Full circle

I was going to post another character biography today, but I figured out a way to loop my previous post from the ending back to the beginning and thought I would write about it instead.

You see, I last mentioned the very well produced webseries Out With Dad.  Out With Dad, which is produced in Toronto, Canada, addresses the important topic of homosexuality and how homosexuals are treated in our society. This is a very important social issue as western society evolves its collective attitude and laws to grant equal and fair treatment to all people regardless of such differences as sexual orientation.  This struggle for equality is perhaps the most important civil right issue we currently face.

I began my last entry by writing about comic creator John Byrne.  I can loop the discussion from Out With Dad back to Byrne because Byrne, a former Canadian, created the character of Northstar.  Northstar, a member of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight, was the first mainstream comics character that was gay.  Back in the 1980’s, when the Alpha Flight comic first premiered, Byrne wasn’t allowed to say outright that Northstar was gay.  However, he managed to insert subtle hints into the Alpha Flight stories to indicate the character’s sexual orientation.

In a recent issue of John Byrne’s Next Men there were two characters that were a lesbian couple.  The depiction of this couple impressed me because of how it was done.  There was no overt mention of the sexual orientation of the characters, but there was no doubt from how they interacted that they were a couple.

So here you have an example of an evolution from not being able to say a character is gay, to it being there with no need to point it out.  I think that’s really cool!