When the comics nominations of the 2012 GLAAD awards were announced, I found myself with a significant quandary to deal with. Not only were a mainstream superhero book written by a woman (Marjorie Liu‘s Astonishing X-Men), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and my favorite lady superhero Batwoman in the running, so was Kevin Keller, the sell-out-popular first gay character to appear in Archie Comics.
My quandary was that I couldn’t decide who to root for.
So it’s a good thing I am in no way a judge of the GLAAD awards (nor am I particularly qualified to be one), but you should probably know that Kevin Keller won the nomination for Archie Comics. Co-CEO Jon Goldwater had this to say: “We could not be more excited for Kevin to be endorsed by GLAAD. Kevin is so important to the growth and future of Archie Comics and it’s validating to see him embraced this way.” Matt Kane of GLAAD pointed out that it was in part Archie Comics’ habit of depicting an idealized version of American teens that made the company’s introduction of Kevin as just one of the gang particularly important.
Other nerd-relevant nominees in the awards didn’t fare so well, with Smash beating out True Blood in television drama, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower taking the category of films with a wide release over ParaNorman. Not that there’s a lot of productive discourse to be gotten out of arguing one winner vs. another. With the GLAAD awards, it’s nice to just be happy that at least there are enough positive, non-stereotypical examples of LGBTQ characters and themes in modern media to make an awards program with some competition. There’s always room for one more reason for genre projects to try and do better next time!
(via Comic Book Resources.)
