Computer Animation Arts

"After 72 years of tackling supervillains as a straight man, DC Comics's magical-ring-wearing superhero the Green Lantern, one of the publisher's oldest and most established characters, is set to be reintroduced as gay."    The Guardian Yes, after much speculation that Batman was about to disclose his real feelings for Robin, or that it was more than just her Jetplane Wonder Woman was keeping invisible, it's DC's Alan Scott who is putting the green colour into the rainbow flag of the LGBT community.  Yes - the Green Lantern has turned pink, but he's not  unique in terms of gay superheroes.  In the Marvel universe, X-man Northstar just married his boyfriend in a superhero gay-wedding , and way back in 2006, Batwoman aka Katherine Kane came out as a lesbian.    Inevitably, not everyone is happy at this queering of the superhumans' patch.  The Christian mothers group One Million Moms responded, "Why do adul...

Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen is best known by his pseudonym 'Tom of Finland' - and is famous/infamous for his unapologetic, frequently pornographic depiction of hypermasculinised gay archetypes (the lumberjack, the biker, the sailor, the traffic cop etc.). Unlike J.C. Leyendecker's illustrations , there is nothing subtextual or inferred about the objectification of the male physique in Laaksonen's illustrations. Indeed, I struggled to find examples of his work to showcase here that didn't risk causing offense or crossing a line! In common with photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe , Laaksonen's work divides opinion; for some, he was a mono-thematic purveyor of porn and promulgator of queer cliches, racist myth, permissive sexuality and casual sadomasochism. For others, he was a champion in the struggle by a particular community to materialise, whose positive images of 'the happy beefcake' challenged the equation often made between homosexuality an...