Green Arrow's not gay, insists writer

Chuck Dixon, creator of comic-book hero Connor Hawke (the 1990s Green Arrow), has denied allegations that the character is gay, reports ZENtertainment.com. Bob Schreck, an out editor at DC Comics, concurs, even though many hints have been dropped over the years regarding the character's ambivalence toward women. Dixon has gone out of his way to rebut such speculation--at one point he had the character sleeping with a female ghost. On his Web site, Dixon was quite adamant in his feelings about gays in comics: "I don't want to expect to be able to shield my kids from the subject of homosexuality, as the media seems intent on bringing it into my home, and nothing short of cutting the electricity and boarding the windows will stop it. But I DON'T want my kids reading about it in comics. I don't want Judd Winnick [Green Lantern] or Grant Morrison [New X-Men] or the nimrod who wrote this Rawhide Kid comic informing my kids about the many facets and lifestyle choices out there in the world. I'd like to be the one to talk to them about it when they're older and I feel the time is right. I especially object to them using characters familiar to my kids to present this worldview. Could you please leave the Beast and Green Lantern alone?"

Commentator Rich Johnston responded to Dixon's tirade in his Web column by writing, "Fine words there. Remember that, people, homosexuality is out--but heterosexual necrophilia is to be encouraged!"