I love finding new reasons to love Kevin Smith. Hearing he's a gay bear icon is pretty funny though, finding him sexually arousing was just not something that had occurred to me.

I know this site has several times ennumerated the stereotype of the mincing feminized homosexual villain in our popular media, and it was something of a shock for me to realize that for so many years I'd been brainwashed by such images and characters. How does this matter at all to Kevin Smith? Because Smith played on this idea of the gay villain in the comic he wrote on bringing back the Green Arrow from the grave. Although his name escapes me, and at the risk of giving the plot away entirely, Smith turns the notion of the gay villain on its head by having his villain pretend to be gay so as to hide his villainous intents by abusing the liberal sensibilities that Green Arrow is so famous for. During the "big reveal" scene I think that the old man actually says, "and who would ever suspect the kindly old queer? Not you, Ollie, with your liberal attitudes," or something to that effect (as you can see, I don't remember all of the specifics).

So the villain poses as a kindly gay man for much of the story, only at the end revealing himself to be a heterosexual sorcerer bent on taking Green Arrow's soulless reincarnated flesh vessel for his own quest in escaping death. Heavy themes, obviously, but Kevin Smith is a great comic book writer and it seems a bit of a gay activist. Awesome.

Great post Jacob but it shames me to say those four stars I just gave you are soley because of your use of flesh vessel.

Just getting to this on my Tivo; Kevin Smith was on Letterman last night, showed his Bear's Life cover, and talked about being the sexual fantasy for other men. It was actually pretty cool.