Bookings for my Feb. 23rd History Month talk on LGBT superheroes are now open. The event is free to attend, but I’d be very grateful if you could sign up on Eventbrite if you plan to attend. We do need to make sure that M-Shed puts out enough chairs. Last year’s talk was pretty much full.

As a reminder, here’s the blurb for the talk:

Anyone old enough to remember the Adam West Batman TV series will know that it would be hard to imagine anything more camp. And yet at the same time superhero comics were strictly controlled with regard to content for fear of corrupting the youth of America (and doubtless the rest of the world as well).

A lot has changed since the 1960s, and occasionally the mass media gets all excited about a superhero coming out as gay. But do those men in tights still expect us to believe that their dress sense is purely utilitarian? And how about the rest of the LGBT spectrum? Do they get a look in?

Cheryl Morgan takes on a tour of a world in which we have been asked to believe that a man can fly, but not that he might fall in love with his teen sidekick.

And the art above is, of course, the Spandex team from Martin Eden’s fine comic.