I have many an e-mail asking what I think about a current Superman storyline dealing with bisexuality. There are a lot of opinions out there, many from folks who aren't informed enough about this matter to know that it isn't Clark Kent who's "come out." It's Jon Kent, offspring of Clark Kent and Lois Lane in a storyline that will probably be forgotten in two years, if not sooner.
But what do I think about it? I think I don't really care about it. Haven't read it. Probably won't. It, like when Superman "died" in 1993 and other lucrative properties have "died" for a while to boost circulation, is temporary.
And I'm not a believer in the notion that super-hero comics need to deal with every aspect of our lives. What I do believe is that consenting adults should be free to marry, cohabitate, breed, adopt, whatever as long as — to use Ronald Reagan's old line which he didn't seem to believe in — they don't scare the horses.
But I don't think super-hero comics are a good place to discuss many aspects of The Human Condition. That's because they aren't about human beings. I don't think they ever deal with death effectively because, as noted, they're about characters who don't die…or if they do, they don't stay dead for long. None of the ones I read that worked 9/11 into their storylines seemed to be at all effective. In the DC or Marvel Universes, the Earth is saved from complete annihilation two or three times a week so how do you give a real sense of horror to a bunch of terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center?
I remember a comic which depicted New Yorkers running in a panic from Ground Zero, terrified of the smoke and dust and debris, understandably afraid a building was about to collapse on them. The real-world news footage of that was chilling. In the comic book, it was a scene we see so often, it was like, "Big deal! People ran in a panic from Superman on the cover of Action Comics #1."
Don't get me wrong: I love comic books. I've probably read way more of them than most people reading this and I love writing them. I just think the unreality of the world in which so many of them take place might not be the right venue in which to address every real-world subject. Human sexuality is a fascinating topic to me. Superhuman sexuality? Not so much. Do you remember those scenes where Superboy was sad because he couldn't get a date? I wanted to yell at him, "You're from another planet, you can fly, you can pick up a tank with one hand and you're invulnerable! Your life is very different from mine!" So is that of Jon Kent, whose father came from the planet Krypton.
So that's one reason I don't care about bisexuality in the DC Universe. Another is that I don't even know who many of those characters are these days. So many different people handle them with so many different ideas about how to make them hip and today and relevant that I often don't recognize Superman as Superman or Batman as Batman or so forth. But maybe that's another topic for another time.
I'll just recall a lesson from a writing teacher I once had who said, "A character is defined by what they do but also by what they don't do." When a character is controlled by too many diverse hands — writers but also producers and editors and marketing consultants and corporate officials — I wonder if anyone even has the power to say, "No, no! Our character wouldn't do that!"