COLUMBUS, Ohio — The latest iteration of Superman, Jon Kent, has come out as bisexual.
Kent, the son of original superman Clark Kent and his wife, journalist Lois Lane, is seen kissing reporter Jay Nakamura in images distributed by DC Comics.
"It's not a gimmick," Tom Taylor, the writer of the comic book, told Reuters from his home in Melbourne, Australia.
"When I was offered this job, I thought 'Well, if we're going to have a new Superman for the DC Universe, it feels like a missed opportunity to have another straight white savior so whilst this isn't everything to do with them. There's a reason this is coming in issue five and not issue one. We didn't want this to be 'DC Comics creates new queer Superman', we want this to be 'Superman finds himself, becomes Superman and then comes out' and I think that's a really important distinction there."
Twitter has been flooded with reactions to the development, but Taylor said the response had been mostly positive.
"There's a lot of trolling online but there are so many people reaching out in so many different languages saying what this means to them. You know, I'm seeing tweets of people saying they burst into tears when they read the news, that they wished that Superman was this when they were growing up, that they could see themselves and people are saying for the first time ever they're seeing themselves in Superman - something they never thought was possible," he said.
Some of the more negative tweets seem to misunderstand the nature of the character Jon Kent.
"It's Jon Kent. It's the son of Superman and Lois Lane. He is as powerful as hope, faster than fate and able to lift us all and he's a very new hero finding his way, fighting things his father didn't as much. He's fighting the climate crisis, he's working for refugees, he's doing a lot of things," Taylor said.
He added "I hope this isn't a headline in a few years time, I hope this isn't trending on Twitter. I hope this just something about a person and good rep for everybody that that represents."
Issue five of the comic book 'Superman: Son of Kal-El', which features the same sex kiss, will be released on Nov. 9.