Are gay comic fans ready for the return of "The Rawhide Kid?"

In 2003, Marvel gave readers a new take on the western hero The Rawhide Kid with Ron Zimmerman's five-issue mini-series "Slap Leather," in which the gunslinger was now written as gay. The series drew controversy on both sides, as conservatives clutched their pearls and cried out "Think of the children" in their best Helen Lovejoy voice.

Meanwhile, gay comic readers were frustrated with a character that came off as stereotypical, dropping sexual innuendos to the shock of the people around him.

This month, a new Rawhide Kid mini-series written by Zimmerman debuts. "The Tombstone Blues" sees the Rawhide Kid assembling other heroes of the wild west to investigate the kidnapping of Wyatt and Morgan Earp.

AfterElton.com reached out to Marvel's Manager of Sales Communications Arune Singh to find out how this mini-series might handle the character's sexual orientation Singh told us that the Rawhide Kid continues to be gay and "The Tombstone Blues" will include "nods to his sexuality, but the story is more focused on the complicated history of their posse and their mission in this series. There will be allusions to his love life but nothing explicitly explored."

As for what those "nods" might be, things don't look too different from the innuendos of "Slap Leather" as this early scene suggests:

The Rawhide Kid meets up with Annie Oakley

Part of what made the 2003 mini-series frustrating wasn't that the character was effeminate — there's nothing the least bit wrong with that — or talked incessantly about sex, but that there weren't many other prominent gay characters at Marvel leaving the Rawhide Kid to carry more of the burden of representation than he could handle. Since then, we've seen Hulkling and Wiccan in Young Avengers, Carolina and Xavin in Runaways, Shatterstar and Rictor in X-Force as well as Northstar, Anole, Greymalkin and Karma having more panel time in the various X-books.

Now that there's a wider variety of gay characters in the Marvel Universe, is there room for a character like The Rawhide Kid with his stereotypical traits? Is it easier to laugh at his quips now that he's not the only gay hero in the Marvel universe? Will you be checking out the new mini-series?