• Out of Outsiders:
  I haven't brought up the controversy over Batman and the Outsiders #1 so far because the situation has seemed a bit too complicated to fit after a bulletpoint. However, Lisa Fortuner does a good job putting it together. (As always when visiting Newsarama, I recommend avoiding the comment threads.) Basically, was DC deliberately trying to draw attention to the relaunched title (one of the few featuring gay characters) by handing it to a writer widely regarded as homophobic? Have they sunk to gay baiting as a way to get people talking about the title (one previously written by Judd Winick who has been honored by GLAAD multiple times) before its release?

• And to think that I'd never be disappointed in news about Fable or NiGHTS:
  Two notable news bites came in for gaymers this week. First, the gay-inclusive RPG Fable 2 is getting a release date ... kinda. The game is scheduled not to become available until "late 2008". Hm, I guess I have time to play catch up, then. (I still haven't finished my copy of Planescape: Torment myself.)
  
  Equally frustrating, it was announced that the Playstation 2 version of the campy classic NiGHTS into Dreams is currently planned as a Japan-only release.

• In this version, when you win we all lose... or maybe it's the other way around:
  Back in May, bloggers at Girl-Wonder introduced the Anti-Feminist Comics Bingo Card which put together every cliched argument that comes up whenever a discussion of female characters in Western comics comes up. It was a humorous way to note all the arguments that come up again and again -- usually from people who think they're the first ones to bring up such an idea. 
  
  The idea was one that resonated with a number of bloggers who created versions dealing with other areas of geekdom. Now, inspired by a post containing enough cliched anti-gay arguments that people weren't sure if it was serious Girl-Wonder's Kate Fiztsimons has created the Queer Comics Controversy BINGO card:
  
  
  
  
  
  I do think one common argument is missing from the BINGO card -- the one which tries to claim that LGBT people don't make up a big part of the population so there's actually a sufficient number of gay characters in comics. Sigh.

• After all, pretty elven men is the natural order of things:
  One arena where I still see homophobia in video game forums is the discussion of designing male and female avatars. I still encounter attitudes that believe that attractive female avatars should be normal and common but there's something wrong about a player who wants to have a good looking male avatar. After the brouhaha over same-sex marriage in the game, I was intrigued to hear that Lord of the Rings Online doesn't follow that trend. You can't make an elven male less pretty by giving him a macho scar and hobbit women have all the unglamorous hobbit features.

• Nomination summation:
  The Young Adult Library Services Association just announced its final list of nominations for Great Graphic Novels for Teens. I'm pretty pleased to see Dead High Yearbook (which is edited and includes a story by out creator Ivan Velez, Jr.) as well as Fumi Yoshinaga's very gay friendly YAOI title, The Moon and The Sandals on the list. (Pictured, a panel from Dead High.)

• Errors, regretted:
  Last week, I pointed to a New York Times profile of Gail Simone and repeated the Times' discussion of Simone as the first female writer to get an ongoing gig on Wonder Woman. That claim was the topic of debate at Comics Worth Reading, where CWR readers brought up runs by Mindy Newell and earlier writers. Simone makes an appearance in the comment thread to confirm that she doesn't see herself as breaking ground that way. For what it's worth, Simone is the first ongoing female Wonder Woman writer (Jodi Picoult did a fill-in run earlier in the year) since the Amazon was revamped in 1987.

• Link of the week:
  There's a new home for the LGBT (and LGBT-friendly) players of City of Heroes: City Folk offers a community where gay fans can plan events, recruit for supergroups and otherwise make connections. I can't really say if City of Heroes really is the most gay friendly MMO as Gay Gamer's Fruit Brute says, but the gay community of Paragon City is easily the best at getting the word out about their activity. If you sign up, tell 'em Lyle sent you!

That's right, folks: fan fave Two Gay Guys is moving to Thursdays, and if this week's installment is any indication of why, it's so that the nice men in the white coats can get its stars back to The Center before the weekend traffic hits.

In this week's vlog, Michael and Brent discuss the supposed gay subtext of the Lord of the Rings movies. I don't know which is scarier: seeing my boss dress up as a hobbit, or the fact that this vest might legitimately be a part of his wardrobe:

If you have a life, you may be unaware that two days ago, the folks at LiveJournal suddenly deleted a bunch of communities and journals that listed interests in things like incest and pedophilia. This was prompted by complaints from a group called "Warriors for Innocence," whose website I'm not going to link to because there have been entirely unconfirmed reports that it tries to put spyware on your computer. See, we love you and your hard drive here at AfterElton.com.

Well, you might ask, ummmm, yeah. What's the problem? Some of the communities that got deleted really were extremely problematic, and while I'm not a lawyer and do not play one in the blogosphere, I'm pretty sure they violated LJ's Terms of Service big time.

The problem, as it turns out, is that a lot of the deleted communities were actually fandom communities that archive homoerotic fanfiction about fictional characters. And some of those characters are, fictionally speaking, brothers, like Faramir and Boromir from Lord of the Rings.

Last week Turbine, Inc. of Westwood, MA released a new online role-playing game based on J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings called "The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar". Salon.com just posted a very interesting article over the controversy that erupted at the company over the issue of whether the game would allow same-sex marriage (the article also examines gay gaming issues in general). Ultimately, Turbine decided to completely remove the game's marriage feature rather than allow same-sex marriage. While it seems a silly decision, I prefer that over discriminating against gay folks who want to swap those Middle Earth Rings with each other.

We've written about gay-gaming issues before including the recent controversy over Bully's same-sex kiss. The issue here doesn't seem to be out right homophobia on the part of the game-designers. The article points out that one of the designers, Nik Davidson, is pro-gay in real life, but voted against including same-sex marriage in The Lord of the Rings. His (and others) reasoning? That since same-sex marriage wasn't in Tolkien's original creation, it couldn't be here as their goal was to be as authentic to his vision as possible. (Does this mean online role playing games were part of his vision?) As an example of sticking to Tolkien's game plan, the article cites how during beta testing they discovered a gray squirrel, a creature which Tolkien apparently abhorred. The color was promptly changed.