Gay Lantern

Last week DC Comics was crowing loudly about the fact that during one of their semi-annual company wide reboots of their entire comic universe, they were going to reveal that a MAJOR character was gay.

Fans began speculating wildly. Who would it be? Batman? Robin? Wonder Woman? She lives on an island full of women after all. What about Batman? The Flash maybe? How about Batman? Maybe Batman?

Or possibly The Gay Ghost? Nah, that would statistically improbable. Could it perhaps be Batman?

Once the DC brass determined they'd squeezed all the free publicity out of the situation that they could, they announced that the winner of the 2012 Forced Orientation Adjustment was none other than... Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern.

chirp... chirp... chirp... chirp... chirp...

Yep, good ol' Alan Scott, the most important Green Lantern there is, right after Hal Jordan, Kyle Rainer, John Stewart, Guy Gardner and the one who looks like a chicken with a fin on his head. You know, Alan Scott, the incredibly MAJOR character who's not really part of the main DC Universe, but is tucked away on a parallel world called Earth 2, where all the other Golden Age superheroes live. THAT Green Lantern!

Way to be provocative, DC Comics! What bold, courageous, social-conscious thinking!

I guarantee that the general public has absolutely no idea that there's more than one Green Lantern, or that there's one living on a parallel world. When they hear, "Green Lantern's gay!" they're going to do a spit take and exclaim, "Holy crap! Did you say Ryan Reynolds is gay?"

For the record, I'm not a fan of this development. Now now, put down your torches and pitchforks, and take the tar off the stove. It's not that I object to the idea of a gay superhero per se. I don't. My problem with the whole business is that I don't want to know about the sex lives of ANY of the superheroes I read about, gay or straight.

Superman and Lois Lane had an "understanding." That's all I needed to know about their relationship. Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman are husband and wife. Enough said. The Alan Scott Green Lantern is now a "confirmed bachelor." I don't need to know any more than that.

Comic books are escapist fantasy. They should be epic and larger than life. I want to read about a guy dressed as a clown hanging a guy dressed as a bat over a vat of boiling acid. I want to read about whole teams of superheroes repelling alien invasions. I want to read about superheroes defeating a giant purple guy who wants to eat the Earth, or shrinking themselves and having adventures on a planet inside an atom. You know, the way comics used to be. I know, I know, get off my lawn.

I want stupid, goofy FUN comic stories. The more ridiculous and outlandish, the better. I think that can be accomplished without knowing which team the fifth most important Green Lantern is on.