One of the major issues facing a gay audience be it for film, television, or literature, is one of representation. From the sparse, early days of Hollywood, as depicted in Vito Russo’s excellent book ‘The Celluloid Closet’, through to ‘Brokeback Mountain’ or ‘Mysterious Skin’, it has been meagre pickings for a mainstream gay audience hoping to see themselves up there on screen. It’s been an easier task in literature, of course, but even then, gay protagonists have featured more commonly at either the more literary or salacious ends of the market, with little in between.

One medium which has, in recent years, combined the visual flair of cinema with the more literary, while often transcending its mainstream appeal, is the comic book. Writers and artists such as Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, and Marjane Satrapi have elevated the comic book from its cultural status as little more than a modern day Penny Dreadful to recognition as an art form in its own right.

Having been an avid comic book fan as a child, it is only in recent years that I’ve reacquainted myself with them. I’ve devoured the classics, from Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ to Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’, but my most recent obsession has been ‘The Authority’.

Created by writer Warren Ellis, ‘The Authority’ is the ongoing story of a group of superheroes who orbit the Earth in a city-sized spaceship called The Carrier, swooping down to Terra Firma to right wrongs and fight injustice. On the surface, ‘The Authority’ owes much to its Marvel and DC predecessors ‘The Avengers’ and ‘The Justice League’, and more than a small debt of gratitude to Alan Moore’s seminal ‘Watchmen’. Even so, it is a work of startling originality, not least of all in the representation of its central gay characters, Apollo and Midnighter.

This crime fighting duo initially start life as a thinly veiled lampoon of Superman and Batman. Apollo is a Teutonic demigod clad in blue and white spandex, while Midnighter is a vision in black leather. The fact that they are also a couple might at first seem like little more than a joke amongst the straight boys; ie, Wouldn’t it be really funny if Superman and Batman were, like, doing each other?

Any fears that this is the case are quickly evaporated. Warren Ellis, and particularly his successor, the brilliant Mark Millar, are much better writers than that. Apollo and Midnighter develop into a realistic couple, or at least as realistic as a relationship between two superheroes who live on a spaceship can be. They bicker and argue, fight and make-up. Their relationship is passionate and loving, and utterly committed.

More importantly, perhaps, neither of them is a sissy. The Comedy Central animated series ‘Drawn Together’ has had similar fun depicting its Superman spoof Captain Hero as a closeted homosexual, but in this he is teamed up between the bed sheets with the decidedly twinky Xander. Apollo and Midnighter are both great big strapping Adonises (or should that be Adonii?) Both are, for want of a better phrase, hard as nails, prompting one confused straight friend to ask me, “So… erm… who do you think is the top?”

As if having two central gay characters in a medium aimed generally at heterosexual men weren’t enough, ‘The Authority’ tests convention and acceptance even further by having Apollo and Midnighter marry and adopt (though their adopted child is a superhero toddler with the ability to warp time and space!) Their wedding scene is the great big happy ending of book four, ‘Transfer Of Power’; the equivalent within this fictional universe of Han Solo and Princess Leia getting together at the end of ‘Return Of The Jedi‘.

While ‘The Authority’ is a work ‘For Mature Readers’ (its graphic violence and strong language mean it’s not an ideal birthday/Christmas present for the under tens), it is still a popular comic produced by writers and artists who work well within the mainstream. Both Warren Ellis and Mark Millar have worked extensively for Marvel, a publisher not afraid to bring in the occasional depiction of alternative lifestyles themselves.

It seems strange that while cinema is still sluggish, or perhaps just plain reluctant, to feature gay characters in genres other than the emotional drama or the romantic comedy (usually as a sidekick, usually played by Rupert Everett), the science fiction comic book has led the charge. In addition to ’The Authority’, Marvel themselves have featured sturdy, well-developed gay characters in titles including ’The Ultimates’ and ’The X-Men’, and readers have, by and large, accepted them. On the big screen any “representation“, in gay director Bryan Singer’s first two X-Men films for example, has been strictly sub-textual, throwing us back to those murky days in the 1930’s and 40’s when only the most knowing of audiences would appreciate what it meant when Humphrey Bogart calls Peter Lorre a ’punk’ in ’The Maltese Falcon’.

For my money any gay teenager (as we all once were) could do a lot worse, in looking for a representation of gay life that’s neither cliché nor patronising, than turn to the pages of ‘The Authority’.

This article © David Llewellyn.

David Llewellyn's new novel, Everything is Sinister, was released two weeks ago.

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