Gays and lesbians may still be lamenting the passage of Prop 8, the measure that re-bans gay marriage here in California, but Stan Lee is offering them a bone (figuratively of course) to help: a gay superhero. Variety reports that Lee, who seems busier now than he’s ever been, is going to produce a gay superhero TV show for Showtime. Lee and his Pow! Entertainment Preseident / CEO, Gill Champion, are set to executive produce an as-yet-untitled gay superhero show to be based on the book, Hero by Perry Moore. The show will be based on Thom Creed, an “up-and-coming superhero who struggles to hide his secret identities.”
Moore said that he wrote the book after being upset by a Marvel comic, X-Men: Age of Apocalypse in 2005 where Wolverine killed Northstar, a prominent gay superhero. Moore felt that it sent the wrong message to have one of the most prominent Marvel superheroes kill a gay character. Moore also had issues with the retconning of gay, lesbian or bisexual characters to make them hetero to be more acceptable.
Hero has received mixed reviews, with Publishers Weekly praising the subject matter, but that “the novel misses its mark, with an abundance of two-dimensional
characters and contrived situations. … While some may be glad to see
a gay hero come out of the closet just in time to save the world,
others may wish the situations felt less clichéd.” Neverminding all the obvious spandex jokes, it’ll be interesting to see if the show goes so far as to depict some of the more risque elements to the book, such as Thom Creed masturbating to internt porn.
No word on whether or not Joel Schumacher will be consulting on the superhero costume.