1 / 10 Batman Chronicles: VOL 02

<strong>Batman under scrutiny</strong>: Prior decades have seen an uproar about LGBT content in comics arising long before anyone even thought to put a gay character in a comic book. Thanks to the Lavender scare and<a href="http://www.bookish.com/authors/fredric-wertham/3a37c163-f47c-41d4-a3e7-ce0468337a4c" target="_blank"> Fredric Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent"</a> in the 1950s, adversaries of the medium had turned their sights on Batman and Robin. In the ongoing battle against violence and sexual themes in comics, opponents assumed that this crime-fighting duo were "homosexual lovers." The public outcry and eventual intervention from the U.S. Senate meant that mainstream publishers had to adhere to the Comics Code Authority, a list of strict rules banning just about everything from profanity to vampires. For those carrying the seal on their comics, any mention of LGBT culture was forbidden until 1989.