One of the things that I have always loved about the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series besides the excellent writing and believable acting is Joss Whedon's pro-gay storyline with Sunnydale's most powerful witch Willow and her longtime love Tara (before Willow's lover accidentally took a bullet meant for Buffy).
As a writer I have always had this urge to create an out and proud gay male character that is unapologetically who he is but could also kick ass and take names like the rest of the female slayers.
So that being said, I bring you the exciting news that in season 9 issue 14 of the comic book series, we will be introduced to a new gay slayer named Billy.
Billy's storyline will be that he finds strength within himself to stand up to vampires, and through taking on the supernatural defines who he is rather than letting others tell him who he should be. What I also love about the Buffyverse is that the writers have always used real-life issues as a metaphor for the supernatural storylines. My favorite being when Buffy finally slept with Angel and the gypsy curse was broken, turning him into a jerk. Many of us have been in a similar situations where we feel that we are deeply in love with someone that when we give them all of us, the worst aspects of their personality comes out once they get the nookie.
"Billy is someone who sees a need in his hometown and steps up to fill the void, even at great personal risk," says writer Drew Greenberg. "He may not have the actual powers of the Slayers, but he's determined to be his own kind of hero, one who's sort of modeled after those who do have the power, and he sets out to make due with what he has. In the process, I think he hopes to follow the lead of all the strong, powerful Slayers who came before him and live up to the standard they set."
Greenberg also revealed that while working on Buffy, the he and Jane Espenson talked a lot about introducing a gay male character to the television show.
"A typical conversation would go something like...
DREW: Maybe Buffy meets a gay demon hunter!
JANE: Why would anyone hunt gay demons??
(Long pause as I glare at her)
JANE: Have I used that one before?"
"But, yes, Jane and I certainly talked a lot about the metaphor of feeling powerless in a place overrun with people who, if you let them, could end up sucking the life out of you, and what it means to be someone who stands up and says, 'I want to make a difference in my life. And if I can make a difference in my life, maybe I'll be making a difference in others' lives, too.' "
Buffy season 7 & 8 writer (Jane) Espenson explains: "Batman doesn’t have super powers. He wasn’t gifted with an exotic foreign birth. So we take the Batman route; Billy is earning the Slayer mantle."
Greenberg also says that while some critics feel that they might be pandering to the gay audience with the recent inclusion of gay charactes with Green lanter, in the Archis comics and the wedding of Northstar, he feels the introduction of Billy may empower young boys struggling with their sexuality:
"I have no problem telling a story about a boy who's always felt more comfortable identifying with what society tells him is more of a feminine role. So much crap gets heaped upon us as gay men -- crap from straight people and, frankly, crap from other gay people -- about how it's important to be masculine in this world, how your value is determined by your ability to fit into masculine norms prescribed by heterosexual society and, sadly, co-opted by gay society as a way to further disenfranchise and bully those who don't meet those norms," Greenberg says. "And those attitudes are a reflection of not just our own internalized homophobia, but of our misogyny, too, and that's something I've never understood. So if this is a story that causes people to examine traditional gender roles and think of them as something more fluid, I'm thrilled."
Even if Buffy never comes back to television or gets a film reboot, i still feel that one day we will get a show on television featuring an openly gay male character who doesn't fit the fashion/make-up, frilly, non-threatening, side-kick to the straight woman stereotypes that plague our television sets.
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