Superman’s completed all of it, virtually. He is saved the world quite a lot of instances. He is died and are available again to life. He dodged punches from Muhammed Ali and even confronted off towards White supremacists.
Till this 12 months, although, each comedian iteration of Superman has been besotted with longtime love Lois Lane. However in an upcoming challenge of a brand new “Superman” collection, the Man of Metal enters right into a queer relationship — a primary for the character, who’s been round for greater than 80 years.
The fifth challenge of the DC comedian collection “Superman: Son of Kal-El” will verify that the brand new Superman — Jon Kent, little one of Clark Kent and Lane — is bisexual after falling for Jay Nakamura, a male reporter, DC introduced this week.
The “Superman: Son of Kal-El” collection follows Kent as he turns into Earth’s new Superman and grapples with the immense weight of his new gig. Nakamura, a bespectacled author with a bubble-gum pink mop, first appeared within the collection’ third challenge as a shoulder for Kent to lean on when the enterprise of being Superman will get too tough.
However within the forthcoming fifth challenge, coming subsequent month, Kent falls for the journalist — he’s his father’s son — after he “mentally and bodily burns out from making an attempt to avoid wasting everybody that he can,” in line with DC.
The particulars of the difficulty’s plot are to be revealed in November, however pictures from the comedian present Kent and Nakamura sharing a kiss and sitting collectively atop a constructing, their legs dangling off the sting.
Sequence author Tom Taylor mentioned the evolution of this new Superman is maintaining with the values the character has all the time represented — and, importantly, displays the experiences of many comedian followers.
“Superman’s image has all the time stood for hope, for reality and for justice,” Taylor mentioned in an announcement. “Right now, that image represents one thing extra. Right now, extra folks can see themselves in essentially the most highly effective superhero in comics.”
In an August interview with Nerdist, Taylor teased that Kent would discover a “superb buddy very early on … and they are going to have a giant function on this.”
That buddy, it quickly grew to become clear, was Nakamura. He and Kent are the latest, however removed from the one, LGBTQ characters within the DC universe — earlier this 12 months, the character Tim Drake, one of many many Robins to battle alongside Batman, accepted a date from a male admirer. And earlier than Kent and Drake, there was Batwoman, also referred to as Kate Kane, who at one level was punished for her relationship with one other lady beneath the US navy’s former “Do not Ask, Do not Inform” coverage; Harley Quinn, who’s ditched the Joker for her buddy Poison Ivy in current comedian runs; and the transgender scientist Victoria October, who debuted in a 2017 Batman collection.
NPR’s Glen Weldon, who’s written a e book on Batman and commonly writes about comics, mentioned that the queering of characters like Robin and Superman is “progress,” however as a result of the characters who come out are usually not the canonical iterations of heroes — Drake is not the one Robin within the DC Universe, and Jon Kent’s father will all the time be the best-known Superman — the plot developments aren’t as vital or genre-shifting as they appear, Weldon wrote this week.
Nonetheless, Weldon mentioned, a bisexual Superman and queer Robin are price celebrating — they are not a one-dimensional villain or aspect character who’s shortly killed off, however the “heroes of their very own tales.”
Followers can learn extra about Kent’s burgeoning romance when the fifth challenge of “Superman: Son of Kal-El” is launched on November 9.
