Comics / ALAN SCOTT is Gay

DC Entertainment announced that the formerly straight male character who will now be portrayed as gay in one of its new comics is Alan Scott, the solo Green Lantern of Earth 2. But that’s just the start.

Readers can expect to see race and gender changes as well, as established DC characters are rebooted over coming months.

 

 

It all starts next week, when the comic Earth 2 #2 will reveal that Alan Scott, the alternate earth’s Green Lantern, has a same-sex relationship. DC today released artwork by Australian artist Nicola Scott that shows Alan Scott embracing and kissing his partner named Sam.

The changes to Alan Scott and other characters on Earth 2 come as the result of DC’s reboot of their entire comic book universe, which began last September when every comic in the publisher’s line-up was restarted at #1. New, younger versions of heroes like Superman and Batman were introduced, along with an entire universe of DC’s characters in new, modern interpretations.

Before the reboot, Alan Scott was the very first Green Lantern, introduced during the so-called “Golden Age” of comic books in the 1940’s. In recent comic books featuring Alan Scott, the character had aged and had two grown children, one of whom was gay.

But that all changed with the reboot, when Golden Age characters and their lineage were mostly eliminated in favor of more modern heroes.

Earth 2, the monthly comic that started in May, is starting to bring some of those Golden Age characters back by reinterpreting them as young, new heroes on an alternate earth. That includes the former straight Alan Scott becoming a young, good-looking gay version for the new comic.

“Before starting work on [Earth 2] #1, the first document I had to work from was the character breakdowns for our primary players,” artist Scott explained. “With Alan, the brief was very clear. He needed to be a big, strapping, handsome man that everyone would instinctively follow and love. No short order but right up my ally. Alan strikes me as an incredibly open, honest and warm man, a natural leader and absolutely the right choice to be guardian of the earth. His sexuality is incidental. Every time I draw him I love him even more.”

The debut of Alan Scott as a gay hero in Earth 2 won’t be the first time Robinson has been the writer behind the introduction of a gay character in a comic. Just last year,Robinson made news among comic book readers when he introduced the first same-sex relationship for a male hero in the JLA. Previously, he’d portrayed the first gay male couple kiss in mainstream comics, in Starman #45. (newsaram)