to assure fans that Superman stands strong alongside refugees on “World Refugee Day.”
The iconic comic book publisher leveraged its tentpole character to push for “what’s right” with a tweet, reminding fans that Superman is a “refugee,” as Breitbart News reported.
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