Not Even Stan Lee’s Gay Superhero Could Overturn Prop 8

Posted by Josh Radde (josh@filmschoolrejects.com) on November 15, 2008

Stan Lee, the Marvel visionary behind some of your favorite comic book characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, and of course Stripperella, is bringing the story of a gay teen superhero to Showtime to adapt into a possible series, and for sure an hour long special.

The as-of-yet untitled project will be based on Perry Moore’s Hero about “an up-and-coming superhero who struggles to hide his secret identities.” Moore will be writing and executive producing alongside Lee. Moore is producing the film with his business and life partner, Hunter Hill (not to be confused with Bears linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer).

Secret “identities?” Normally, superheroes struggle to hide one secret identity, let alone two. But it could be interesting to see a young man who both struggles with his internal sexuality as well as his external powers. The novel won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for Young Adult novels earlier this year. It centers around young Thom Creed who lives with his father, a disgraced former superhero. When Thom begins to notice that he has powers he can’t confess that because he needs to protect his father; when he realizes he likes men, he can’t tell anyone because he lives in a homophobic town. Quite the predicament, but I imagine he could’ve avoided all these problems if he didn’t spell “Tom” with an “h” in it.

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