Batman and robin gay
A Brief History of Dick
Freely adapted from The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon, out now from Simon and Schuster.
Let’s get one thing absolutely clear: Robin isn’t gay.
Don’t let the grassy Speedo and the pixie boots steer you wrong; Dick Grayson is as straight as uncooked spaghetti. In proof, there have been several Robins over the years, and not one of them has exhibited any trace of same-sex attraction or evinced anything resembling a queer self-identity.
Neither, it feels essential to note here at the begin, has Batman.
Don’t receive my word for it. Ask anyone who’s written a Batman and Robin comic. Or, you know what, you don’t have to: Dollars to donuts they’ve already been asked that doubt, and have gone on record asserting the Dynamic Duo’s he-man, red-blooded, heterosexual bona fides. Batman’s co-creators, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, both firmly swatted the question down. So have writers like Frank Miller, Denny O’Neil, Alan Grant, and Devin Grayson—though Grayson admitted that she could “understand the homosexual readings.”
So there you have it. After all, if a character isn’t written as gay, then that character can’t possibly be g
Holy homoerotica, Batman!
Handsome, dazed, and to depart for
When I was a young lad, my pulse quickened every time I came across a naked male torso in a magazine, on greeting cards in the mall gift shop, or on TV. Initially I couldn’t know why such images held my attention. Later, I’d concern that someone would notice me lingering over these hunky men for much longer than a young boy should.
Sometimes, it felt harmless to marvel at these displays of the male physique because it was a sports game or a TV show I was watching with my family or friends. As a kid, my younger brother was a large wrestling fan. I’m guessing he followed them for the storylines (?), whereas I stuck around to watch hulking men touching each other in their ridiculously skimpy costumes. And then there was that one ACC Thinksafe TV ad featuring a buff guy enjoying a steamy shower before stepping out and slipping on the wet floor. That ad sent my confused petty brain into overdrive, to the aim where I still couldn’t help but notice how spicy he was while lying there with a suspected broken neck.
But my ultimate source of fit men in various states of undress (other than Farmers catalogues) were comic books.
The Patron Saint of Superheroes
The brief answer: Sort of.
Bob Kane never drew the dynamic duo in an intentionally compromising position, but were the two having sex in the gutters between the panels?
Can’t say. That’s the signal of the comic book gutter. It requires the reader to fill in the narrative gap. If you read sex in that space, then sex it is. Frederic Wertham certainly did, and lots of it.
In his 1954 Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham famously explains: “Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature ‘Batman’ and his young friend ‘Robin.’ . . . They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and contain a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. . . . It is like a wish fantasize of two homosexuals living together. Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friend’s arm. . . . [Robin] often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident.”
Wertham is great fun to lampoon, b
The Gayness of Batman: A Brief History
"Gayness is built into Batman. ... Batman is very, very homosexual. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay."
As we reported last week, this was the claim made by Batman, Incorporated writer Grant Morrison in an interview with Playboy where he applications his insights into the psychology of superheroes. In Morrison's view, Batman's attachment to Alfred and Robin and his alleged detachment from the women in "fetish clothes" who "jump around rooftops to fetch to him" is symptomatic of his conceptual gayness. That's a very selective framing, but as Morrison told the LA Times in 2010, "Batman can take anything. You can do comedy Batman, you can do gay Batman."
That's not true, of course. You can do comedy Batman, and you can do The Midnighter (Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's openly gay Batman analogue), but DC Comics is unlikely to allow any writer to make Batman gay, even in an Elseworlds or alternate-universe story. As Morrison himself says, Batman is intended to be he