Rawhide Kid #2

[history79]

"This is a straight western with a non-straight lead. If you prefer your gay character to be either goody-two-shoes with absolutely no characteristics that identify them as gay, or, even worse, cookie-cutter victims of societal oppression, then this ain’t the book for you."

- Axel Alonso

Source: https://www.dailyxtra.com/wilde-wild-west-44522

Comments

[filthysize]

This book might just be ahead of its time. I remember the main criticisms this received was that he's portrayed as astereotype, but I think that's because back in 2003 people were still demanding pop culture representation to break out of the stereotype of all gay men as flamboyant in order to assert a semblance of masculinity that would allow a heteronormative culture to accept them as regular men.

Nowadays, when the conversation has shifted to a larger assertion of accepting queerness in all of its forms and dismantling the very heteronormativity that dictates what masculinity should look like, and we've got a multitude of books with gay characters, this just reads as a delightfully camp. This would be a hit if you release this today as is.

[bruinsfan]

I don't know. I think it was probably well-meaning, but perhaps would have benefited from input by people with awareness that all the stereotypical gay behaviors exhibited by Jack McFarland or Mr. Humphries might not work well in a post-Gold Rush Wild West setting. As far as I'm aware, most of the tropes that have come to be associated with gay stereotypes originated later than that in the theatre.

[dcbanacek]

Gay before their time? :)

[arilou_skiff]

MMmm, not sure, while from my understanding a lot of it came from 1920's theatre, Oscar Wilde hits a lot of the same stuff, and he was largely contemporary. (though then again, he too was a thespian)

[icon_uk]

Wilde was a bit more than gay though, he was part of the aesthetic movement, a separate ideology which regardless of sexuality (though probably appealling to the gay side more than most) posited that only art for arts sake had meaning, and rejecting the "macho manliness" of the era*, choosing lilies and feathers and the like as decoration.

* Though it should be noted that despite the decadent, louche appearance, Wilde was 6'2" and had boxed, so could take care of hismelf handily if the need arose. He also toured the US in 1882, and though the Press mocked him for his aestheticism, he was a huge popular success wherever he went, and was popular in the strangest place, drinking with miners (in Leadville Colorado to name but one example) and in the upper class salons.

[filthysize]

I'm pretty sure all the anachronisms are deliberately done for comic effect given that this is a wild west story that also features George W. Bush as a character.

[tcampbell1000]

I'm with you on this. I've long believed that it does characters a disservice to make any one of them a standard-bearer for an entire group of people. This feels like a person that the creative team believes in, and he feels like kind of a nifty power fantasy to boot. When his signals aren't sailing completely over everyone's heads (which is most of the time), he can still get away with being himself because he's just THAT GOOD. There are parallels with real-life Western legends there, but also an appeal for anyone who's ever been afraid to be themselves, for any reason.

I especially liked how he dealt with the kids in #1 and the way he kinda coaxes a couple of the bandits here a couple steps toward realizing something about themselves.

[reveen]

I don't know about this comic, but I do see a lot of change in how we perceive these stereotypes. Where before camp gay or butch lesbian were seen as negative stereotypes there's now room for these kinds of people in a more nuanced understanding of gender. Camp was seen as problematic likely because it was seen as an obstacle to gay people being accepted by heteronormative society.

But these days living up to some ideal of a straight laced "normal" gay person either doesn't matter homophobes accept you, or is co-opted by reactionaries who want to move on to fighting against the breakdown of the gender binary.

[theflames]

Completely agree, I'm surprised at the criticism lobbied at the Rawhide Kid's personality since......... he's fairly tame by the gay community standards. Like I love him, he's lovely but he would have no issue fitting into the 'masc4masc' crowd, but that same crowd is/was very hypersensitive to anything that made gays look feminine or flaming, so his quirks/femininity seemed more glaring than they actually are. And of course, straight people are hypersensitive to this too.

Rawhide Kid sounds like a lot gay men I know in real life, I see part of him in me too. Hardly a stereotype though.

[zachbeacon]

Well I always found Batlash to be the most "flamboyant" major comic cowboy and he's very straight.

I honestly just think this is the kind of story that people find difficult to separate from the marketing (like the early Sentry stuff). I mean, forget the interviews Joe Q and co were giving at the time; just look at the cover.

(And I still think Zimmerman may have been the worst hire to come out of Marvel's early 2000s "let's hire TV and movie writers" push).

At the very least it gets points for coming out before Brokeback Mountain.

[icon_uk]

I was going to make the comparison to Bat Lash too.

Bat was always a dandy, and being a dandy doesn't require being gay.

[locuatico]

Funnily enough, the clueless guy not realizing Kid is gay (despite how flamboyant he is) is pretty much in tune with modern gay humor.

[stubbleupdate]

Mayor Bush.

[cainofdreaming]

The hammer gun is his...

[randyripoff]

I'm just wondering where the Nazis and the Klan are in that last scan.

They are attacking Rock Ridge, right?

[janegray]

Oh, this is so fun :)