Batman is gay

Handsome, dazed, and to die for

When I was a young teen, 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 understand why such images held my attention. Later, I’d worry that someone would notice me lingering over these hunky men for much longer than a young lad should.

Sometimes, it felt sheltered 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 vast 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 short-lived brain into overdrive, to the point where I still couldn’t help but notice how hot he was while lying there with a suspected broken neck.

But my ultimate cause of fit men in various states of undress (other than Farmers catalogues) were comic books.

Batman is gay, comic publication writer says

Comic book scribe Grant Morrison is recognizable for being a bit outrageous, so his recent 'outing' of Batman should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, fans of the caped crusader have long had reasons to wonder.

Comic manual characters can lead unconventional lives. Very few of them are married, or have kids, or a normal job. If minors live with them – unusual, but take Donald Duck as an example – they are “nephews,” and we get no clue as to who their parents are or why they live with their uncle.

If the characters live communally, then it is usually men only and the set-up is not without parallels to married life: that's the way it is for Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie, the well-known German comic figures Mend and Foxi, or for that matter, Batman and Robin.

In the actual world, arrangements like that are usually cause for plenty of commentary. Which is why it's not exactly a huge surprise that an official Batman Inc. author has now come out and just said it: Batman is gay.

“Gayness is built into Batman,” Grant Morrison, a Scot who has been writing for the series since 20

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 suggestions 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 become 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

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 lush Speedo and the pixie boots steer you wrong; Dick Grayson is as straight as uncooked spaghetti. In fact, there possess been several Robins over the years, and not one of them has exhibited any trace of same-sex attraction or evinced anything resembling a lgbtq+ self-identity.

Neither, it feels essential to note here at the start, has Batman.

Don’t take 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 question, and have gone on write down 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 include writers like Frank Miller, Denny O’Neil, Alan Grant, and Devin Grayson—though Grayson admitted that she could “understand the gay readings.”

So there you have it. After all, if a character isn’t written as gay, then that personality can’t possibly be g

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