Allow Us to Explain With DCnU on the horizon, and speculation running amok about where favorite plots might land once the tornado relaunching dies down, there's been a lot of comic talk in office chats about our much-beloved gay and lesbian vigilantes. Before any more messes of movies come out, or new continuity throws us all for a loop, we thought it would be a good idea to round up June doing what half of every major city (and quite a few small ones) on the planet is doing right now; celebrating Gay Pride Month. It was high time we actually gave space to LGBT issues, given the month, but also in general. (Withstanding the pandering tone of X-Men: First Class does not count.) Before we get to kicking ass and taking names, however, a little history lesson is in order. The existence of this list says volumes by itself. The majority of the characters mentioned were created in the 1980s or later, and all of them were officially outed after 1992. It would have been relatively impossible to create a list of mainstream, name-recognizable gay or lesbian action heroes even ten years ago, putting superheroics behind its sister genres of science fiction and fantasy. Why are capes (and trenchcoats, and shit-kicking combat boots) so late to the pride party? Because from the 1930s right up until the nineties, the primary source of superhero creation, the comic book industry, including the Big Two and their satellites, had to contend with the dastardly Comic Code Authority, and their ban on depicting homosexual characters or relationships. (Or, in some cases, actions, costume choices, or living situations that seemed gay.) Fearing censorship or outright shutdown of titles thanks to the CCA's no-homo policy, the more progressive class of writers and editors hid what they wanted to say between the panels. Still, a lot of implication and innuendo managed to slip through over time, leading to some readers waiting twenty years or more for an answer to their "are they or aren't they" queries. With the official prohibition lifted in 1989, gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters slowly began to trickle into the rosters of superhero teams, and, much more slowly, into the scripts for live-action tie-in material. Today, we've got out team members in the big leagues, many of whom are dedicated canon couples, as well as lesbian and gay headliners of their own titles. There's a big, obvious gap on this list that we wanted to address up front; the absence of transgendered characters or issues. The dearth of the "T" in LGBT is something we at TMS talked about, and its not dealt with in this particular grid for a few reasons. One was that, behind as the action hero world is on strong LGB material, they're even further back on trans issues, and positive depictions are few, and debatable. (Which doesn't mean they're not worth debating.) Another reason we discussed is that, while the longstanding conflation of gender identity and sexual identity is perhaps understandable, we were unwilling to exacerbate the problem. Transsexuality and homosexuality (or bisexuality) are not the same thing, though plenty of individuals can claim membership in both arenas simultaneously. To us, shoehorning in a few (debatably) trans characters on the list would have felt like token inclusion, when gender-bending action heroes (and villains) deserve, and should have, their own Grid. This list is dedicated, as always, to the runners-up who were, for the most part, deemed too obscure, or would have made the list unbalanced towards either men or women. Among others, we salute you; Willow, Scandal Savage, Jetman/Jetlad, Obsidian, Wiccan, Hulkling, Rictor, Shatterstar, and, oh yeah, Erik Lensherr (look it up). On a sentimental, real-world note, this list should also be dedicated to the lobbyists, organizers, and representatives of New York State, who are right now celebrating their victory for marriage equality. They don't have capes or masks, but they're heroes nonetheless, keeping the world safe for comic book fans gay and straight alike. It gets better. Especially if you can punch through walls.

John Constantine Some may have raised an eyebrow when they saw the British occult detective on a list of badass gay, lesbian, and bisexual heroes. Being in continuous publication under the Hellblazer title since 1988, and appearing in Alan Moore’s epic classic Swamp Thing before that, means that John’s got a helluva lot of continuity to comb through. He’s got plenty of skeletons and demons in his closet, and that includes both ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends. A magnet for the weird and horrible, like others of his genre, Constantine is a streetwise, cynical magician and con who sticks on the side of humanity, no matter who else is playing. Initially created as an advisor on the supernatural for Moore’s lovelorn Swamp Thing, Constantine got his own series under DC’s adult line, Vertigo, which has also housed Wildstorm. Traveling the world and always finding himself in trouble, Constantine can use his wits, a bit of nasty magic, and sheer will to get out of any scrape (save being misrepresented by Keanu Reeves in an awkward film adaptation that bore almost no resemblance to the comic series). A man of gray morality, Constantine will make deals with demons, angels, obscure gods, or the Devil himself (he’s not such a bad guy, really) to make sure the world, and his own sanity, stay intact. It's a long-running theme of Constantine's tale that anyone he loves meets a foul end, and that means anyone, female or male. However, equal opportunity guilt hasn't meant equal representation on the comic page; though John's canon bisexuality has come up numerous times, the majority of the writers who have taken the reins shy away from involving him with men. It's understandable that the guy has more serious concerns, what with regularly being the unwitting third choice in a game between Heaven and Hell. Perhaps, after things get mashed up and spewed out again over at DC, Vertigo's editors could take a hint from their protagonist and have some guts.

Northstar Back in 1983, John Byrne, a writer and artist for Marvel Comics, was commissioned to turn Alpha Flight, an in-continuity arc about a Canadian superhero team, into an ongoing series. Worried that the characters created with a shorter duration in mind would come off as undeveloped, Byrne had an inspired idea, given the time; why not make one of them gay? The only problem was that Marvel's ban on identifying gay or lesbian characters was still firmly in place. Sticking to his guns on the issue, Byrne could only imply his chosen character's sexuality and wait for things to change. Enter Jean-Paul Beaubier, AKA Northstar, into comic book history. A youth member of the terrorist group the Québec Liberation Front, turned former professional skier (it's Canada, what do you want), Northstar's mutation involves super-speed, and all that includes like flight, supersonic sound, and fast punching, as well as flashes of light generated by his speed that can blind enemies. Though a shown disinterest in women had hinted about his sexuality to readers, he wasn't officially outed until 1992, making him the first gay superhero in a mainstream American comic series. He has appeared in varying continuities, both with Alpha Flight and as a solo character, crossing paths most often with the X-Men, Wolverine, and S.H.I.E.L.D. Though Northstar's storyline has offen suffered from the initial tokenism that made him notable to begin with, he's still been a superheroic forerunner for addressing both gay politics and HIV/AIDS. Despite being offed in three different continuities within the space of a month in 2005, Northstar was resurrected in main Marvel continuity, reappearing in issues of Wolverine shortly after his supposed demise. To date, it looks like he's back in action with a re-formed Alpha Flight, unable to be stopped by villains or the legions of editors who have tried to zap him out of existence over the years. Canadians get more love in the Marvel Universe than they do elsewhere. It turns out, the same could be said of gay Canadians.

Utena Tenjou As long as heroes have existed in popular pulp, there've been damsels to save (whether they've wanted to be saved, or not, in some cases). But saving the damsel every single day takes a certain level of fortitude and compulsion. Saving the damsel every day while attending a boarding school, and where saving her from the fate of being betrothed to someone else means fighting the other students? For repetitive stress injury alone, Utena Tenjou would deserve her spot on this list. Based on the manga by Chiho Saito, the Japanese animated series Revolutionary Girl Utena does not so much have a lesbian undertone as a tone, liberally mixed with surrealism, dabbled with highly stylized metaphysical nods, and served on a platter of thickest allegory. Utena is the iconically pink-haired tomboy who, having met and been deeply affected by a prince in her childhood, decides to become one herself. Attending Ohtori Academy as a teenager, Utena's chivalrous instinct to protect a student she meets, Anthy Himemiya, lands her in perpetual sword-duels with the Student Council. Anthy, referred to as the "Rose Bride", is thought to be the key to a coming revolution, and is sought after by everyone in the Student Council’s dueling club, for both altruistic and implied sexualized means. If that sounds straightforward, we haven't mentioned (this time around) the psychological twists, the violence, transformations, incest, or scenes where characters have existential discussions lounging on piles of cars in planetariums. As the protagonist of what, on the surface, purports to be a "magical girl" series, Utena herself is a fascinating puzzle that continues to interest fans and academics in equal measure. By enacting the various choices her world presents to her, she both conforms to and subverts the traditional options for women; to be either a damsel or a witch. Utena's struggle with her gendered placement in a highly gendered world, as well as her feelings for Anthy and other, princely, characters, is atypical. Utena may not have revolutionized the world, as was the series characters' self-professed aim, but her appearance in both comic and animated form was a big hit enough hit in Japan to make the jump to the U.S., where it held particular interest for many gay and lesbian anime fans. Today, it's an enduring cult classic that embodies some of the most "anime" of anime tropes, and is well worth a look even if purple-haired maidens don't quite do it for ya. Just…don't ask us to explain the movie adaptation.

Mystique Mystique, though steamy looks thrown by Rebecca Romijn Stamos to Ian McKellan do nothing to indicate it, is a canonically bisexual character and, unlike some of the characters on this grid, was intended to be from her initial appearances in 1978, fifteen years into the X-Men series. However, like Northstar, Mystique was created under the Comics Code and Marvel's editorial ban on gay and bisexual characters. Writer Chris Claremont's initial plan of giving Mystique a long term relationship with fellow mutant Destiny and even a child between the two of them (conceived while the shape-shifting Mystique was in a male form), had to be shelved. Or closeted, to use a different sort of cabinetry. Claremont did as best he could, by characterising Mystique and Destiny's friendship as a deep and lasting one, but Nightcrawler had to be explained as Mystique's child with Azazel (yes, that red guy from X-Men: First Class) instead of Destiny's child with Mystique. It wasn't until 1990 that Claremont was able to reveal that Mystique and Destiny had actually been off-again-on-again lovers for almost a century as the two cooperated in some very long term plans to keep Destiny's awful prophecies about mutant kind from coming true. Certainly, there were times when Mystique took others as lovers, and even had a couple kids. But Destiny was the only lover she mourned, nearly driven crazy by greif; and the only person she actually raised a child with, by adopting Rogue.

The Midnighter Narrowly edging out his own super-powered husband to get a spot on this Grid, we settled on Night's Bringer of War because, frankly, we'd be too afraid not to. Not unlike his creator, grand British madman Warren Ellis, Midnighter's method of making critics eat crow is to shove it down their throats wearing a spiked gauntlet. The Batman allegory to DC's hyper-violent Wildstorm Universe, Midnighter (no, he doesn't have a name) is, like his in-comic husband, Apollo, a remnant of the insane Henry Bendix's now-defunct Super Soldier program. Implied to have been a blacker-than-Black-Ops volunteer, the trenchcoat-clad bundle of snark has bioengineering that allows for superhuman strength, flexibility, and speed, as well as a legendary immune system and healing ability (he's survived having his neck snapped, recovered from shattered limbs in a matter of weeks, never has a common cold for more than a few minutes, and has even had his back-up heart torn out and got better , just fine.) Midnighter’s trademark, however, is the supercomputer hardwired to his brain that allows him to run all the variations on a possible fight before the combat even starts, leading to some nightmarish pre-battle warnings to opponents. Badass from helmet-top to combat-sole, Midnighter can be something of a well meaning screw-up when it comes to his marriage. Still, he has a soft spot when it comes to both members of his family, especially his adopted daughter, Jenny, the reincarnation of his former team leader. His tireless protection, patience, and determination to do anything for Jenny was what got him on the Best Geeky Dads list last year.) Due to chronic mismanagement by subsequent creative teams, the titles that chronicled his adventures, The Authority and the spin-off Midnighter, have faltered through various attempts at revision and resuscitation. It's difficult to maintain a series, after all, that was dedicated to addressing the dark logical endpoint of world-spanning vigilantism. Given the level of violence that was a customary part of the Wildstorm imprint, it will be interesting to see how Midnighter, Apollo, and other former Authority members make the jump this fall into mainstream DC continuity. (They're slated to appear alongside the Martian Manhunter under Stormwatch.) You can bet that we'll be checking in.

Jack Phantom Looking for a lesbian written by Alan Moore who isn't killed by a supervillain because her secret identity was made public by her homophobic teammates or experimented on and murdered by fascists ? Then you'll probably want to pick up Top Ten, one of the least "Alan Moore" things Alan Moore's ever written. The series started up in 1999, under the imprint of America's Best Comics, which Moore created underneath the imprint of Wildstorm, which that year was bought out by DC Comics, a company that Moore had sworn never to work for again. Fun stuff. America's Best Comics was a label that Moore used to produce some of his craziest stuff, like Promethea which had its X-rated moments, and some of his most famously badly adapted stuff, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. So think of Top Ten and its setting as the light hearted contrast to Moore's tantric mess of a meditation on creativity in Promethea and his tribute to 18th Century pulp and horror in LoXG. Top Ten's city of Neopolis was founded at the end of WWII to be a place where superheros, mad scientists, dragon-slayers, robots, gods, daikaiju and pretty much every other science fiction and fantasy trope could live in relative peace. At least, as much peace as any other large metropolis, hence Top Ten, the tenth and most senior precinct of police in Neopolis, staffed by Neopolan citizens themselves. There are near three dozen police officer characters in the series, but included among the synthetic android nudist, the sentient doberman with a humanoid exoskeleton, and the devil worshipper is Jackie "Jack Phantom" Kowalski, a lesbian who can phase through solid objects. Jack is a Sargeant, partnered with Lieutenant Peregrine (real name Cathy Colby), a born again Christian with a bit of a dim view of Jack's perceived "choices," but Jack's relationships with the rest of her coworkers are solid. She and the perennially girlfriendless dude Dust Devil flirt constantly, though both know it's not going anywhere, even while walking into the maw of danger: the sewer lair of a shapeshifting alien porn star who's reached the larval stage of her life and has developed microscopically thin filaments capable of slicing atoms from atoms, a threat that Jack's powers are uniquely suited for.

Ultimate Colossus One of the advantages of a long-running series such as X-Men is that multiple continuities -- while confusing to hapless PowerGrid writers -- can provide arenas for authors to play with established characters, try out what-ifs, and generally make a mess of the sandbox without having to rebuild from scratch.In the case of Ultimate X-Men/Marvel, this meant digging in deep and kicking things up a notch. Peter Rasputin of the Ultimate universe is a former Russian arms smuggler, revealed as a mutant when he uses his powers to protect himself during a trade deal gone horribly wrong. Like his mainstream counterpart, Colossus can cover himself with a bio-metal exoskeleton. Unlike his mainstream counterpart, he cannot lift his limbs when in bio-metal form without the aid of a super-strength drug called Banshee, leading to some interesting twists further down the line. He's strong enough to defeat both Iron Man and Thor in battle, and, at one point, is stopped only (and temporarily) by a localized nuclear explosion. (Then again, you know you're dealing in alternative timelines when Kurt Wagner's up against Wolverine for title of Biggest Asshole. Did we mention Peter's also in the Russian mafia?) Hinted at in early issues of Ultimate, Peter's sexuality was finally revealed more directly in other character's comments on his reaction to Angel's good looks, and, later, during his interactions with another of our PowerGrid members, Northstar. (A rather embarrassed Peter inadvertently goes to metal form when asked if he's single.) The two later attend a homecoming dance together, trigger some nasty, double-standard reactions from Peter’s teammates that later prompt him to leave the X-Men. (Really people, can’t you see your own social issue parallels?) He rejoins later, and becomes one of the only heroes to survive the Brotherhood of Mutants’ attack on NYC. We guess if you’re a gay mutant with intolerant mutant coworkers, your secret second ability is putting up with hypocritical nonsense.

Batwoman In a tale of high editorial irony, present-day Batwoman is a revamp/offshoot of the original Bat-Woman, who was introduced to dispel the now-infamous allegations in 1954's Seduction of the Innocent that Batman was full of homoerotic undertones. Along with many other camp vestiges of the 50s and 60s, (including the Bat-Mite, and the Bat-Hound), Kathy Kane was retconned out of her cowl and her love interest duties by 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths. Another Crisis would bring Kane back, this time with a serious political punch. Following the Infinite Crisis series, DC set up 2006’s year-long, title-spanning epic, 52, in which they wanted to maintain Bat-presence without the usual heavy-hitters. There was no female Bat Family member operating at the time, with Cassandra Cain, one-time Batgirl, turned to evil, and a ( now ironic ) decision having been made to keep the wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon in her role as Oracle because of the dearth of disabled heroes in the DCU. Kane's re-introduction was handled shallowly, initially depicting her as a spoiled heiress-turned-vigilante. Her inclusion in the events of 52 set up several important aspects of her character, however, including her sexual orientation, as well as her past romantic involvement with Renee Montoya AKA The Question, who's also on this Grid. Though DC would try to bury their controversial decision to make a lesbian character associated with one of their biggest titles when the news made a huge splash, their shameful backtracking proved to be of no avail. When Batman’s death in 2009 left Detective Comics without a protagonist, Kane’s Batwoman was brought in to fill the large pointy-eared hood. Under the leadership of writer Greg Rucka, Kane’s backstory and character were fleshed out in the story arc Elegy, which won Rucka a GLAAD award and heaps of critical praise. After the end of her run as main attraction in Detective Comics, Kane was to receive her own series. Much to fan distress, the launch of Batwoman #1 was put off, and put off, as, it turns out, in preparation for DC's big relaunch of its titles. Like the Nolan-verse Batman of the current film trilogy, Kane's Batwoman is depicted as having semi-realistic weapons and gear that are based on military technology. As a former member of the armed forces (Elegy notably dealt with Don't Ask, Don't Tell), her training includes several different forms of martial arts, as well as experience with various kinds of fighting equipment. She's been shown to be as tough and capable a fighter as her male counterpart, with her own absorbing motivations. With her series set to debut this fall along with the rest of DC's new crew, we're excited to see Kate back in action as one of the most prominent female superheroes out there.

The Question Meet Gotham City's second most prominent gay superhero: Renee Montoya, who currently operates under the guise of The Question. Renee is one of two female characters who successfully made the transition from Batman: The Animated Series, their place of origin, to the canon of actual Batman comics (the other is Harley Quinn). In B:TAS Renee was introduced as a beat officer both Hispanic, Catholic, and female, and eventually was promoted to detective. Her first comic appearance was in Batman #475, in 1992, but she didn't really get anything to do until 1999, in the events of No Man's Land, which eventually lead to Officer Down (Greg Rucka's and Ed Brubaker's first dabbling in the lives Gotham's Major Crimes Unit), which in turn led to Gotham Central, one of the most critically acclaimed and least bought series in DC's history. In Gotham Central Renee became a fully rounded character, one of the series' leads, and she was outed as a lesbian by Two-Face (this was actually much creepier and serious and less silly than it sounds) in the second story arc. Her parents disowned her, her coworkers began throwing slurs around, a few story arcs later her partner was nearly implicated in the murder of a villain because of a crooked cop, she was briefly invaded by the freed spirit of the Deadly Sin of Rage (the series' only brush with the DC maxi-event of the time), her girlfriend left her because of her ongoing anger management problems (stemming from her possession, which no superheroic character was on hand to explain or fix), and her partner was murdered by the aforementioned crooked cop, who walks off scott free. In light of all this, Renee quit the GCPD, unable to serve and keep her sanity at the same time. So when Greg Rucka came back to her for 52, the same series that reintroduced Batwoman as canon, Renee was in a particularly deep, dark hole. Her partnership with, and subsequent succession as, The Question was one of the better plot threads that wound through the year-long story, and it took brought Renee from "slowly drinking herself to death" to "badass vigilante taking down international drug cartels." But lets backpedal a moment: because every superhero is paired up at some point with every other compatible superhero, Renee Montoya and Kate Kane (Batwoman) dated before they got to the costumed phase of their lives. They met when then Officer Montoya pulled Kate over for speeding; Kate managed to walk away with a ticket and Renee's phone number. Their relationship was tumultuous not least because of how different they were, and also an excellently written example of the different ways in which a person might make the decision to come out: Kate's family had money enough that instead of dealing with her grief and purposelessness, she could live the life of a socialite and she had never worried that her trust fund might be taken away if she dated women. Renee, on the other hand, was a good cop and a child of immigrants struggling to rise in rank in a police force rife with graft and intolerance for her gender, her true sexuality, and her Dominican heritage. On top of that, she was deeply closeted, secure in the knowledge that her devoutly Catholic parents would disown her if they found out she was gay. Even her brother, who she came out to at the age of thirteen, still believed, against all evidence and her protests, that she could choose to date men if she just wanted to enough. While Kate's coming out was made from a place of deep integrity and cost her a career that was everything to her, she never risked her extremely privileged place in society or her family's love. When Renee berated her to go back to school, stop being a waste of space, and make something with the gifts she had been given; Kate would deflect the issue by accusing Renee of living a lie as "Officer Montoya" and assume an air of superiority because at least she was being true to herself, sidestepping the fact that Renee had much more at stake in revealing her sexuality. This was a younger Kate with a lot of personal development to go through, for what it's worth. But these are the kinds of things that are possible when minority characters aren't just tokens but valued additions ( thanks, Mr. McDuffie ): writers can actually explore the fact that different people approach their minority status in *gasp* different ways.