Watching Watchmen: will Hooded Justice, Watchmen's gay hero, be a part of the film?

After years in development hell, Warner Bros. announced a cast for a movie adaptation of Watchmen at Comic-Con International. Watchmen is a highly regarded comic by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons that asked how different our world would be if superheroes actually existed and if real people could maintain their morality if they found themselves wielding so much power and authority.

The story primarily takes place at the end of the Cold War, the late 80s, but also looks back at the history of its alternate universe to see how superheroes would have changed our history. One of the caped crusaders we meet during those flashbacks is Hooded Justice, one of the first masked men to arrive on the scene who, it turns out, was also gay.

So far, Hooded Justice hasn't been cast and hasn't been mentioned in discussion of the film. I hope that doesn't mean he won't appear in the movie. While Hooded Justice isn't one of Watchmen's essential characters, he plays a key role in establishing the bigotry and violent tendencies of another character, The Comedian.

I'm probably suffering from a bit of hair trigger worry, considering that Watchmen will be directed by Zack Snyder, who unfortunately struck more than a few homophobic notes in his previous comic book movie, 300. It's probably worth considering that the 300 comic was also considered homophobic by many, while Watchmen creator Alan Moore has a history of being very gay friendly (he also wrote V for Vendetta). Perhaps, in the long run, we'll be able to attribute the homophobia in 300 more to the source material than the director, but in the meantime it's worth watching to see if Watchmen's influential gay hero makes it into the film adaptation.