The Four Color Media Monitor

DC, clearly intent on following up on Marvel's steps with Northstar a year ago, is publishing a story where the new lesbian Batwoman goes the same route:

In Batwoman #17, available from DC Comics in print and digital versions today, the openly gay heroine Batwoman (aka Katherine “Kate” Kane) proposes to her girlfriend, police detective Maggie Sawyer. While we don’t yet know the answer, if all goes well they’ll presumably be getting hitched, bringing same-sex marriage squarely into the center of a mainstream comic.

Like as if anybody really cares. It didn't do Marvel any favors sales-wise when they tried it, so I don't think there's much chance this'll do any better.

The article also quotes Greg Rucka saying:

“I think comics are catching up with other media like TV and movies, and I think they’re catching up in the way mainstream comics always have: they’re the last to do it,” said Rucka. “Superhero comics are an extraordinarily conservative medium because of the persistent [Fredric] Wertham effect of won’t somebody think of the children? And when I say that it’s a conservative medium, it is paradoxically conservative. It’s not necessarily politically so, but it’s bound by its history.”

Oh come on. Even before the past 2 decades, superhero comics were anything but conservative, and Rucka himself proved that with his own adult contributions. After the 80s ended, that's when they really began to go overboard with liberal positions that were really tasteless, but even before that, I don't think superhero comics could be called conservative in every sense of the word. Today, it's pretty clear they've otherwise abandoned children as an audience in their obsession with only catering to a shrinking crowd of grownups.

Update: now that I realize it, Rucka does specify a certain difference between politics and marketing approaches, although the latter changed a lot after 2000.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, politics