DC’s New 52 reboot in 2011 was an opportunity to reimagine their characters for a new audience. In the case of the Justice Society, who had always been an older generation of heroes dating back to World War II, their New 52 versions were young and modern, with origins set firmly in the present day. Out of all of them, the biggest change came to Green Lantern Alan Scott, who not only saw a drastic overhaul to his costume and the very nature of his powers, but was also positioned by DC editorial to be a major new gay character. I already have a video where I dive deep into everything about all of this, and I’ll link to it at the end, but suffice to say that reimagining Alan Scott as gay didn’t go very well, and all evidence seems to point to members of DC editorial just wanting to cash in on the rising popularity of gay representation in mainstream American comics, as other publishers like Archie and Marvel had been getting a lot of good press over the weddings of characters like Kevin Keller and Northstar, respectively. Unfortunately, Alan’s status as a flagship gay character disappeared as soon as the headlines stopped, and the fact that he’s gay has been almost completely ignored ever since. I feel pretty justified in saying that everything surrounding the New 52 version of Alan Scott was just a cheap, pandering publicity stunt with no intention to ever follow through, and it was no surprise to see the original, classic version of Alan Scott return in 2019’s Justice League #31 as part of the “Justice/Doom War” storyline…what I did find surprising was the fact that this version of Alan Scott was now also gay.
This raised a lot of questions, probably the biggest one being why DC would decide to do this. They already made a new version of Alan Scott just to have a gay version of the character, and then did nothing meaningful with any of it, so why also make the main version of Alan Scott gay? It turns out the answer lies with James Tynion IV, a writer probably best known for his work on the Batman titles.
Tynion has been openly bisexual since at least 2014, and has talked extensively about the ongoing saga of figuring himself out, including the period of his life where he’d just allow people to assume he was straight because it was easier. Once it had become clear internally that DC was going to be bringing back the original version of the Justice Society, and that Alan Scott was going to be a central figure in what DC was doing with Infinite Frontier and beyond, Tynion saw an opportunity to deliver on the promises made about the other Alan Scott back in 2012. Back then, DC told the world that Green Lantern Alan Scott was going to be a prominent gat hero, and now almost a decade later Tynion was going to make good on those words. And what better opportunity than when Alan was poised to play a part in the bigger picture of the DC Universe, when the most eyes would be on him and a whole new generation of readers would be encountering him for the first time.
So as you can imagine, Tynion has a strong personal interest in making sure the topic of Alan Scott’s sexuality is handled in a way that feels authentic, while also setting the stage for future stories that’ll advance Alan Scott as a character while also tying into the events of the DC Universe overall. And you can feel the difference right away…unlike with the New 52 version, there was no media blitz or press conference announcing to the world that a big important gay character was coming, and they didn’t front-load it with flashy splash pages of Alan kissing another man to get people talking on social media. Instead what we get is a character expressing deeply personal, introspective thoughts about what it means to keep your real self hidden while the rest of the world thinks they know you.
Alan Scott made his big comeback in the Justice/Doom War in 2019, followed by the Green Lantern 80th Anniversary issue in 2020, and you can feel James Tynion IV’s actual lived experience guiding the character down this new path. And at first it’s very restrained, nobody on the page rushing to overtly say out loud that the character is gay, instead talking about the feelings and concerns and regrets of constantly holding back the less socially acceptable parts of yourself. It’s important that both of these stories take place in the 1940s, when all of American society had a very narrow definition of what it meant to lead a good, decent, “normal” life…and if you didn’t fit that mold, you still had to play along, or you could lose everything. This is the suffocating world Alan Scott lived in while he slowly learned the importance of finding light in the darkness…a light that would get to shine warmly in the pages of DC Infinite Frontier #0, when Alan was finally able to do something that he used to think could never happen. He was honest to the people he loves…honest about his past, and his present…and they accepted him with open arms.
Another big question that gets asked is that if, from an in-universe perspective, we’re supposed to believe that Alan’s been gay all this time, why did it take him until now to come out? Sure he was raised in the 1930’s, but he’s been living in the modern day for quite a while at this point, so what took so long? We get our answer in DC Pride #1, written by Sam Jones, during a heartfelt conversation between Alan and his son Todd, the superhero known as Obsidian. And just like Alan, Todd is gay…but unlike Alan, Todd doesn’t hide it. He’s lived a life shrouded in darkness in every way you can think of, and he’s no longer willing to give power and control over his life to anyone who would hold him back. It took watching his son take those steps first to make Alan realize that this was something he needed for himself too. And this is fantastic, because it addresses the fact that Alan’s always had a very distant relationship with his kids, due mostly to the fact that he never knew they existed until they were already teenagers, but even after finding them, Alan was never really able to bond with Todd the way he did with Jenny. And now we know why. Todd being gay means that he was partially defined by something that Alan never knew how to handle…it’s always been a part of Alan, but he grew up in the 1930’s and 40’s, he’s very firmly a product of his time, and it was drilled into his head that he had to suffer in silence if he didn’t want to be shunned by society as some kind of deviant. How do you talk to your son about coming out when all of your experiences with the topic don’t leave room for the possibility of acceptance and happiness coming from your honest expression of self?
And it turns out that what changed everything for Alan, what gave him his grand epiphany, was watching Todd be happy. His son came out, found love, and celebrated loudly and openly in the streets with hundreds of other people, all reveling in the joy of the experience of being themselves. Alan saw that and realized he wanted it too. He needed it. He never realized how much he’d been hiding until he saw people like his son refusing to hide at all. It’s why he came out now, and it’s why he told his children first, in what’s likely to be a step towards having the relationship with his son that’s always been missing from both of their lives.
As retcons go, this is the best kind, because it adds something new to a character’s past without taking anything away, giving new context to old stories, and allowing for an enormous amount of growth. Look at how little Alan has appeared since this all happened…a few pages in a Justice League story, and then short stories in three different anthologies. All together, the character has only been in about one full issue’s worth of pages since being reintroduced as a gay man, and he’s already had an incredible amount of character development, as well as advancing his relationship with his children farther than I think I’ve ever seen.
I know change is a hard thing to accept, especially when it comes to characters we’ve loved for decades, but what we’re seeing right now with Alan and his family is the result of someone who genuinely cares about these characters using his own lived experience to make sure they get the best possible treatment. And while it won’t always be the case that Alan will be in the hands of queer creators who have that personal reference point to work from, any writer going forward will be able to look back at the Justice/Doom War, at the Green Lantern 80th Anniversary issue, at DC Pride, and at Infinite Frontier #0 and see what’s already been done by writers who know this inside and out because they lived it. Even if James Tynion IV and Sam Johns never write these characters ever again, they’ve already provided a rock solid foundation that anyone can build on, as long as they care enough to do it justice. And we’ll see what that looks like very soon, the Infinite Frontier event is about to get started and Alan Scott, Obsidian, and Jade are all supposed to play an important role in the story. As far as I know, the writer of Infinite Frontier, Joshua Williamson is straight, but I’m not worried about it much because anyone who’s read his run on Flash can tell you he understands what’s at the heart of a long-running dynasty of DC heroes built on legacy and family…and he’ll have all the work we’ve talked about here today to be his starting point, and his road map as we see where the story of Alan Scott goes from here.
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