BILL'S MEDIA WATCH: Stormwatch

Stormwatch is a comic book from DC Comics that features two prominent gay characters: blond, super-strong Apollo, and the leather-clad, dangerous, somewhat-psycho Midnighter. These two characters have actually been around for quite awhile, and they originally appeared as a gay couple with an adopted baby daughter in a series called The Authority, first published by Wildstorm [an imprint of DC Comics] in 1999 and written by Warren Ellis. [DC also briefly published a Midnighter series.] When DC decided to reboot its entire line of comics last year from Superman on down, the new Stormwatch book incorporated these two characters, erased their long history with the Authority, but kept them gay and attracted to each other. When I read that an amazon-like heroine was going to come between them in issue 18, I was afraid it would be some kind of cliched nonsense about a gay man and a straight woman fighting over the same allegedly bisexual guy [a la that crappy play Cock], but it was more about the hunky if naive and insecure Apollo's paranoia than anything else -- although how he could believe even for a second that Midnighter could be straight after all the flirting going on between the two is beyond me. Anyway, they share a hot kiss [see scan] at the end of the issue. It will be interesting to see how their romance plays out in the stories ahead. Stormwatch 18 was written by Peter Milligan and very well drawn by Will Conrad. Early issues of the comic have been somewhat confusing, but maybe Milligan will -- pardon me -- straighten it all out -- but not Apollo and Midnighter, please!