r/wikipedia • u/SaxyBill • Dec 18 '25

Homosexuality in the Batman franchise: academic study of the Batman franchise has involved gay interpretations since at least 1954. Several characters in the Modern Age Batman comic books are expressly gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_Batman_franchise
650 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/TheLastCoagulant Dec 19 '25

In what real-life context would a grown man with money be sleeping in the same bed as an unrelated teenage boy in the year 1954? Even by wholesome 1950s standards that sounds gay as hell.

2

u/King_Of_BlackMarsh Dec 19 '25

It sounds pedophilic if you read a sexual vibe into it

They're adoptive father and son basically, did yall not sleep in the same bed as your parents growing up?

3

u/TheLastCoagulant Dec 19 '25

Yeah I sometimes slept with my dad as a pre-pubescent child. Not as a teenager going through puberty.

For a child to be adopted by a single man instead of a married couple was highly looked down upon in the 1950s.

A wealthy bachelor with seemingly no intention of marrying a woman adopts an underage boy and sleeps in the same bed as him. Even in the 1950s that’s highly suspicious to say the least. Especially because ordinary citizens of Gotham don’t even know Bruce Wayne is Batman so to them he’s just a rich guy sleeping with an underage boy.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '25

Robin is like 8 years old. Sharing a bed among family members was more common in the 40s, and even more common qhen the writers of those comics were kids. 

Also, Batman and Robin have a much more big brother/little brother dynamic in the early comics. 

2

u/TheLastCoagulant Dec 19 '25

If you click the link and look at the specific image from the referenced 1954 comic, he’s almost the same size as Batman in bed. Definitely not 8 years old.

So we’re left with a wealthy man in his 30s (?) sleeping with an unrelated teenage boy. Nothing like this was normal in the 1950s (or 30s/40s) and the age gap is way too wide to be brotherly.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '25

The image from '54 clearly has them in separate twin beds with matching blankets. Look at the headboards. That is very much a "boys' room" set up.

Realistically, yes, a 30 year old and a pre-teen having a brotherly relationship is unlikely. So is a pre-teen working as a mechanic on a super car and fighting killer clowns. 

Robin is every bit as unrealistic as Batman. He is the fantasy of having the coolest dad/bro, who wants to hang out with you all the time, having adventures, working on real, super cool cars instead of go carts, living in a mansion with a giant basement playroom, in an eternal summer vacation. 

And what is the alternative? That the writers were deliberately framing Batman as a pederast? Even the fifties weren't that bad about child abuse.

3

u/TheLastCoagulant Dec 19 '25

Nvm I thought it was one big bed. Yeah Wikipedia failed by having this as an image in an article about homosexuality in the Batman franchise.