Gay Geek update: George Takei gets a second "Star", Newsarama becomes "So Super Duper"

George Takei and his Star Wars: Clone Wars alter-ego Lok Durd

George Takei was an important person to me growing up. As a child, I watched him on TV every afternoon on Star Trek and, as the only Asian-American man I regularly saw on TV, Takei was an important role model. So I'm thrilled to see how well he's done since coming out, what with his role on Howard Stern's radio show, his very public wedding, his recurring role on Heroes and his stint on UK reality show I'm A Celebrity, Get Me out of Here.

Takei's next performance can be seen this Friday on the Cartoon Network's Star Wars: Clone Wars, where he'll be the voice of Lok Durd. I've got mixed emotions about this development. On one hand, this means that Takei is the first performer to work on both Star Trek and Star Wars, and it does warm my heart to imagine Takei having scored some kind of bragging rights over his Trek rival, William Shatner.

But on the other hand...

Clone Wars' Ziro the Hutt

The Star Wars franchise has made heavy use of offensive stereotypes in the past decade. The Clone Wars movie introduced a relative of Jabba the Hutt who was clearly meant to invoke gay stereotypes and The Phantom Menace gave us the Neimoidians, who added Asian "Yellow Peril" stereotypes to the Star Wars universe.

With that in mind, should we look at Takei's Clone Wars role as selling out? Or is Clone Wars trying to make up for past offenses by including a prominent, gay Japanese-American? Interestingly, Takei's character is a Neimoidian,which offers an opportunity to remedy the offensive nature of the Neimoidians ... or or to perpetuate them.

So Super Duper

Meanwhile, some my fellow comic book nerds might be aware of the kerfuffle that happened at Newsarama when its blog crew split with the site in December. While Newsarama wasn't ever known as the friendliest space for gay comic fans, the original Blog@Newsarama team added a lot of gay-friendliness, something that the site has yet to recapture.

Perhaps that will be remedied now that the site will be serializing Brian Andersen's gay comic So Super Duper. If you're not familiar with Andersen's charming comic, it follows a gay hero who mixes superhero slugfests with gossip sessions at the salon.

As far as I can recall, it's the first time any of the major comic sites have given this kind of feature to an independent, gay comic — perhaps this is another example of how the web is making it easier for gay comic creators to find an audience?