Filipino Barbarians and their Teen Sidekicks

The Philippines has a huge comic book industry, dating all the way back to the 1920s.  Most are in Tagalog, with some English and Spanish loan words thrown in; a few in the other major languages, such as Ilokano.  If you can't read Tagalog, you can usually figure out what's going on anyway, by looking at the pictures: a lot of beefcake, Filipino man-mountains saving the world.

1. Conan-style barbarian heroes who battle weird monsters, such as Tartaro and Malcan (by contemporary comic artist Arman T. Francisco, who runs a Filipino Komix blog).

2. Semi-nude Tarzan-style jungle heroes, often with teen sidekicks in tow (or else kids themselves), such as  Lawin, a boy raised by eagles, or  "Haring Wupong" (King Cobra), by Francisco V. Coching

 Boy Shabu, a boxer with magical powers written by Vic J. Poblete, appeared in Aliwan comics.

Many comics offer a pleasantly zany mix of history and myth. In this"Aram" comic by Joe Lad Santos, an ancient Greek hero and his teen sidekick use the sword Excalibur to explore the Bermuda Triangle.

The 18th century European adventurer Prince Amante, by Mario Del Mar, became so popular in the 1950s that it was adapted into the first full color feature film in the Philippines, Prinsipe Amante (1950), starring Ben Rubio.

Peter Barton's Powers

When I met Peter Barton, he was guest starring in some tv shows, doing live theater, and calling his agent every day, trying to transition to a macho 1980s leading man.  But just a few years before, he had been a soft, androgynous teen idol.

Born in 1956, the former medical student started his acting career in 1979, as the teenage son on the short-lived sitcom Shirley!  Only 13 episodes were filmed, but that was enough for the teen magazines to adulate Peter as the Next Big Thing.  He was handsome, muscular but not a bodybuilder, and just androgynous enough to meet the gender-bending expectations of the era of Culture Club and ABBA.

Dozens of shirtless, speedo, and semi-nude shots followed, plus a starring role in Hell Night (1981) with Vincent Van Patten, in Leadfoot with Philip Mckeon, and in a movie-of-the-week, The First Time (1982).  Peter also appeared in a tight swimsuit in an episode of Battle of the Network Stars.  Many gay boys found in him a kindred spirit, gazing at his movies or swimsuit spreads and thinking "He's one of us."

Then his big break came: The Powers of Matthew Star, one of the many kid-friendly sci-fi series in the 1982-83 season (others included  Voyagers!, The Greatest American Hero, and Knight Rider).  Strangely, it aired just before the drag queen-friendly Madame's Place.

The plot was similar to Shazam!, which aired on Saturday mornings a few years before: teenager with superpowers lives with an older man.  In this case, Matthew, or E'Hawke (Peter Barton) was a prince from a planet orbiting Tau Ceti, hiding out on Earth from enemies who wanted him dead.  He went to Crestridge High School and lived with his guardian, Walter, or D'hai (Louis Gossett Jr.), who was working undercover as a science teacher.

I watched occasionally, but it was a little too "Saturday morning tv" to draw a big audience.  Besides, Matthew had a girlfriend, there was no homoerotic buddy-bonding, and there was not enough beefcake.  Most gay kids quickly changed the channel to The Dukes of Hazzard on CBS.  Powers was cancelled after only 22 episodes.

Peter's teen idol fame ended shortly thereafter, as more muscular actors like Willie Aames and Scott Baio rose to the limelight.

In 1988, he got his big break, a starring role on The Young and the Restless.  Other soaps followed, plus the detective series Burke's Law.

Today Peter lives in upstate New York with his daughter.  He has never married.

See also: My Celebrity Dates, Hookups, and Sausage Sightings

Searching for Gay Characters in Comics in 2019

Heartened by the gay-friendiness of Welcome to Wanderland, I went to my local comic book store and picked up a pile ...um, I mean went to Comixology and downloaded the digital versions of six comic books that they recommended.   As usual, I was looking for gay characters, or at least gay subtexts, but beefcake would do in a pinch.

1. Amazing Age: "Sam Charleston is a normal kid who likes hanging out with his best friends Mike and Violet. However, a tragic event drives the trio apart and they navigate their high school lives without each other. That is until one day when one of Sam's old childhood comics mysteriously appears and brings the friends back together in an unexpected way."

Opening scene: they're writing a superhero comic.  Mike wants his character to "get a lady."  Not a good sign!

Then Sam's Dad dies, and he goes over to the dark side, becoming a juvenile delinquent.  Five years later, Violet is a punk, Mike is a jock, and they hate each other.

Sam passes out in class, and awakens as a character in his comic book, Amazing Age.

The end.  Why are these comics so short?  You barely get the premise.

Gay characters: None specified.  Mike wants "a lady."  I assume that Sam wants one, too.

2. Book of Monsters #1 - Alone: "Stories have long been told of the Pied Piper who leads kids through the deepest and darkest parts of the forest. But what happens when the children he is leading lose their way?"

The older teen's shirt reveals half of his chest on thecover, but nothing inside - a deliberate attempt to draw in readers with the promise of beefcake.

The kids lost in the woods fight troll-monsters who have a problem with personal pronouns: "Find own meat!  This mine!"  It gets old fast.

I'm much more interested in the Pied Piper than some dumb monster-battle, but he doesn't appear at all.

Gay characters: None specified.

3. Miskatonic High: "Five teens take on H.P. Lovecraft's monsters and their small-town high school ... They're just not sure which is worse."  Didn't know what to expect.

First scene: We open in media res at a Breakfast Club-like detention.  A discussion of nose-picking.  It can only go downhill

The five kids,   bookworm Simon, jock Matt , and three girls (Alex, Ren, Sarah), are performing required community service as their punishment, when they are zapped into the ancient world and fight an tentacled monster.

Yawn.  Not another monster battle!

Gay characters: Matt gets a girl.  I can't figure out if Simon is gay or just sophisticated.

4. Offbeats: "It's Tintin meets Tarantino in this 1950's crime noir! A young man tries to save a woman from a vicious street gang, but ends up needing to be rescued by a petty crook who introduces him to a whole new world!"

Next Issue: Booker and Jim rescue a missing dancer, but end up being betrayed. The cops hand Jim over to a local mob boss who offers to free him in exchange for betraying Booker -- who mounts a daring raid to rescue his new friend."

I was sold by the promise buddy bonding, but it was all a tease.  Jim is obsessed over his girlfriend, Booker has a wife, and they inhabit a world full of strippers and hookers.

5. Planet of the Nerds: "Three high school jocks in the 1980s are accidentally frozen by an experimental cryogenics device, only to be revived in the computer-driven, superhero movie-loving world of 2019, an era ruled by nerds!"

I chose Issue #4 because of the naked jock on the cover (top photo):  "Feeling like misfits in 2019, the thawed-out jocks from the '80s hatch a plan for revenge on the rich and powerful nerd who froze them."

No, they don't.  They break into his house, only to be stopped by his private security guards.

The cover picture does not appear in the story: the thawed-out jocks are staying with Steve's ex-girlfriend Jennie, who has aged 30 years, but Steve still feels that it's his duty to have sex with her (she refuses).

Fortunately for him, because he can now come out as gay (which is ok in 2019).  That's the end of the nudity.

I like the jocks' horror at the dystopian society they've awakened to:  We have Nazis again, Donald Trump is president, Prince is dead, Kirk Cameron is a religious cultist and Bill Cosby is a felon. 

Postscript: In Issue #5, they confront the evil scientist cum Nazi who accidentally froze them, and Steve gets a boyfriend.  Fade out kiss and everything.

Gay characters: Two

6. Rex Radley, Boy Adventurer: "Rex Radley is an 11 year old boy born into excitement! His mom pilots a giant robot and fights towering monsters! His dad has a cavewoman bodyguard and defends the planet from an army of dinosaur men! The Adventure never stops for Rex!"

So Jonny Quest without Dad's life partner Race Bannon, or his own life partner Hadji.  Sounds awful.

Rex does seem awfully mature for 11; I would have guessed 16.  But he has no friends his own age, and the adults are almost all women: Mom, his aunt, and Dad's companion:  a cavewoman who doesn't know how to use personal pronouns "Been long time since Tharga ate dinosaur."

Come on, personal pronouns are easy.  Repeated after me: Ego, yo, eu, je, Ich, wo.  And everybody knows that humans and dinosaurs never co-existed.

Gay characters:  None specified.

1 out of 6, not a great score.  I think I'll stick to Kevin Keller.

See also: Welcome to Wanderland

The Top 10 Teen Titans

Remember the Teen Titans of 1960s DC comics, pushing together various DC teen sidekicks, including Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl, Robin and Superboy (he's actually the teenager version of today's Superman, who is much older then Robin, so...oh, just go with it).

Turns out they've been doing the comic book store circuit ever since, with many changed characters, changed premises, and changed titles: The New Teen Titans, Team Titans, Titans, and finally The New 52, which appears in issues of Teen Titans, Titans Hunt, and Ravagers.

Yeah, that's why I don't read DC Comics.  Who wants to read a hundred issues of a dozen titles to get the story?

Forging a tv series out of such a complicated storyis risky business (really, who in the real world has ever heard of any teen sidekick except Robin?).  It was announced in 2014, went through the ranks of acceptance and rejection, and finally premiered on the DC Universe network in October 2018 with an 11-episode first season.  Most of the Titans are young adults, with some new teens added.

According to rumor, in Season 2 they are planning to introduce a gay Titan.  Bets were on Bunker, canonically gay in the 2012-2013 comic book series. But they have just cast Joe Wilson as Jericho, who has a long backstory of closeting: he was originally meant to be gay in the comics, but the authors changed him to straight, but in Rebirth he was bisexual, and...

I'm getting a headache.  Let's just go on to the beefcake:

1.Brenton Thwaites (top photo) as Dick Grayson, the Robin of the comics now retired and working as a detective in Detroit.  No superpowers, but very athletic.

2. Ryan Potter as Gar Logan, one of the early Titans, then a member of the Doom Patrol. He can turn into a tiger, which I imagine is very effective against bad guys with guns.I guess he's like Beastboy.

3. Joshua Orpin as Superboy.  One from an alternate universe.

No beefcake photos of Superboy?  Really?

4. Alan Ritchson as Hawk, a former prizefighter, now a vigilante with his partner Dove.

What's with all the Titans lacking in superpowers?

5. Curran Walters as Jason Todd, the new Robin.  You didn't know that Batman keeps changing them when they die or get too old, did you?

6. Elliott Knight as Don Hall, the deceased younger brother of Hawk, the original Dove.

That's it for the male Titans.  I'm disappointed.  Where's Cyborg?  Kid Flash? Aqualad?   Gnarkk the Caveman?

7. Lester Speight as Clayton Williams, a bouncer in a Detroit nightclub who is good friends with Dick Grayson.

8. Jeff Roop as Thomas Carson, a minor character.

Beefcake seems rather limited, for a series about superheroes.

9. Alain Moussi as Batman (uncredited).

Oh, right, I need 10.

Um...how about Brooker Muir as the Superboy body double?

Jack Larson and other TV Jimmy Olsens

In an April 1940 episode of the radio Adventures of Superman, the Man of Steel helped a young boy named Jimmy Olsen protect his mother's shop from racketeers.  Sensing audience identification, the producers soon gave Jimmy a part-time job at the Daily Planet so he could follow leads on his own, snoop around abandoned warehouses, get into trouble, and require lots of nick-of-time rescues.

Jimmy arrived in Superman comics in November 1941, somewhat older, perhaps seventeen.  He was a redhead, like the cliche sidekick in boys' adventure novels of the period, and his v-shaped torso suggested muscleman potential.  But he was never a sidekick, like Robin to Batman, or Bucky to Captain America.  Jimmy never lived with Superman, he never learned Superman's secret identity, he only participated in the adventures by accident.  Was he homoromantic partner, or merely a coworker and pal?  

In Jimmy Olsen's comic book series, which began in 1954, it doesn't take a lot to find the romantic subtext beneath the boy pal text.  But in the tv and movie versions of the mythos, things are a little different.

TV first:

1. In The Adventures of Superman (1952-58), Jimmy Olsen (former teen idol Jack Larson, top photo ) seems mostly a coworker to Superman (George Reeves). We rarely see the two together, except on the job, and even then, Lois (Noel Neill) usually forms the third.  Jimmy requires rescue alone (without Lois or Perry present) just once, when he is kidnapped by a transvestite in "Double Trouble" (1953).  He bonds with editor Perry White (John Hamilton) more often.

 Jack Larson is gay, and even states that he was out on the set during the period; maybe that explains why he kept Jimmy carefully free of any romantic feelings for Superman.

2. Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-97) starred Dean Cain and Terri Hatcher as the famous couple (yes, now a couple), with the standard antipathy turning into romance ("He's so...arrogant!").

Jimmy was played by Justin Whalin, a former child star (the child of lesbian parents in a 1993 School Break special). Given the hetero-romantic story arc, it would seem that Jimmy would be a third wheel, but he actually has an unrequited crush on the hunky Clark. And there are a few Jimmy-rescues.

3. Smallville (2001-2011) was about Superboy, the teenage Clark Kent, so Jimmy (Aaron Ashmore, left, with an unidentified hunk) was not introduced until Season Six, when Clark arrived in Metropolis.

Jimmy had at least two girlfriends during his three years on the program, and expressed any romantic interest in Clark or Superman.

Clark Kent (Tom Welling) did have a homoerotic bond with a young Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum), but not with Jimmy.

4. Supergirl.  Mehcad Brooks plays a grown-up James Olson, with no Superman around.

Not a very good record.  Where there is a gay subtext at all, it is between Clark Kent and someone else. Why has one of the most substantial and overt homoromances in all of comics failed to make it on the small screen?

Batman and the Boy Wonder

The Batman tv series (1966-68), like The Adventures of Superman and  The Green Hornet (1966-67) was based on a long-standing comic book series.  But only loosely. The characters were the same -- superhero with no superpowers Batman/Bruce Wayne (Adam West), his teen sidekick Robin/Dick Grayson (Burt Ward), butler Alfred, police chief Gordon, even some of the villains -- Joker, Riddler, Penguin, Louie the Lilac (played by comedy legend Milton Berle). But they infused their characters with a "gee-gosh" earnestness that the hippie generation found hilarious.

Playing along, the producers came up with crazier and crazier villains, as famous actors lined up for guest villain spots -- Cliff Robertson as "Shame," Vincent Price as "Egghead," Roddy McDowell as "Bookworm," William Smith as "Adonis."  Boxer Jerry Quarry played a boxer.





And the predicaments that the Dynamic Duo got into during their weekly cliffhangers became more and more ludicrous.  But what gay kid noticed, or cared?  They were tied up and struggling, muscles were straining, and you had to wait a whole 24 hours to see what clever -- or exceptionally lucky -- strategy they would use to escape.

Sometimes Robin was tied up alone, and Batman had to rush to the rescue, providing a "my hero" moment and the only buddy-bonding.  Otherwise Dick and Bruce were aggressively portrayed as adopted father and son, not as boyfriends, as they had been in the original comic stories (why, precisely, do they sleep in the same bed in a 100-room mansion, or need a cold shower afterwards)?

But what gay kid was paying attention?  Both Adam West and Burt Ward were pleasantly muscular.


















And both Burt Ward and Frank Gorshin, who played the Riddler, had extra advantages -- jaw-droppingly obvious even to kids -- that rivaled the enormity of Rupert Grint, 30 years later.  After the first season, complaints from the Catholic League of Decency forced them to tape it down.



Burt's  autobiography, Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights, describes his endowment in intimate detail, and it's also discussed in the Batman biopic starring Jason Marsden, but gay men who had grown up with him were already quite aware.  They had missed the plot details of any number of episodes because it took up the entire tv screen.

See also: Lane's Celebrity Date

Totalitarian Television: Underdog and Friends

When I was a kid, all of the grown-up men I knew worked in the great smoking factory that my Dad called "the goddam hellhole."  And all of the grown-up women were their wives, cooking and cleaning and raising their kids in the small square houses that stretched out to infinity in all directions.  Everyone assumed that this was my destiny, too.  When I grew up, I would spend every day in the goddam hellhole, and come home every night dog-tired and cursing to my small square house, where my wife and kids would be waiting.  

Most of the tv programs I watched offered an escape: Gilligan and the Skipper didn't work in a goddam hellhole, they were sailors, and Robbie Douglas' Dad and Uncle Charlie lived happily together without wives.  But if I got up too early on Saturday morning, or dared to watch tv on Sunday, a series of badly animated cartoons pushed obedience to Big Brother:

Tooter Turtle longs to escape his dreary pond in the woods, so he asks Mr. Wizard to hook him up with a new job: firefighter, lumberjack, pilot, astronaut, college student.  Catastrophe strikes, and Mr. Wizard returns him to reality with his chant: "Twizzle, twozzle, twozzle, twome, time for this one to come home."

Tennessee Tuxedo, a penguin voiced by Don Adams of Get Smart, thinks he is just as good as any human, so he and his friend Chumley get jobs as weathermen or movie producers, or start a rock band.  Catastrophe strikes.  Inevitably.  The theme song tells us: "He will fail, as he vies for fame and glory."  (Later it was changed to the less depressing "he may fail").

The message was clear: don't dream, don't aspire.  Conform.  No escape is possible.

Commander McBragg, a retired British army officer, told an unwilling visitor about his adventures in India, Africa, China.  But was he telling the truth, or making it all up?

At least they didn't have wives.  But the superhero Underdog (voiced by Wally Cox)  had a girlfriend, Sweet Polly Purebread.  And his alter ego wasn't a cool journalist, like Clark Kent, or a millionaire, like Bruce Wayne -- he was a shoe shine boy!

The cartoons were produced by Total Television.  Some originally appeared on King Leonardo and His Short Subjects (1960), and some on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (1963) or Underdog (1964), but by the time I was watching, they were relegated to the ghetto of early Saturday or Sunday mornings.

At least they were better than Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Superman: You'll Believe a Man Can Fly

Superman first flew in 1938, and for the next 40 years he had comic books, movie serials, cartoons, and radio and tv series, but no feature films.  Nor, for that matter, did any superhero except for the tongue-in-cheek Batman (1966).

That all changed in December 1978.

 It was a dreary winter, dark, cold, and snowy, with movies about angst, tragedy, and lost love: The Deer Hunter, Same Time Next Year, California Suite, Moment by Moment, Oliver's Story.  I was depressed; a semester into college, and I hadn't met any gay people, or learned of any gay writers except Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde.  Superman was a bright spot, a cozy childhood memory (though it too had a cave of ice).

Director Richard Donner was careful to include every familiar aspect of the Superman myth: the doomed planet Krypton, the elderly farm couple of Smallville, the Daily Planet, Perry White, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, the Fortress of Solitude, Lex Luthor. And some from the familiar TV Superman of the 1950s, who used to change clothes in a phone booth (no old-style phone booths left in 1978).

Indeed, everyone was so busy checking off their list of Superman conventions that they forgot to pay attention to the plot: Lex Luthor plans to drop a nuclear bomb on the San Andreas Fault, thus causing California to slip into the ocean, whereup he will get rich by selling prime oceanside real estate in Nevada.

Ok, that was ridiculous even for a comic book.

The Man of Steel was played by 26-year old Christopher Reeve, a virtual unknown (he had one movie credit and a few tv appearances). He was hired for his muscles, his square jaw, and for his uncanny ability to be both sexy and wholesome at the same time.

He didn't disrobe during the movie, but he favored us with some beefcake shots in teen magazines and in the faux-gay After Dark.

 He was interviewed in gay magazines, an almost unprecedent act of solidarity in the 1970s, and in 1982 he played a gay character, the protege of playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Cane) in Death Trap.  I can still remember the gasps of shock when the two characters kissed on-camera.

Gay-positive Christopher Reeve and his studly physique provided the only gay interest in Superman.  No buddy-bonding in high school, no boy pal, no subdued homoromantic sniping with Lex Luthor.

It was a heterosexual love story, and rather a sappy one.  Audiences twittered and squirmed when Superman and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) flew endlessly through the skies of Metropolis hand in hand, while Lois thought: "Can you feel what I feel? Do you know what you're doing to me?"

On the other hand, she wasn't a complete Girl Scout.  She asked, "How big are you...um, I mean, how tall?", leading to considerable speculation about the Man of Steel's package.

Christopher Reeve was paralyzed in an equestrian accident in 1995, and died in 2004.  Margot Kidder died in 2018.  They're both gone, but that magical night in the midst of a cold, dark, dreary winter lives on.

Jimmy Olsen, Superman's First Boyfriend

Many gay boys growing up in the 1950s and 1960s dreamed of dating Superman.   In 1954, Daily Planet reporter Jimmy Olsen got his chance: he began to appear in his own comic book title, as Superman's "boy pal."

What, precisely, was a boy pal?  A boy sidekick, like Kaliman's Solin?  An adopted son, like Batman's Robin?  Jimmy wasn't a boy or even a teenager: he was tall and sturdy, with the standard comic book body-by-Michelangelo (since reporter outfits are not particularly revealing, almost every story required him to be in underwear, in a swimsuit, or ripped out of his clothes). 

The "boy pal" relationship differed considerably from ordinary friendships:

1. It was physical.  Superman and Jimmy flew with their arms wrapped tenderly around each other, a position that no one else, not even Lois Lane, rated.

2. It was romantic.  Superman gave no one but Jimmy a gift of jewelry (a special signal watch).

3. It was of public interest: “There goes Superman’s boy pal!” passersby would whisper, and when the duo quarrels in “Superman’s Enemy” (Jimmy Olsen 35, March 1959), every stage of their breakup and reconciliation made Daily Planet headlines. 

4.  It was exclusive: each had other friends and even other sidekicks, but in “Superman’s Super Rival” (Jimmy Olsen 37, June 1959), when Jimmy seems to be courting a newly-arrived superhero named Mysterio, Superman is so jealous that he challenges the rival “pal” to a fight. 

5.  It threatened heterosexual romance: in a fantasy story, “Jimmy Olsen’s Wedding,” (Jimmy Olsen 38, July 1959), Jimmy’s girlfriend agrees to marry him only under the condition that he never see or contact Superman again (one can’t imagine why). He complies for several years, but eventually he cannot bear to be separated any longer, and arranges a secret rendezvous with his “pal.” His wife discovers him in the act (of what?), shrieks in anger. and leaves him.

Such an overt same-sex romance made me scrounge to beg or borrow all of older Jimmy Olson comics I could.  The issues I could buy in the store (the series lasted until 1974) were no good; about 1965, Jimmy and Superman broke up.  Though they stayed on friendly terms, no further stories featured their romance. 

And the special signal watch was never seen again. Perhaps Jimmy returned it the day he told Superman over coffee, “it’s not you, it’s me.”

In 1972, Jimmy found a new boyfriend, an African-American cop named Corrigan, whom he sometimes even called his “pal.”

Unfortunately, the homoromance was not maintained in tv versions of the Superhero.  Smallville gave Superman two boyfriends, but neither were Jimmy Olsen.