DC Comics has one weird trick for turning famous superheroes queer

polygon.com:

On Oct. 11, 2021, the Man of Steel came out of the closet.

“Superman comes out as bisexual; ‘not a gimmick,’ writer says,” blared the Reuters headline. “Why ‘Bisexual Superman’ Has Conservatives’ Tights In a Twist,” declared Forbes. And sure enough, the outrage was swift, sharp, and depressingly predictable. Less than a month after DC announced the character’s forthcoming revelation, police were dispatched to the homes of writer Tom Taylor and artist John Timms after threats were made to the comics company. Meanwhile, former Superman actor Dean Cain (increasingly the voice of scowling disapproval of modern DC Comics) took to cable news to accuse the company of “bandwagoning” on a trend of publicly queer superheroes.

In the midst of all this shock and furor, you might have had to squint a little to catch a fairly significant detail: The Superman in question wasn’t Clark Kent, the Last Son of Krypton, at all. That Superman, the one we had been reading about in comics and watching on movies and TV since 1938, was as resolutely heterosexual (and as monogamously attached to Lois Lane) as he had ever been.

No, our newly out-and-proud Superman was one Jon Kent, the son of Clark and Lois, introduced by writer Dan Jurgens in 2015 and (after a successful stint as Superboy) lately promoted to sharing his dad’s alter-ego when elder Kent took a trip off-planet to overthrow an alien dictator or two, as is his wont.

This, in the world of 21st-century comics, is hardly unique. Jon is an example of a legacy character: a younger protégé or inheritor of an established hero, who takes on their title and codename as their own. And while legacy heroes are hardly the province of DC alone, they’ve long played a special role in the company’s