Buffy Comic Adds Billy The Gay Slayer

When it was on TV, Buffy was always very gay-friendly, and now it’s living on in comic form, it’s getting moreso, as Dark Horse Comics, which also produces Hellboy and Star Wars comics, has announced that they’re adding a gay slayer character in the next issue, due out in October, according to Out.

Drew Z. Greenberg, the comic’s producer said: “It’s a very honest, very sweet story (well, a sweet story with a fair amount of death and mayhem, but still sweet!) about a young man who wants to be a hero”

He adds, “I have no problem telling a story about a boy who’s always felt more comfortable identifying with what society tells him is more of a feminine role. So much crap gets heaped upon us as gay men — crap from straight people and, frankly, crap from other gay people — about how it’s important to be masculine in this world, how your value is determined by your ability to fit into masculine norms prescribed by heterosexual society and, sadly, co-opted by gay society as a way to further disenfranchise and bully those who don’t meet those norms,”

“And those attitudes are a reflection of not just our own internalized homophobia, but of our misogyny, too, and that’s something I’ve never understood. So if this is a story that causes people to examine traditional gender roles and think of them as something more fluid, I’m thrilled.”

Jane Espenson, who wrote the newest issue, titled, Billy the Vampire Slayer: Part 1, said: “We’re hardly pandering when we make a comic book. There’s always growing pains when making progress, but I think cycnicism in the face of inclusion may not be a profitable route in making progress.” Espenson, who was a producer on the Buffy TV show, is also behind the gay web series Husbands, which recently started its second season (with a Joss Whedon cameo, no less).

It’s also rumoured that Billy may be joined by another gay male character in an upcoming issue. It’s been a big years for gay characters in comics, with gay weddings in both Archie Comics and X-Men, while the latest incarnation of Green Lantern was revealed to be gay back in June.