Marvel has announced that in an upcoming edition, Thor will be a woman, and that the new Captain America will be black. And while there have been gay superheroes, and Archie Andrews has recently taken a bullet for his gay friend, Kevin, we could still use a re-thinking of a central icon. Because if Superman was gay:
– It would explain the cape.
– Because he’s such a good guy, he’d still save people in the states where he couldn’t get married.
– He’d get really tired of the “So are you seeing Batman?” jokes, especially because they met on Supr, a hookup site for heroes, and it didn’t really click.
– Instead of Kryptonite, his weaknesses would be Mallomars and Joan Collins movies.
– Other gay men would hate him because he looks like that, and he never has to work out.
– His mother would still keep asking him about Lois Lane.
– Just to bug him, online trolls would say, “I’m sorry, but I think that Clark Kent is way hotter.”
– He would use his x-ray vision to check on the fiber content of his t-shirts and sheets.
– Ma and Pa Kent would join PFlag.
– Superman would tell the X-Men, “So all of you basically have just one superpower each. Well, I think that’s adorable.”
– His tagline would become “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and in your dreams, Ironman.”
– Matt Bomer would make him feel fat.
– In private, he’d refer to Superboy as “the twink.”
-When the viciously homophobic Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was in terrible trouble, Superman would somehow arrive a microsecond too late to rescue him. Also, when evangelical Christians Scott Lively and Rick Warren, who have both actively supported Uganda’s homicidal hatred of gay people, needed a hand, Superman would be on a break. But in both instances, Superman would issue a statement to the media, reading, “Oops.”
– He would worry that his iconic hands-on-hips pose, in front of a rippling American flag, was too stereotypical.
– He would finally know what it meant to be a role model.
