Friday, Jun 1, 2012    Text size: 

NEW YORK — Eisner Award winning writer James Robinson has officially announced that original Green Lantern Alan Scott will be reintroduced to fans as a gay character in the newly rebooted DC Comics Universe.

Comic enthusiasts first met Green Lantern Alan Scott in 1940 when he was a heterosexual family man whose son, Obsidian, would grow up to become a gay superhero. The decision to change his sexuality was suggested by Robinson when DC decided to revamp Scott as a twenty-something media mogul in "Earth Two #1."

"In Alan's prior version, he had been an old man with a gay son," Robinson told HuffingtonPost.com. "Removing that character from the DC Universe bothered me — the fact that we were taking a gay character out of circulation. And it occurred to me: Why not just make Alan Scott gay? He's still interesting, he's still a dynamic hero, a great man, but he happens to be gay."

Scott's new origins is part of DC Comics "New 52," a complete overhaul of its superhero comics that saw all of its long-running titles replaced with 52 new number-one issues. The reveal will be made without ceremony in next week's "Earth Two #2."

"Alan is already out when we realize he's out in issue 2. There isn't a coming-out moment," Robinson explained. "He has nothing to hide. He's proud of who he is. By and large, the world has accepted him as that."

Robinson, whose "Starman" comics in the '90s for DC introduced the titular character as a gay man, said he isn't worried about any backlash from Green Lantern fans. "I have to look at the world and what's the right thing to do, and what the right characters should be in these comic books," he said.

"People that tend to be a little more hesitant to have these characters in comics need to just move with the times and realize that it's a diverse world and there are brave, gallant, interesting people who happen to be gay."

"Earth Two #2" comes out on June 6.