TALKING GRIFTER & MIDNIGHTER WITH CHUCK DIXON

[MattBrady]

Beginning in March, Wildstorm Universe mainstays Midnighter (The Authority) and Grifter (Wildcats) team-up (or is that face-off, or both?) in the six-issue limited series Grifter and Midnighter, by writer Chuck Dixon and artist Ryan Benjamin.

Newsarama recently chatted with Dixon to discuss the series, and the action-packed adventure he has planned, as well as his views on his starring characters. Dixon’s attachment to this series has raised some eyebrows in fandom because of public comments the writer made in the past regarding the portrayal of homosexual characters in comic books, and the fact one-half of this series’ main cast is in fact, homosexual.

Dixon handles the topic head on, as well as discusses Midnighter’s “left wing rage”, and oh yeah, talks a little about the story too…

Newsarama: Chuck, in preparing for this conversation we just read DC’s solicitation copy for Grifter and Midnighter #1, and it’s pretty general, although the threat they face is hinted to be planetary (no pun intended) in scale. What can you tell us about this adventure?

Chuck Dixon: First off, it’s a crossover and, to my way of thinking, has to have certain elements that readers expect in a crossover. Then it has to exceed those expectations. The first issue establishes who Midnighter and Grifter are for those who are fans of either or neither and sets up the adventure to follow.

In keeping with the kind of nasties that the Authority deals with, the threat here is a creepy non-human race with an agenda that unfolds as the series goes on. It’s not a simple “let’s conquer the Earth” scenario. It’s about a billion-tear old grudge playing out with our two anti-heroes in the middle.

NRAMA: Would you consider this more of a team-up? A face-off? Or an old school face-off leads to a team-up?

CD: I’m not gonna blow smoke here. It’s old school. Both of these characters have a long history of expedient violence and I’m not going to hold back on showing them go mano y mano when they first meet. Given the twisted and Byzantine backgrounds for these two it’s no kind of contrivance to have them start out at odds. And Midnighter did kill Grifter once. So there’s some payback involved.

NRAMA: You mentioned this is an “old school” crossover and also said in your mind a crossover has to have certain elements – so what are they?

CD: We want to see all the coolest facets of the characters involved and only the coolest facets. In a crossover you have a chance to introduce a character to an audience who came in to root for their dog in this fight. Midnighter readers may not be familiar with Grifter and vicey versa. So you need to present both in their very best light. No one wants to see a crossover where one of the protagonists comes off as lame. You also need to compare and contrast the two crossover primaries to create conflicts and alliances.

NRAMA: How did this project come about? Was this an idea/story in the works for a while, or did the scheduling issues surrounding both the Wildcats and Authority series create a need for a project for a few months that would come out reliably?

CD: Not hip to any scheduling issues but this one will come out monthly. It started with Scott Peterson taking on an editorship at WildStorm. Scott and I worked together for many years when he was in the Batman office at DC. We’ve always had a great working relationship despite what we know about each other. It was presented to me as a six issue limited in which Midnighter and Grifter meet. The rest was up to me.

NRAMA: Give us a short description of each of your main characters here? What about them appeals to Chuck Dixon and led to you thinking of teaming them or putting them together in this story?

CD: Grifter is a covert operative for a shadowy intelligence organization known as IO as well as being a founding member of WildCATS. He’s got all kinds of wild psi-powers from when he was purposely exposed to DNA-altering elements back when he was a part of the para-military unit Team Seven. He’s a soldier who often questions his orders.

Midnighter is a tough, street-level brawler with astounding healing powers and extra-human levels of physical strength along with other abilities that make him a dangerous fighter. He’s a former StormWatch member and now forms part of the core of The Authority. He’s the significant other of Apollo, a god-like super-being who also belongs to the same team. The best way to describe his personality is that he embodies left wing rage.

NRAMA: Ooh, that begs for some follow-up… can you give us more insight into that particular element of his character? What is “left-wing rage”?

CD: That’s my read on the character. There are scenes in his own book and in Authority where he’s seen murdering right wing caricatures. He also seems very frustrated with social injustice. But rather than hold a sign in front of an embassy or organize a boycott, Midnighter tears someone a new one. There’s a lot of liberal wish-fulfillment wrapped up in the character.

NRAMA: And how do you approach personifying left wing rage through a character? Is it easy for you to identify with and therefore pass along through Midnighter? Or is it harder for you to reconcile that POV with your own views and represent it genuinely sans any indirect commentary?

Perhaps more succinctly, do your own views make it easy, hard, or neither to speak though Midnighter?

CD: That’s funny!

I think it’s easy for anyone to identify with frustration. I’m by no stretch of the imagination a member of the left wing. So I think I can look at this aspect of his personality a bit more objectively. And I’m already having fun with it.

NRAMA: Well, taking a look at cable news, one could make the argument objectivity is a lost art, from all sides. And when you use a term like “liberal wish fulfillment”, given how the right has demonized the very term “liberal”, right or wrongly (not accusing you of anything) some people will question if representing his views genuinely is even possible. So pardon the phraseology, but as you’ve identified yourself as clearly not coming from the left, do you think you can present Midnighter’s views in a “fair and balanced” manner?

CD: I absolutely can. I’m neither gay nor a liberal. I’ve never fought crime on the rooftops of a major city or traveled to distant worlds to battle aliens. But a big part of my job is to put myself in the place of the characters I’m writing. To me, that means being true to the character’s established personality and not bringing them into line with my beliefs. I’ve written anti-gun screeds for Batman. I wrote Oliver Queen as a stone McGovernite. I wrote an anti-death penalty story even though my views are the polar opposite. Why? Because it made for a great story for that character.

While I’m extremely (and often unwisely) vocal about my views on my website I don’t present those views in my work. When I’m writing Connor Hawke or Alien Legion, the folks that buy it aren’t picking it up to hear my opinion on school lunch programs. Their not even picking it for me. They want to read stories about the title character.

That said, Midnighter wears his politics on his sleeve. By “liberal wish fulfillment” I mean that he does what a good liberal could never do but probably wishes he could. Midnighter embodies the rage and fury I see coming from the anti-Bush crowd. There’s no denying this. No one who’s written him this way would try and distant themselves from that description any more than I would deny the Punisher serving the same purpose on the opposite of the scale.

And there’s nothing fair or balanced about Midnighter’s views. He’s a sociopath.

NRAMA: So you think it’s your job to write the characters as you would a non-fiction biography? No creative interpretation involved/allowed?

CD: I’m going to write him exactly as he’s been presented up till now. I have no desire to change him. Don’t look for Midnighter to be reading National Review in the quiet moments. If I wrote any quiet moments for him.

Any changes I might make to that part of his character are not a matter of interpretation. Any changes would be wrong and a disservice to the writers that came before me and the readers who enjoy Midnighter’s antics.



NRAMA: We’ll get back to Midnighter in a moment…How important a factor is the soft-ish “reboot” of the WildStorm universe in this story? This more of an evergreen story that would have starred these two characters at any time, or is the recent changes to the Wildstorm Universe a key element?

CD: I generally prefer the evergreen variety of story. This one can be read all by itself with no referencing to other WSU output. It reflects changes in the status quo made to the continuity but not in any overt way that makes new readers or returning readers feel like they missed anything. I’m very much a tourist in this continuity and am cool with that. I’m not looking to add or subtract anything from what the guys on the regular series are establishing. I’m not here to show anyone “how it’s done.”

NRAMA: How about their respective teams and titles? Will fans see any guest-stars from Wildcats and/or the Authority, and what role – if any – the teams and the character’s respective teammates play in the storyline?

CD: Grifter is often a loner figure so we don’t see much of his ties or affiliations except for a brief reference in issue #1. There’s quite a bit of the Authority in the opening issues as they’re very much a part of what motivates Midnighter throughout the story.

NRAMA: Getting back to Midnighter, a few years back you were publicly critical of not only Marvel’s handling of their Rawhide Kid character in the series Slap Leather, but you reputedly were critical of other writers – namely Judd Winick and Grant Morrison – as well for using familiar characters as platforms to present homosexuality in comic books. We say reputedly because the message board your comments were posted to no longer exists, and we’re going by second hand accounts of your comments at that time.

We could ask a million and one detailed questions about this, but maybe it’s best and more fair to simply ask you to speak to the fact that Midnighter is homosexual, how you feel about that, and if your earlier thoughts have any effect on your regard and approach to this character?

CD: Midnighter will indeed be presented as gay. After all the mis-quotes, hate posts, and misrepresentations of my opinions, you bet your ass I won’t be shying away from that aspect.

I was critical of Marvel’s presentation of Rawhide Kid as a homosexual. I thought that the limited series was done as a stunt and wound up demeaning both the Kid (a childhood favorite of mine) and the homosexual community. I committed some unforgivable sin by suggesting that perhaps a Howard Stern staff writer would not the ideal candidate for a sensitive portrayal of a gay western hero and that it was a mistake to retro-fit an established character rather than create a new one.

The Perpetually Outraged instantly labeled me as a homophobe and the label became permanent when I weighed in on Judd Winick’s introduction of an openly gay character in Green Lantern. My suggestion was that superhero comics are, whether die-hard fans like it or not, ostensibly children’s comics and perhaps not the forum to be informing children of homosexuality, heterosexuality, or sexually transmitted diseases. I think I incensed some people by saying that I didn’t want my kids receiving their sex ed from Judd Winick in the pages of a superhero comic book. I still don’t.

I’ve never backed away from my disdain for agenda-driven comics in what should be the medium’s primary escapist, mass appeal genre. Stand on your soap box all day long. But don’t stand on the shoulders of household-name icons. Write the characters in character and don’t write your world-view through them.

And the introduction and retro-fitting of gay characters into established series has become an instant cliché. It’s done in a cynical manner strictly for marketing purposes in a way that should offend everyone.

I don’t recall criticizing Grant Morrison on this particular issue.

NRAMA: So noted.

You say you don’t want comics to be a forum to be informing children of homosexuality or heterosexuality. There is the POV that things like Bruce Wayne’s Billionaire playboy bachelorism, and the relationships between Lois and Clark, Peter and Mary Jane, Reed and Sue, their weddings (all turned into respective events in their series), and the relatively innocent but at times quite obvious sexual banter between these characters is “informing” readers of their heterosexuality. Do you agree?

CD: I’m no more in favor of a frank sexual discussion between Reed and Sue or Lois and Clark than I would be were it Gay Character A and his partner.

When I was writing Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon’s romance I stayed away from stating that they were in any kind of sexual relationship. You could absolutely imply it. But you could just as easily tell yourself they were saving it for marriage. Is this method naïve? In movies made before the 60s it was the norm to present characters as romantically involved and then leave clear indicators that they were getting it on between scenes. Clark Gable and Jon Crawford go into a hot kiss and we fade to black. Cut to next morning and she’s making him breakfast and dressed in a different nightgown. Now they could have kissed one and then played Monopoly until dawn. The audience was left to choose what they wanted to believe and there was no need to explain the facts of life to the kids after a Cary Grant movie. We used to call them “air force” scenes. Whoosh! Right over the kid's heads.

So Clark and Lois can be seen kissing and being affectionate and there’s no need to explain it. The sexual aspect of their relationship doesn’t have to be explored. But if Wonder Woman and Supergirl are seen kissing then that does call for an explanation. The sexual aspect of a relationship like that will call forth questions from the kiddies.

Maggie Sawyer, in Superman, was obviously being portrayed as a lesbian. But there was a level of deniability because she wasn’t always being shown in romantic clinches with her girlfriend. Astute readers picked up on it. Others either didn’t notice or chose not to. Maggie even appeared on the cartoons with her girlfriend. I much prefer this kind of characterization over Northstar’s “I’M GAY!”

The important thing, for story purposes, was that Maggie was a good, three-dimensional character first and a lesbian second.

NRAMA: That all said, Sue Richards has been pregnant three times. That could certainly lead to a life/sex discussion among kids. To play devil’s advocate, one could argue kissing and hand-holding and marriage – i.e. romantic love – does not necessarily equate to explaining a sex act of a homosexual character any more than it would a heterosexual character.

And to go a step further, certainly some people would argue explaining to a child why a woman and woman would kiss should be no more extraordinary than explaining why a man and a woman would. Little girls often say they want to marry their fathers. The difference between love, romance, and sex is learned for everyone. Couldn’t one argue that the path for romance between same sex characters to be something that children do not regard as unusual and intrusive to the story is for society to become more accepting of it?

CD: You bring up issues that carry us away from my initial opinion. It’s all about context. There are a million different ways that the issue of sexuality of any kind can be introduced to children. But why can’t some comic creators resist the urge to do so in the pages of a superhero comic? It’s a genre where people wear capes and masks and have magic rings and lift buildings up over their heads. And no matter how much you wish the genre could grow old with you, these are still characters for children. They’re on pajamas and backpacks. They’re Legos, for God’s sake.

Sure, your kids might see two dogs screwing on the sidewalk and you have to either brush it aside or have a “talk” about it. But that’s up to you as a parent. I really wish that superhero comics could be left to be about adventure and heroism and suspense. Why does Ant-Man have to be a wife-beater? Were the writers that much at a loss for a story?

And does anyone really suppose that the first time a child sees a pregnant woman is in a comic book? I’ve never proposed sheltering children from real life. But let them have the funnybooks, okay?

Will the inclusion of gay characters in mainstream comics make homosexuality more acceptable? I haven’t seen a mainstream comic story yet with a gay character that wasn’t loaded with stereotypes and clichés. A wise editor I used to work with cautioned his writers, “don’t write about human relationships unless you’ve had one.” Most of what I’ve seen of the conscious-raising variety of comics on this subject has been dismal and pandering. Loaded with mock outrage and received wisdom and very little honest human interaction. It’s dealt with an in-your-face issue rather than a story.

They’re no different than the embarrassing attempts at inclusiveness in 70’s comics. All those white-guilt driven stories about battling The Man. Ugh.

Having it all laid out in that kind of ham-handed way is far more harmful than the kids wondering why Uncle Jimmy never got married.

My opinions on this have never come from a position of intolerance. It’s all a matter of context. Sure, the kids are gonna have to learn about love and sex and relationships. But why can’t that be outside the pages of a superhero comic? Why do comic writers have to take on the mantle of social engineer? I haven’t met a comic book writer yet I’d let talk to my kids about sex. Why would I want them doing it as part of a story about super-powered men and women in tights?

NRAMA: And on the topic of introducing and retro-fitting gay characters into established series, again, to play devil’s advocate, you mentioned the attempts at inclusiveness in the 70’s. Arguably the biggest comic book success story of all time was when Marvel completely re-invented on a dime what was a team of all white characters by instantly replacing them with cast of multi-racial characters, which at the time was very uncommon and arguably influenced by and promoting a social agenda.

Do you regard the introduction of the All-New, All Different X-Men as you do the introduction of a gay character in the pages of Green Lantern?

CD: That’s not the same issue at all. Marvel was just following a trend that started with Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos and that found its source more in Kirby’s old kid gang stories than it did any kind of ideas of social engineering.

The new X-Men line-up wasn’t the first time racial diversity had been introduced to comics. Saturday morning cartoons had long become integrated. And re-casting X-Men was probably done for reasons rooted in Marvel’s tried-and-true tradition of throwing things against the wall and seeing if they’ll stick. The X-Men was a loser title that was always at the bottom of the sales numbers. Shaking it up with a new cast and making that cast diverse turned out to be a smart move. I’m not convinced it was done to advance civil rights and heal the racial divide. After all, we have a Canadian, a German, and an Irish guy added to the cast. If anything, it was an effort to make the cast more international to appeal to a broader global audience. The only actual American minority in the group got kakked in the opening issues.

And had one of the new X-Men been presented as gay (like that could have happened in the 70’s), at least he or she would have been created as gay rather than outted later to create buzz.

In any case, the equating of sexual preference with race always strikes me as reaching.

NRAMA: So just to be crystal clear, will Midnighter’s sexual orientation play a role in your story in any significant way?

CD: Sure will.

Midnighter was firmly established as having a homosexual relationship with Apollo and that’s the way I’m writing him. The Authority was always a mature readers book and I don’t have any problem with the frank presentation of sexual relationships there any more than I would in a movie or television show intended for the same audience.

NRAMA: So just t be sure to represent your position clearly, you objected to Slap Leather because even though it was a MAX title was and audience appropriate, it “retro-fit” a character. Grifter and Midnighter on the other hand is audience appropriate and it is consistent with the origin and established profile of the characters?

CD: It’s the retro-fit that bothers me. The MAX versions of Nick Fury or Luke Cage were just as annoying to me. Particularly the implications that Luke Cage’s story could now be properly told without restrictions. That’s insulting as well as being artistically bankrupt.

I’m sure you could get a lot of press with a Donald Duck book that showed sex, drug abuse, and domestic violence. But, in the long run, you’d have poisoned that franchise forever. Some publicity is bad publicity. And you can go broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

Let’s be honest, “maturing” an established character is a hedge against poor sales. X-rated Nick Fury will sell a few thousand more copies than X-rated Double-0 Generic Spyguy. Creating a new womanizing super-spy or gay western hero is harder than re-jiggering an old one. It requires marketing and creativity and a level of earnestness that no one was willing to bring to it. Better to titillate hardcore fans or turn it all into a cynical joke.

Look at Vertigo’s success with creating brand new mature reader characters. Preacher and Constantine and the others populate the line with new, vital creations rather than simply doing a dirty version of Batman. In the long run this has paid off with a strong backlist of trade paperbacks, movie deals, and TV deals that could not have happened by simply making mature imprint doppelgangers of DCU’s icon characters.

Everyone says that the future of comics is in the bookstores and libraries. It’s of paramount practical concern that the comic companies guard and shepherd their franchises even more carefully than before. They’re being seen more and more by audiences of casual readers who have an expectation of who these characters are. This is no longer the sub-culture hobby that it was even ten years ago.

NRAMA: Okay then. Finally, in general, any last thoughts or first impressions you want to leave readers with over the next couple of months while they await issue #1?

CD: Despite all of the brouhaha over me writing the limited series, this is the kind of story I’m known for; visually-driven, fast paced and violent with a few laughs thrown in. Ryan Benjamin has been around for a while but he really shines on this project and I predict he’ll soon be too damned good to answer my emails.

[RichJohnston]

This was your quote:

"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 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 or Grant Morrison 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?"

Originally Posted by Chuck Dixon

My suggestion was that superhero comics are, whether die-hard fans like it or not, ostensibly children’s comics and perhaps not the forum to be informing children of homosexuality, heterosexuality, or sexually transmitted diseases. I think I incensed some people by saying that I didn’t want my kids receiving their sex ed from Judd Winick in the pages of a superhero comic book. I still don’t.

Chuck, a number of your comics have informed children of heterosexuality. They have featured heterosexual couples, married heterosexual couples even. Men and women have been in love, have kissed, have fancied, have complimented each other.

And in Connor Hawke's case, had sex with a ghost. A female ghost of course.

[melperfect]

This looks great!
Benjamin's art looks fantastic, after this project I'd love to see him work on a Bat-Book (Nightwing, hint hint)

[creatorman]

Totally looking forward to this! Chuck Dixon, awesome writer, I know this series is going to rock. And Ryan Benjamin, finally back in comics!!! Awesome artist, really missed your work over the years. All the best to both of you.

[I am MODOK]

Good interview. Tough questions asked, and tough questions answered.

Chuck Dixon is one of my top comic writers of all time, so I will definitely be grabbing this, either in trade or monthlies. Dixon on an action book is not to be missed!

And I know this will probably get me a lot of hate, but I agree with CD about what comics are for. I read them for escapist action. Big colorful characters slugging it out over all sorts of problems. I'm usually insulted when I know I'm being lectured or "taught" about the real world.

[EMeadow]

This one's going to get a lot of talkbacks.

And Mr Dixon, the one thing you forgot to mention when it came to why you weren't happy with Rawhide Kid is because you thought John Severin was being lied to when he was drawing the book and was never told in any way that the character was going to be written as homosexual..

As for the comment about a Howard Stern employee and how he shoudln''t be doing the writing(even though Zimmerman didn't work for them, just glommed on the show)......well Newsarama people will not argue that one with you :-)

You will get arguments however about continuing the stereotype that comics are just for children. You're not writing your stories as if they were for children, you know kids are not the dominant buyer in the market. Why persist in the fantasy that that is your audience. All you'll do is annoy the people who are reading your books, make them stop reading them, and there go your royalty checks.

Your audience is in reality people your age and a little bit younger who like their stories with a more adult feel. And even the kids who do come in and buy comics today want their stories with the same grown up feel. Adult situations of any sexual nature are a part of that.

I think its better to learn from them in the comics because they'll be straightforward and not talk down to the kids like parents tend to in their attempts to shield them from the truth. Same thing with TV, and literature. Its just out there in a straightforward manner. And that's what kids want. Not what you tell them they'll want. They don't listen anyway. Chances are you didn't to your parents either. :-)

[EMeadow]

Originally Posted by RichJohnston

This was your quote:

"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 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 or Grant Morrison 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?"



Chuck, a number of your comics have informed children of heterosexuality. They have featured heterosexual couples, married heterosexual couples even. Men and women have been in love, have kissed, have fancied, have complimented each other.

And in Connor Hawke's case, had sex with a ghost. A female ghost of course.

See if you can find the "John Severin was lied to" quote.

[SpyGuy]

Originally Posted by MattBrady

CD: It’s the retro-fit that bothers me. The MAX versions of Nick Fury or Luke Cage were just as annoying to me. Particularly the implications that Luke Cage’s story could now be properly told without restrictions. That’s insulting as well as being artistically bankrupt.

Let’s be honest, “maturing” an established character is a hedge against poor sales. X-rated Nick Fury will sell a few thousand more copies than X-rated Double-0 Generic Spyguy. Creating a new womanizing super-spy or gay western hero is harder than re-jiggering an old one. It requires marketing and creativity and a level of earnestness that no one was willing to bring to it. Better to titillate hardcore fans or turn it all into a cynical joke.

I gotta say, I'm with Chuck Dixon on this particular point. The FURY series by Garth Ennis was absolutely appalling.

[Hobowatcher]

"Uncivil Union"

That title works on sooooo many levels.

Chuck Dixon is an incredibly versatile writer. I can't wait for this.

The only thing I don't really agree with him on is that I don't see why homosexuality cannot be portrayed in a comic. If he's ever read Manhunter or Gotham Central, a gay couple can be fairly portrayed and not ridden with cliches.

[Scorned1]

Why do I have the funny feeling that Wildstorm is going to turn Grifter gay? This might be good for the character because all we’ve seen so far is that he’s always been with Zealot.

Really, this might be the best made-sense-team-up that I have ever seen. So I’m game for it. But six issues? I hope they got a good story plan out just right because just one more issue and it could be Civil War length without the crossover issues.

[skeletorjr]

Excellent interview. Mr. Dixon writes a good comic, and I appreciate his willingness to expand on his opinions. His views on comics are refreshing, and I find that I agree with about 99 percent of what he has to say.

[immortus]

Originally Posted by SpyGuy

I gotta say, I'm with Chuck Dixon on this particular point. The FURY series by Garth Ennis was absolutely appalling.

If by appalling you mean amazing, then yes.

[Matopi]

I don't harbor any ill will towards Dixon, but I can't help but read this interview and think that maybe another book would be a better fit for him. No one asked the question, but did he actually want to write this? Or was it just editorially assigned, and he's just making the best of it?

At any rate, best of look to him. I'm holding my breath on this one, though, both for Chuck and the character.

[Chip]

Dear Mr. Dixon,
Being gay is not a "lifestyle choice".

[SpyGuy]

Originally Posted by immortus

If by appalling you mean amazing, then yes.

Yeah, pointless colostomy bag jokes are amazing, aren't they? Especially if you've worn one for six months...

[kalorama]

I like Dixon's work quite a bit, but really have no interest in these characters. The interview, however, was quite interesting. I don't necessarily agree with his views, but he expresses them in a reasonable way that gives you something to think about. Nice read.

[Clem]

Please dear god someone get this guy back on Nightwing.

Another 70 classic issues when you feel up to it

[Beefy McHuge]

Great interview that asks the right questions, gets some interesting answers and then follows up on them with more good questions.

[JamesLM2006]

There's nothing reasonable about his opinions. He's a rabidly anti-gay bigot. Period. Everyone in the industry knows it. I wish that Newsarama had done what Rich has done; that you'd presented his own words to him in rebuttal to his attempts to clean up his opinion. It is unbelievably offensive that DC hired this homophobe to write a gay character. Not to mention this "liberal rage" BS. What next? Hiring David Duke to write a John Stewart mini-series? Of course, homophobia is still accepted in this society; it's trivialized and pandered to. And there are comics fans who are every bit as bigoted as Dixon. So maybe DC thinks this is a situation they can manage. I say, we need to boycott this book and send letters to DC protesting this crap.

[Primate]

I don;t agree with a lot of what Dixon said. But I respect his own respect for a character's intrinsic "self-ness" as presented previosuly. Props to Brady for asking serious questions and not making this a press release. Props to Dixon for taking the time to answer truthfully and fully, even if I do not agree with him on all fronts.

[JamesLM2006]

Somehow I don't think folks would be giving props and respect to Dixon if his remarks were racist. Homophobia is still just someone's opinion. Try telling that to Matthew Shepherd's parents.

[thefrogman]

I am definitly checking this out. You can blame Captain Atom: Armegeddon for introducing them to me, and having Chuck Dixon writing it.

[Maurice M]

When I read the title of this article it mentioned Grfiter & Midnighter. I find it so very sad that so little of the mini was actually discussed


P.S. I disagree with the idea that sexuality of all kinds can't be presented in comics in an appropriate way for children, but I agree completely at how bad CAGE, Fury, and Rawhide Kid were. Poorly written cliche filled drivel.

[Hobowatcher]

Originally Posted by Chip

Dear Mr. Dixon,
Being gay is not a "lifestyle choice".

Sure it is. Just like being straight is a "lifestyle choice." Heck, being sexually active with ferrets is even a "lifestyle choice."

Its a way to live that makes it a lifestyle, and its your choice if you want to live it that way.

[MattBrady]

folks - keep it civil.

Last/only warning. No personal attacks, no bashing. Disagree all you want, but be civil about it.

MattB