Coming out in Comics: Supporting cast

From Green Lantern vol 2, issue 137.  We have a better look at how to deal with sexuality.  Judd Winick wrote this, and it is a proper coming out tale.  Kyle Rayner is telling his young assistant, Terry, that he's proposed to his giurlfriend, Jenny Lynn Hayden.  Terry doesn't take it so well.  I don't want to scan the whole comic, so what follows are some of the most relevant panels.


The penny drops for Kyle Rayner:

A couple of nice little pages explaining about how stereotypes are wrong.  This is not shoehorned in and comes across really naturally:

How to deal with the coming out process:

And the moments when Kyle sits down and talks to Terry:

Kyle's butt comment could be read badly, but as it has been pretty well established that Terry and Kyle are good friends I read this as friendly ribbing.  Some people make compain about these scenes and say it's heavy handed.  I disagree, I think it's dealt with respectfully and maturely and I think there is place in comics for dealing with social issues.  Later issues dealt with Terry getting pretty badly attacked by homophobic idiots and looked at his recovery, his parents (non supportive) reactions, and his efforts to raise awareness of homophobic bullying.

I take my hat off to you Mr Winick, this storyline was done very well.