Angry Puppy Special Report: What was gay at NY Comic Con? Not nearly enough.

From our perspective the most frustrating thing about this year's New York Comic Con wasn't the already-anticipated lack of gay characters in any of the big comic, film, or video game presentations or booths. After all, we weren't expecting much. Sadly, though we were thrilled to have a panel of our own, our biggest frustration was with the gay panel discussion, for which we had higher hopes.

Check out the descriptions of two panel sessions listed in the Con program, and see if you can spot our frustration...

In one room a session titled Disguised as Clark Kent "explores how the Jewish backgrounds of the creators of the best-known superheroes helped make them our most familiar pop icons." At the same time and right next door is a session called Sticky Pages: NY Comic Con Super-Queero Edition!, which looks at "What's good, bad, and ugly in the industry today... Featuring a visit from Special Guest CAPTAIN CONDOM!"

The sexualized program name alone put us at odds with the event; what message does this send to the comics industry, the press, and the thousands of fans attending the con? The panel was made up of a good mix of independent and corporate comic book artists, writers, editors, and publishers. And the very talented members of the perhaps overbooked 9-person panel had interesting insights to queer representation in all areas of the comics world. It was difficult, however, for us to not be distracted by Captain Condom, who stood on the stage with arms folded behind the moderator for the entire event.

Hulk not happy with poor gay representation at Con
(and did someone try to stuff a dollar in his pants?)

Also unfortunate was the extension of the sexualized discussion into the panel discourse. Half the moderator's questions seemed out of place and we wondered whether the session next door was also asking its panel what characters they thought were hot, if they'd rather have Supergirl or She-Hulk, and whether the writers and artists would sleep with their fans?

Interestingly, none of the audience questions were even remotely sexual. The audience wanted to know how receptive publishers were to gay storylines, whether being gay ever created career obstacles, and how public reaction affected editorial decision-making in mainstream comics.

The talented folks on the panel had some very interesting insights to offer on these topics. Among them we learned that employees, writers, and artists of mainstream publishers don't find being out very difficult. The discussions at the mainstream publishers are less about whether there should be new LGBT characters, but rather how they should be formed. At the same time the panel acknowledged that mainstream houses tend to look for very 'vanilla' LGBT characters in their search to appeal to the broadest possible audiences. And of course that progress in LGBT representation is very slow.

YAOI, or "Boys' Love" comics, are becoming more popular Stateside

We, like the audience, were interested in all these questions and lines of discussion. And it was heartening to see so many talented LGBT editors, artists, writers and publishers out there giving us these great gay characters and storylines. But walking away from the panel we couldn't help but feel a little bummed about how this came across to the industry professionals, press, general audience, and LGBT attendees at Comic Con.

More pics from the Con after the break! 

Captain America, the Jeans-Wearing Superhero

So many geeks, so little time...

Tim Fish's Cavalcade of Boys

The LOST video game