10 Things From DC Comics That REALLY Haven't Aged Well

Sexual minorities are among the many collectives that tend to face the most misrepresentation in hetero-normative media - which has also been the case for DC Comics as well. It may seem odd now that there are characters like Midnighter and Apollo, but the initial exposure given to LGBTQ people in DC Comics was generally limited to misinformed ideas about homosexuality.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the 1980s, where DC debuted one of their first openly gay characters - a Peruvian wizard named Extrano. The character was unfortunately conveyed almost entirely through a stereotypical view of his sexuality, which continued to be seen as different from the norm. Case and point, his name literally translates as “strange” or “queer” in English.

Then, to add insult to injury, Extrano would later contract HIV, after a vampire named “Hemo-Goblin” simply scratches him. Just an overall garbage fire of offensiveness, really. Fortunately, Extrano would receive much-needed retcon in 2016 - where he would appear in Midnighter and Apollo, a comic spotlighting one of DC's openly-gay superhero couples.