Six Gay Geeks who've improved the pop culture landscape

With the gay geeks finally getting representation on Beauty and the Geek thanks to Gregg, I've been thinking about openly gay men in pop culture as well as the visibility of gay themes in the realms of science fiction, comics and video games. Overall, these are realms where gay fans frequently feel left out, but things are getting better. Here are six openly gay men working in those areas who have also helped improve visibility for those of us who'd like to have a superhero, space captain, or time-traveling immortal of our own.

Russell T. Davies

Davies became a well-known name when he created the original Queer As Folk, a series that was groundbreaking at the time for prominently featuring gay characters including Doctor Who fanboy Vince Tyler. Davies was a longtime Doctor Who fan himself and was eventually tasked with reviving the franchise. Davies' Who run brought queer characters to the franchise. While most gay characters were a part of the world's background, Davies' first season of Who gave us Captain Jack Harkness, a charming and roguish, time-traveling con artist. Captain Jack was a popular character who got his own spin-off series (we've discussed it occasionally) giving us the first bisexual male heroic lead on a mainstream sci-fi program.

One of the interesting tendencies of Davies is to reuse names, something that Davies says helps him flesh out a character. His Queer as Folk everyman Vince shared a name with the first companion in Davies' Doctor Who run, Rose. (And the Tyler name continued in a show that Davies didn't work on when the creators of Life on Mars named their time-traveling protagonist, Sam Tyler, after Rose.) He's introduced two smart and capable women named Jones (Prime Minister Harriet Jones and medical student Martha Jones) as well as Torchwood's super capable office assistant Ianto Jones. However, the character that has the geekiest lineage is Captain Jack who is named after Agatha Harkness, a popular character among gay Marvel readers. Naming your influential character after the tutor of a d-list comic book diva, that's geek cred.

Phil Jimenez

Jimenez's artwork first hit the comic shops in 1991, his amazingly detailed and realistic style quickly made an impression. Over time, his consistently strong work has built him a following that has made him one of comics' marquee names who publishers court for an exclusive contract (he's currently exclusive to Marvel and is working on the flagship Amazing Spider-Man, with his first issue hitting the shelves earlier this month).

Jimenez became a role model for gay comic fans in 1996 with an editorial that appeared the last issue of the Tempest mini-series that he wrote and pencilled. In the editorial, Jimenez publicly came out and touchingly remembered Neal Pozner the man who first hired him to work for DC Comics who became a mentor to Jimenez, as well as Jimenez' partner. Pozner died in 1994 and the eulogy was powerful not only for increasing gay visibility among comic creators but for bringing a gay relationship into the dialogue.

Clive Barker

Barker quickly made an impression as a horror writer, particularly after Stephen King praised him as "the future of horror". Barker has had a long and varied career that has included film (which includes the horror series Hellraiser as well as producing the film Gods and Monsters), comic books (Barker has an original series comic soon from IDW, who've previously published adaptations of his The Thief of Always and The Great and Secret Show) and video games.

Perry Moore

Moore is been a busy guy, having gotten the Narnia novels onto the big screen, co-directing a documentary about Maurice Sendak. Last year, Moore made a splash among gay geeks with his Young Adult novel Hero which told the story of a young gay superhero learning to accept himself and find his role in a world full of heroes. Moore also sparked plenty of discussion when he asked "Who cares about the death of a gay superhero anyway?" by compiling a Women in Refrigerators-style list of the unfortunate fates of gay characters in comics.

Andy Mangels

Mangels has long been a strong advocate for increased gay visibility, especially in comics and sci-fi. He started the "Gays in Comics" panel at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1987 and has consistently moderated the annual discussion ever since then, an event that has impressively grown every year. Mangles helped bring gay characters to the printed sectors of the Star Trek universe (which has been pretty resistant to including gay characters in its official TV and film editions) having included gay characters in his Next Generation novel, Section 31: Rogue (co-written with Michael A. Martin) as well as in the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy comic.

Bryan Fuller

While Fuller is best known for creating series that merge fantasy elements with human drama like Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies, his history includes some work that ties in more closely to geekdom. Fuller started out writing scripts for Star Trek: Voyager (the one thing that could get me to put Voyager DVDs on my Netflix queue). He also brought the work of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola to TV with an animated adaptation of The Amazing Screw-On Head (which also featured the voice of David Hyde Pierce) and was part of the writing team behind the first season of Heroes, having written the season's most acclaimed episode, "Family Man".
Fuller has also been a strong advocate for gay visibility on the shows he's worked on. Not only did Wonderfalls start out with a lesbian relationship as one of its subplots, Dead Like Me had a few stories focused on same-sex couples and Fuller was a strong voice on the de-gaying of Zach in Heroes.

That, of course, is just a topline view. Is there a gay geek you think should be mentioned? Tell us all about him in the comments!