Hero of the beach: Flex Mentallo at the end of the worlds

Abstract

This article explores the four-part mini-series Flex Mentallo, written by Grant Morrison with art by Frank Quitely, and published by DC Comics in 1996. With reference to queer theory, comic book history and the culture of male bodybuilding, it argues that Flex the series, and Flex the character, are more fascinating, rich and fundamentally ‘queer’ for their refusal either of an unambiguously straight or gay reading. It celebrates the multiple origins, possible explanations and fluid identities of this narrative in relation to the closure and censorship imposed at various times since the 1950s on the superhero genre, and suggests that the series may have led, in turn, to an opening up of alternate worlds and timelines in mainstream DC Comics continuity.

Keywords:

• superheroes
• queer
• comics
• bodybuilding
• Silver Age
• Crisis on Infinite Earths
• Grant Morrison

Notes

1. The text pages in Flex Mentallo, the miniseries, imply that there was a ‘Golden Age’ Flex prior to the one we see in the actual story; indeed, Flex's first cover in Doom Patrol #42, with its subtitle ‘The Sensational Character Find of 1991’, deliberately parodies the debut cover of Robin, the Boy Wonder in Detective Comics #38.

2. There seems to be general agreement that the Silver Age began with the publication of Showcase #4, featuring the new Flash, in October 1956, and ended with the comics which saw Robin leave Batman for college (Batman #217) and the Green Lantern begin to tackle ‘social’ issues (Green Lantern #76). See Sassienie 1984, and Jones and Jacobs 1997.

3. Most notably Batman: Arkham Asylum, with its painfully self-aggrandising subtitle ‘A Serious House on Serious Earth’.

4. In fact, unlike the Batman of Miller's cover, Flex does not quite appear in true silhouette; in an absurd touch, his leopardskin pants are glowing orange against the night sky.

5. Jason Craft's Annotated Flex Mentallo notes that ‘this transvestite character resembles Lord Fanny from Morrison's series The Invisibles’; in my reading, there is no way of knowing for sure whether the character is a cross-dressed man or a ‘real’ woman. See The Annotated Flex Mentallo, http://www/cwrl.utexas.edu/~craft/flex.html, n.p.

6. Again, there may be a self-parodic nod here to Morrison's own ‘Serious House on Serious Earth’.