According to Italian author Marco Mancassola as Superheroes age they have the same problems as we non super folk. He explores the sex lives of Superman, Mister Fantastic and Mystique as their heroic abilities are dulled by the ageing process. Batman seems to be the focus as well. Just recently actor Andrew Garfield had made a passing reference to Spider-man being perhaps bisexual. There seems to be a growing fascination with sexualizing superheroes and also, what their sexual orientation may be. Batman having a young ward live with him, and an absence of a female motherly character has often brought some smirks and jabs at the caped crusader's sexual preference.
The novel goes further however, depicting Batman and Robin as a bickering gay couple whose sex life has gone flat. The movie Batman and Robin showed a bickering crime fighting duo but any relationship was between the lines according to George Clooney. Who is quoted as saying he "intended the character to appear gay". The author Mancassola says that being homosexual does not completely define his Batman in that “Batman has always had a very dark side. And it shouldn’t be a shock that my version of this character indulges in weird forms of fetishism and extreme sex. “Narcissism is his inner abyss. He let his only real love story miserably fail because he is in love with the mystery of youth – that inaccessible, fleeting kind of spirit that he sees in the eyes of his young male and female pick-ups.” Most will see his novel as a hit piece against Batman or a way to push some agenda but the author claims.
"I depicted him that way because I love him. He is human. He embodies the tragedy into which contemporary society has transformed the fact of getting older.”
This seems a stretch to most Batman fans but more and more superheroes sex lives are up for debate. Catwoman in the Dark Knight rises is hinted to have a relationship with her female friend and Batgirl was revamped as a jewish lesbian as far back as 2006. How long will it be before Hollywood makes the plunge to explore the nature of Batman in more erotic terms?
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