Gay superhero comes to the rescue

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A force has arrived to bring hope to an industry starved of gay inspiration – Thom Creed.

A new novel by Perry Moore, producer of the Chronicles of Narnia film series, aims to address the dearth of high-profile gay superheroes in the comic industry.

Hero tells the story of Creed as he struggles to come to terms with his sexuality in high school while discovering he has new found superpowers.

The book examines the feelings of shame Creed experiences and the potentially disastrous events that follow from his first kiss.

”A book like this could’ve saved me when I was young,” Mr Moore told the New York Times.

He feels strongly that gay characters have been at the receiving end of an ambivalent industry over the last few decades, and his novel is one attempt to address that imbalance.

Northstar, of the superhero team Alpha Flight caused international headlines in 1992 when he became the most significant of Marvel’s heroes to announce he was gay.

But Moore is livid at the character’s subsequent treatment.

In 2005 Northstar was killed by a brainwashed Wolverine, and Moore argues the killing of the Marvel universe’s only gay hero by one of their most popular icons sent out entirely the wrong message.

“I thought I was going to have to stop buying comics,” he told the New York Times.

”I waged my own little jihad.”

Visiting comic stores with yellow Post-it notes containing messages such as ”Can there be a gay superhero?”, he placed them surreptitiously inside the pages of Wolverine comics on sale that day.

”Yes, bad things do happen to all people,” he accepts.

”But are there positive representations of gay characters to counterbalance these negative ones?”

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