Grant Morrison Outs Batman; Talks of Wonder Woman's Lesbian Utopia
I loves me some Grant Morrison. Even when he's off-the-charts crazy and I can barely understand a single frame of his comics, I still have to applaud him for taking me someplace new. I barely understood any of Final Crisis, but the parts that I did, I thought were genius. Most of my beloved graphic novels were done by him: We3, The Invisibles, and Flex Mentallo. And although I had a hard time swallowing the conclusion to his Black Glove run of Batman, I loved every issue leading up the end. His run of the New X-Men is one of my go-to comics for a lazy Sunday afternoon.
I've also had a fair number of moments when I've wondered about Grant Morrison's sexuality. Case in point, this:
I'm trying to think of more homoerotic moments in mainstream comics and I'm having a hard time coming up with something. You could put that image in a Tom of Finland book and no one would notice the difference. Was this a scene in which the main character stumbled into The Eagle? Nope. It's our hero, Flex Mentallo. Happily strolling through the world fighting crime in leather wrist bands and a leopard-print bikini.
Grant Morrison has also admitted to spend a fair number of years doing drag for...fun? To prove that he could? Honestly, I think a lot of straight people would dress up in drag just for kicks if they weren't so worried about the gay stigma of it. And that's what's so great about Grant Morrison. He doesn't care about the stigma. He just wants to go someplace real and exciting and edgy.
It's in that spirit that I present Super Psyche, his interview in the latest issue of Playboy magazine. His description of Batman is priceless.
Gayness is built into Batman. I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay. I think that’s why people like it.
Yes. Exactly. There have been jokes for years about the bizarrely intimate life of the 1960's Batman & Robin, but I have to applaud Morrison for not only understanding that the character is a very gay concept at his core, but for understanding that that's why people are drawn to him. Sure, you could make the case that Batman fits the stereotypically gay childhood: absent father figure, over-bearing mother (I'm looking at you Alfred); but Morrison goes beyond simple stereotypes. He knows that Batman just wants to hang out with the guys:
All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn’t care—he’s more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid.
But he doesn't stop at the gay under/over tones of Batman. He's got a lot to say about Wonder Woman as well:
William Moulton Marston, the guy who created Wonder Woman, was a noted psychiatrist. He’s the guy who invented the polygraph, the lie detector. He was one of those bohemian free-love guys; he and his wife, Elizabeth, shared a lover, Olive, who was the physical model for Wonder Woman. What he and Elizabeth did was to consider an Amazonian society of women that had been cut off from men for 3,000 years. That developed along the lines of Marston’s most fevered fantasies into a lesbian utopia.
Then he spilled the beans on the years he went in drag — which was apparently the inspiration for his character Lord Fanny of The Invisibles:
I didn’t look like a girl, but I looked like a good tranny, so it was okay. I did it for four or five years before I got too old for it. I still have some of the clothes, but they mostly got destroyed doing insane rituals and climbing hills in high heels and stuff.
That's it. I couldn't possibly love Grant Morrison more. He's my dream straight man.
Check out his interview and perhaps... decide to live a little more on the edge.
Comments
I don't know. I'm not as much of a devotee as you are, Keith, and while I don't imagine he's saying that Batman is a true homosexual, I have a little trouble with his using the word "gay." By "gay," he seems to mean just ...strange or eccentric or odd. "Queer" to me would be a better word for that, since it has a more nebulous meaning than "gay," which should refer either to general light-hearted holiday festivities (as in "aparrel," a meaning which would NOT apply to the Batman) or to homosexuals. This is a bit like calling something that's different in an uncool way "gay." Though I take Morrison at his word that he doesn't MEAN it as a pejorative, I think that's exactly what he did.
I have to disagree, Jono. I think he means gay, like, "I like dudes" gay. He even refers to Batman's heterosexuality. And I don't think it's a demeaning use of the term any more that his discussion about Wonder Woman just highlights her BDSM roots, and became a weaker character once the publisher strayed away from that origin.
I would disagree strongly that the core of Batman's appeal is his veiled homosexuality. He's also a brutal vigilante, a bad-ass detective, and one of the most psychotically damaged personalities in all of comics. That's "gay"?
I think you just described Phi Phi O'Hara.
Bitch couldn't "detect" a fire if her wig were burning.
Dear Grant Morrison,
I like you, so I'll say this nice: "Tranny" is a slur. Especially when a cis guy uses it. Especially especially when you use it to describe your performance as a drag queen.
Don't use it. Not a good word.
Yours sincerely,
An actual tranny.
Agreed. That didn't sit well with me either. You'd think that having written, possibly the greatest trans woman in comics, Lord Fanny of the Invisbles, he'd be more sensitive. Maybe he thinks that gives him some ownership over the word and makes it ok to toss around?
I think the closest analalogy to a person with Bataman's sexualiy in our world is someone like Michael Jackson, who, from many reports, was a non-sexual person due to being pretty damaged early on. He preferred the company of children. Like Batman, I'm not quite convinced he was an actual pedophile. Having kids around let him act like the kid he never got to be (as batman does in many ways - dressing in costume, following no rules). I wouldn't call MJ gay. Queer, possibly. Grant Morrissson, whose work I enjoy, is using "gay" to mean "damaged" and "freaky." And he definitley loses points for banting around the word "tranny". You're a writer, Grant! Use better words!
sounds like he was trying to be dishy for Playboy
