Your friendly neighborhood bartender is taking a break from his wild dating life to tackle your questions with his patented blend of advice and adult beverages. So slide on up to the bar my friends. Now, what can I get you?
Hey JT,
18-year-old fangirl here. I'm a huge lover of scifi, fantasy, and superhero stories (and yes, okay, maybe I do a little cosplaying). My friends and I were talking about Northstar the other day (he's my favorite X-man), and it got us thinking about other gay superheroes. After Northstar my favorites are Hulkling and Wiccan because they're such a cute couple, but all of them are part of a team.
So I guess my question is do you know of any gay scifi/fantasy characters who are action heroes (superheroes or fighters or whatever else) that are actually the main characters? Or are they always the sidekicks or part of a team?
Super Fangirl
You mean besides Frodo?
I kid, I kid. (Sorta.)
That's actually a tough question to answer, SF.
While there are a few characters to point to (which is a huge improvement over the, ya know, none that there used to be), gay characters who lead the charge are definitely few and far between.
Though he started as part of a group called The Authority, the Batman analog called Midnighter(whose husband, Apollo, bears suspiciously similar powers to Superman) branched off into his own spin-off title for a while.
Midnighter (right) macks it to Apollo (left)
While we're in vaguely Batmannish territory, there's also the fierce, badass Batwoman, aka Kate Kane, who was reimagined as a gay woman in 2006 and was given her own series when DC rebooted their universe in 2011.
And sticking with DC, there's also the new/old (it's complicated) Green Lantern, Alan Scott, also got the Batwoman treatment with the universe reboot and debuted as a gay hero.
Moving into the realm of literature, a good find is definitely the late Perry Moore's YA novel, Hero, which featured a gay teenage superhero named Thom.
You should also check out Shadow Walkersby former AE staffer Brent Hartinger, a story about a gay kid who discovers his ability of astral projection, and then uses that power to solve his little brother's abduction.
This gets trickier, though, as we move on to live-action television and film. For one thing, having a gay lead character at all is still seen as a risky move by a lot of studio executives, let alone a gay character in an action hero role. Why?
Why else? Money.
These days, it isn't about creating good genre stories. It's about creating franchises. Franchises mean major swag for studios, and the last thing they want to do is risk losing even a cent of that, so they tend to pander to the lowest common denominator and assume that no one will ever want to pay money to see an action hero who goes home to his husband at the end of the day.
As far as I can tell, the only character that approaches what you're looking for is Captain Jack Harkness, the team leader on the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood, and if you're an AfterElton reader I'm pretty confident you knew I'd get here eventually. Though not gay, he is openly bisexual (or, sigh, pansexual because he does it with aliens, too) and his most significant relationship was with his male coworker, Ianto Jones.
But hey, my knowledge is finite, limited only to what I've seen with my own two eyes. (And, I mean, Google, but whatevs.) So if anyone out there knows something I don't, let us hear it in the comments!
Hey JT
I'm an out college student. I was never really one for the scene, but I've decided to try and get out there more so I can start meeting more people. The only problem is the majority of my friends are straight, and so prefer to go out to where the straight people flock to meet people.
For years I've just gone where my friends are going, but I've grown a bit tired of watching them hook up while I politely reject some drunk girls advances. We've gone to gay bars before but these nights are once in a blue moon when my guilt tripping works. So my question at the end of all this is do you think its normal for a guy to go out by himself or is it kind of sad?
Out But Not Out
Huh.
Is it normal or sad for a guy to go out by himself? Well, that kinda depends on you, OBNO, and by “kinda” I mean “totally - like TOTALLY totally.”
You’ve got to have a lot of confidence to waltz into a bar solo, grab yourself a seat and a drink, and wait for either A) a guy to come to you, or B) a guy to be so cute and seemingly approachable you figure, “What the hell? You only live once, right?”
It’s not exactly ‘sad,’ per se, to see a guy alone at a bar, but I’ll be honest and tell you that for some guys it does make you seem like less of a prospect. When hitting on strangers, you want to seem at your best, and for some people that means traveling with a posse.
For the record, I’m not saying that’s right or that’s what people should feel. I’m just trying to be as truthy as I can.
On the other hand, who knows? Maybe there’ll be another guy who comes to the bar sans entourage that night, and you’ll hit it off.
But if I may, I’d like to take a little advice columnist license and point you to another option: don’t go to bars at all.
That’s great that you want to put yourself out there and start meeting people, but there are a ton of ways to do that besides going to bars. Volunteering is a great start, for one. I've talkedabout this a coupletimes before, in fact. I’m not knocking bars at all, but why limit your options?
Hey JT,
I'm coming into the city at the beginning of February. Can you recommend any good shows to see?
Yeah, I'm a Tourist
Actually, YIAT, I can recommend a whole buttload of shows!
As it happens, the beginning of February is during the awesome time of year when you can get two tickets for a lot of Broadway and Off Broadway shows for the price of one. Check out thiswebsitefor details.
But if you want a personal recommendation, I highly recommend Bare, an emotional pop musical about two boys at a prep school that fall in love. It's a reworking of a show that had a brief run almost ten years ago, and while the changes were controversial to some, I thought they tightened the story and highlighted the emotional beats, and the show is better for it.
It's quite an experience. I totally cried and everything.
Also, hot guys kissing!
Taylor Trensch as Peter and Jason Hite as Jason in "Bare"
To ask JT a question, email him at jtadvicecolumn@gmail.com. Or you can be super tech-sexy and ask via Twitter. Messages may be edited for space (but they're totally more likely to get chosen if they're three paragraphs or less. Just sayin'.)
You can find previous editions of AfterElton's Ask JT advice column here.
