Behind the Mask: The Inherent Queerness of Superheroes with Steve Orlando

By Alex Dueben

August 31, 2022

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Photo credit: Pexels/Erik Mclean

Steve Orlando has won acclaim inside and outside of the comics industry for his work in recent years. At Marvel he’s writing Marauders, an X-Men team book featuring Kate Pryde, Bishop, Psylocke and others, and Spider-Man 2099. At DC he wrote Justice League of America, Wonder Woman, Midnighter, and Martian Manhunter, among many others. He’s also been writing comics that range from Commanders in Crisis at Image, Starward at Heavy Metal, The Pull from TKO, Party and Prey, Search for Hu, and the MMA graphic novel Kill a Man, to name just a few. Orlando is openly bi and has spoken about it publicly. 

He has managed to talk about bisexuality in comics, and in our conversation, we spoke about the inherent queerness of superheroes, the process of making comics and the collaborative process as well.

Steve Orlando sitting on a bench outdoors with a comic in his hands while he looks to his side.
Instagram/the.steve.orlando

Alex Dueben: Why do you write comics as opposed to something else?

Steve Orlando: It’s always been the collaborative aspect for me because I’ve done everything involved in creating a comic. When I was in college I wrote, illustrated and lettered a graphic novel. I then of course destroyed all copies of it because it was terrible, but I know what every aspect of making a comic is like. 

Even when I was a kid I would read the Bullpen Bulletins and see that what we were getting was a product of not one person’s talent, but of folks who are something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. There’s a risk inherent in that. That can be exciting, giving up control, but it also keeps it constantly surprising and organic and evolving. 

I feel like comics are uniquely collaborative. Every field of art is creative but there’s an alchemy every time you work on a book with a new creator. It’s different. It’s always refreshing itself. I like that it’s not just me. I’ve written prose and other things and I like that, but why comics more than anything else? I like that it’s not just me sitting down and having the last word. I’m the first person holding the baton but then all these other folks come in and we’re working together. When it’s going well, we’re a team of people trusting each other to do what we do best. And the end result is always surprising and exciting. You see that in a lot of other fields in different ways, but I think the creative Voltron aspect is unique to comics and I’ve always loved it.

I’ve been reading your work for years and you’re often able to make a comic, even if it’s with big franchise characters, feel like a Steve Orlando comic.

SO: Violent and horny? Is that what you mean? [laughs]

[Laughs] That does describe a lot of them. But it feels like your work and your voice. You might be writing Batman or Wonder Woman but it doesn’t feel like a generic creator.

SO: Well, thank you. For better or worse. I’m sure sometimes some wish it felt like a generic creator. I can only tell what I think is the true version of a character. I can only be true to what I think they’re about. Sometimes those answers will vary. I teach classes and one of the things we talk about the most is this concept of character and finding character. Once you know that, you can figure out how to challenge them, how to support them. Every time I write Batman or Wonder Woman it’s going to be true to what I think and what I want to say about them — but someone else’s take might be completely different.

When we go to creative summits at DC, there’s a school of folks on the topic of Batman for example who think that he’s about justice and then there’s a school of people who think he’s about obsession. I don’t think one is right or one is wrong, but you can tell the difference in how he acts. That difference in point of view is going to lead to very different Batman stories. 

All I can do is make that decision and find the core of every character that I am working on and make sure that I’m being true to that. I think my takes on those are a little different and maybe that’s why you do see a certain Steve Orlando type of story. Maybe the way I look at a character like Aquaman or Batman or Wonder Woman is different than the mainstream. I hope so! 

For better or worse, not everything I do is successful. Nobody bats a thousand. But I can say I try to make it so that everything I do is me. I was talking on a podcast about how all my idols are people still struggling in their late seventies. I’m a huge Werner Herzog fan and he still can’t get funding for his movies. I had a huge realization recently like even the people I look up to, it’s not like they’re on gold toilets now, so you just have to do the stuff that feels right to you. And that’s what I’m doing.

Batman is a very elastic character and so many of these characters are elastic. The joy of comics is playing with them and that it can be about the creator as much as the character in some ways.

SO: That’s a complicated thing. I don’t know if it should be about the creator. There’s a line to be drawn. You have to infuse things with authenticity and passion, so we’re always writing about the things we care about. But if someone picks up a Batman book that I wrote, that billion-dollar IP isn’t there for me to work out what I should be working out in therapy. So there’s a thin border between vibrancy and reality and taking a character hostage to your own ends. 

But also, that’s the job. I’m making it sound complicated, but the job is to know where that line is. To talk about the stuff that is real to you but not bend the character so that they act out of character. If that were the case then everybody I wrote would suddenly be having angry queer sex — and they’re really not. [laughs] Where appropriate, people are having angry queer sex. And where not, it doesn’t happen.

The comics and creators we lionize tend to feel a little different. Claremont’s X-Men or Miller’s Batman or whatever are all very unique.

SO: Frank Miller is a great example. He’s written some iconic Batman. And he’s written a Batman that was so wildly out of character that DC said, we can’t publish this, go do it somewhere else and scratch the serial numbers — and he did that. In the case of Batman as you said, that line is pretty fucking broad. If you look at The Dark Knight: The Golden Child [which Miller wrote], I think it’s a gonzo masterpiece. 

I don’t know if I think it's good, but I think it’s entertaining. It’s Batman, but it is the weirdest super-dystopian super-cynical carnival show of Batman. But I reread it every six months because it’s just fucking wild. But it’s still Batman. Even when the Joker is wearing the Melania jacket, it’s still Batman.

You’ve always been doing a lot of different work. And now you’re very focused on making independent comics and your own work and what do you want to do in comics as far as telling stories?

SO: Everything in Commanders in Crisis, in a lot of ways. The book is about analyzing empathy and its role in society. For better or worse there are things you can’t do when you’re working on a billion-dollar IP. I have my idea board and a lot of these are concepts that I wanted to get in, and they just weren’t a fit for what I was doing. There are very boring legal department rules but at the end of the day, I think the appeal of doing originals is that you can have an end. 

There are nerdy-specific answers but everybody knows that Batman is going to be fine. He’s died and come back three or four times. He’s going to be back. It’s the illusion of change. But when you are working on original work, you can have real change. There is a freedom in having to do work that is not going to be serialized forever. It’s going to end and have a real definitive ending when it does. Being able to offer real change in any way you want is really appealing to me.

AD: You have plenty of stories to tell with superheroes and things to say with them.

SO: That’s true. I didn’t actually face a lot of opposition, but it all depends on what you want to do. When I was writing Wonder Woman I know that I can’t have a True Detective Season 2 orgy in the book. That’s just how it goes. Which is not a complaint! That has no place in the mainstream version of Wonder Woman, which is for all ages. 

We have an urge to buck the rules as creators, but sometimes the content rating is the content rating. We had no restrictions on Midnighter, for example, which was refreshing. Other than the same restrictions that a straight book would be on. Anything that you could show in Grayson or Green Arrow at the time, we could show in Midnighter

But if I wanted to show his dick flopping around killing people, I couldn’t do that. I knew that. I had straight but progressive sex in Commanders in Crisis and I had analingus and it was my book and I could do that. I could not do that at DC.

Or something like the graphic novel The Pull that you made with Ricardo López Ortiz and Triona Farrell, which is about saving the world, but not to spoil anything, doesn’t happen in an ordinary way.

SO: There’s a non-traditional saving of the world in The Pull. I’m really happy with that book. Ricardo knocked it out of the park. Triona’s colors were incredible. That’s a perfect example of what I was saying about collaboration. I had the core idea, but going back and forth with Trina and Ricardo really helped me find those characters, which guided the direction of the book. 

Early on you asked, why comics. It’s because that sort of collaboration and creative shared headspace leads us in directions we wouldn’t expect. It allows us to be surprised by our own work. I think that’s really unique about comics and really special.

Two of the things commented about your work is that it’s very queer and the way you try to explore otherness in different ways.

SO: I think I do focus on identity a lot. Not every work I do is queer, but that’s also because I’m not trying to pigeonhole myself. But I think that wrestling with internal shame and identity is almost ubiquitous in my work. Because I want people to feel like there is a commonality between them and someone they think they have no points of connection with. I want that. 

One of the things I want out of a book like Kill a Man is to show two communities that think they have very little in common that there’s a small island where they can maybe connect. I don’t set out to tell one type of story other than the macro idea that though each of our stories are very personal and unique, broadly we’re all struggling and that’s something that we could connect on.

Comics are a great form and medium to talk about otherness and separateness. Superheroes and so many other characters have that baked into their DNA.

SO: That’s why you see a lot of queer fans. We’re used to having secret identities.

It’s no surprise that people who code switch and hide parts of their identities are fans of stories where that’s inherently part of it.

SO: I think it’s natural. We’re also lucky to be pushing to the point where in many cases that subtext is text now. Of course, there is still the basic identifying of folks with a secret, but now we have more and more queer heroes and representation in general. The growth of which has led to it being less tokenistic. I mean, we had some when I was a kid, but in the late eighties, everything was tokenistic. 

The way that you get around that is by — as Greg Park eloquently said at Flame Con years ago — a diversity of diversity. No one character is ever going to embody some sort of macro uber journey for a community — because that doesn’t exist! All we can keep doing is telling these stories as authentically as we can and then doing it again and doing it again. And raising up people with different stories to speak their own truth as well.

AD: I’m curious about your own perception of your bisexuality and the role that you think it’s played in your work.

SO: It’s played a role, but it’s a tough thing to discuss. I spoke about it on the page for the first time in Martian Manhunter and I’m really proud of that. In life, I’ve gotten a lot of shit from the gay community that is totally different from the overall struggle that folks have with prejudice from the straight community. It’s not exclusive when you’re anything off the binary. I’m not just going to say it happens when you’re bisexual. 

It was important for me in Martian Manhunter to have a scenario that has happened to me in my life, where Diane is facing a lot of unique pressures from her girlfriend. It’s something that I’m proud of because it hasn’t really been put to page.

More often than not in my queer relationships in my life, it’s been a concept. “Why don’t you start saying you’re gay now because you’ve chosen me?” It’s not unique coming from the straight side of society. It’s a line to walk and I try to talk about it when I can. There’s a challenge in depicting anything off the binary because — just like in real life — if I’m writing Constantine and he’s with a man, people are going to say, Steve decided he’s gay now. No! I didn’t decide that at all! It’s hard to depict that on the page. Short of a bisexual or pansexual threesome, it’s very hard. But it’s not insurmountable!

Navigating the industry is its own thing. I’m happy to thread the needle when I can. I’ve been dealing with this shit my whole life. I couldn’t hold a leadership position in my GSA in college because I was told that I didn’t identify strongly enough. But they let me be the secretary. To this day I’m frequently called “the openly gay writer” of whatever book. This is not to say that there’s anything pejorative about being gay. I’ve never said that I’m gay. But people saw that I was writing Midnighter and said that I must be gay. Or they see my online presence — which is really slutty — and they go, he must be gay. I don’t go out of my way to correct it because I don’t want people to see that out of context and think there’s something pejorative there. But it is an ongoing thing.

Assumptions are always coming from all sides. I’m with a man right now and he’s great. He’s the best person I’ve ever been with. But I wouldn’t be less bi if I was with a woman. Many of the bisexual or pansexual identifying women in comics, some of whom are with men, are no less those things for being in heterosexual relationships. It’s important to say. I hope to be able to continue to bring it up when it fits the characters and the stories I’m working on and help show people that. 

The story always comes first for me. If Batman stopped fighting crime to say, you shouldn’t call that bi person this, that would be terrible. You have to know where it fits. It fit in Martian Manhunter because the character Diane knew what it was like to be able to pass, because she had done it. She was not out as bisexual and she could get by. She wasn’t being true to herself and knew what that pain was. But she could get by, the same way he could get by living as John Jones the human detective. But there’s something not fulfilling about that. Their journey to finding pride in themselves is what that book was about.

Finding their truth is key to so many of your characters and their stories.

SO: It’s key to everyone. That’s what I mean when I say that most of the stories I write are not queer, but most stories I write are about people figuring out identity. Whether you are or not queer, whether you are or not in any one given community, most of us have had to figure that out. I wish people would see that there’s a commonality there. And find a little fucking compassion. But that’s clearly been a challenge in the past, well, my lifetime. [laughs] I can’t even say the past five years. It’s been my lifetime.

You have a lot happening in your career. With more coming up that I’m sure you can’t talk about yet.

SO: I’m incredibly proud of Commanders in Crisis. It’s unique. It’s a throwback to an older storytelling style in comics. A lot happens in every issue. A lot of new ideas in every issue. The way that the movie Venom felt really fun because it somehow felt like a movie being made both today and in 1998. I want to write a comic that is very modern and progressive and thought-provoking and subversive — but with the storytelling style of the Silver Age where you get a shitload of new stuff in every issue and is very gonzo. I’m super proud of that.

The Kitchen Witch is getting remastered. That's a culinary fantasy and just an adorable middle-grade book. You mentioned Starward in Heavy Metal. It’s the Heavy Metal version of YA. It’s a wild cosmic story. Sailor Moon meets Wonder Woman book. Really really cool with gorgeous art. 

Project: Patron from Aftershock was a book that I’ve been cooking for a long time. This is my love letter to the Death of Superman era. But it’s updated for the modern mindset with the reveal that while the world thinks that the Superman character came back — much like the real one did — here he died and the UN replaced him with a robot. This is about the team that pilots the robot and their struggles, so a little Evangelion, a little Curt Swan Superman — a very Steve Orlando mashup!

And there’s more. But I’m a busy guy.

One good recent book that you co-wrote was Kill a Man, which is a queer MMA book.

SO: I am so proud of Kill a Man. I love all my children equally but differently. That having been said, Kill a Man is something I worked on for almost three years. We fought like hell to get that book on the stands. Which is perhaps spiritually correct being a book about mixed martial arts. But I think it's one of the best things I’ve ever done. It is so core to my life and the way I feel about things.

I’m always surprised there aren’t more MMA and wrestling comics, because there’s so much crossover with comics fandom.

SO: Wrestling and comics have a huge crossover. I think there’s a stigma around sports. But I think there’s a big crossover because they’re very similar. Right down to the illusion of change. The big bold soap opera storytelling lines right up with the classic eras of comics that we are all such big fans of.

Are you a big Heavy Metal fan?

SO: Absolutely. I love the original movie and I love the place the book has in pop culture and science fiction culture. I did a short for them in Heavy Metal #303 called String Theory and I was just excited to be in the magazine. To me, it’s an institution. You might see more from me in Heavy Metal

Not everything has to be a masterpiece. Stories can be dirty. Stories can be raw. Stories can be provocative. And that’s Heavy Metal in many ways. They’re not always putting out symphonies, but I don’t want that all the time. These are intense feelings and things we need to say and the more comics the better in my opinion.

You mentioned Werner Herzog earlier and he’s very much a guy who says, go make something and then go make something else.

SO: There’s no better metaphor for the comics industry working in comics than Fitzcarraldo. That’s why I sometimes post that picture of Klaus Kinski grabbing his head as he can’t get that boat over the mountain. I push that boat over the mountain six days a week — but I’m still here!

** This interview has been truncated and edited for brevity and clarity.

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