Green Lantern Fights Gay-Bashing

Aug 13, 6:40 PM (ET)

By VERENA DOBNIK

NEW YORK (AP) - The comic book company that created Superman and Batman has a cutting-edge new story line: a gay teenager is the victim of a hate crime.

DC Comics'"Green Lantern" No. 154 hits newsstands in September - with main character Terry Berg beaten almost to death on a street.

Terry actually emerged as a gay character in 2001 in issue No. 137, which was cited by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation as the year's best comic book. Terry is a sidekick to Kyle Rayner - aka Green Lantern - whose emerald ring gives him supernatural powers that keep New Yorkers safe.

"Terry came out because he had a crush on Kyle. Who wouldn't? He's tall, with all those muscles," says cartoonist Judd Winick, who created the gay character at the suggestion of DC comics editor Bob Schreck, also responsible for the "Batman" series.


Schreck "knew I'd be pretty sensitive to gay issues," says Winick, 32, who is married and lives in San Francisco.

He was a cast member of MTV's "Real World," a documentary-style show that detailed the lives of a group of people living in the same house.

Winick's "Real World" roommate was Pedro Zamora, a nationally known AIDS activist who died in 1994. Their friendship inspired Winick's comic-book story "Pedro and Me."

If there's a lesson in dropping gay issues into "Green Lantern," one of DC's flagship titles, "it might be that it would be great for young people to see that the Green Lantern doesn't care that Terry is gay. He's a person," says the cartoonist.

"Terry represents acceptance. And now, in this hate crime, we're discussing the worst side of the gay issue."

In issue No. 154, the teenager and his boyfriend are walking down the street when three men start yelling out a derogatory anti-gay word and chasing them. They catch up with Terry, who's brutally beaten.

Though he's a main character whose gay lifestyle is a running thread in the comic series, it's not the first time the comic book industry touches on gay issues.

The 1993 coming-out of Marvel Comics' Northstar, of the Canadian X-Men group Alpha Flight, was a sensation. X-Men characters Mystique and Destiny had an implied lesbian relationship, and the Green Lantern features lesbian

Quoted:
At least the comic book is real to life and shows the fag almost beaten to death like what sometimes happens in the real world for no other reason than because you are gay.