Captain Metropolis
Gender: Male
Orientation: Gay
Publisher: DC
Character Type: Primary
Alignment: Good
AKA: Nelson "Nelly" Gardner
Summary: Captain Metropolis was a founding member of the Minutemen and eventually entered into a secret relationship with fellow teammate, Hooded Justice. The couple kept their relationship a secret due to their need to maintain a positive team image in the 1940s.
Database Links: Watchmen Wiki, Gay League
Important Issues: Captain Metropolis is outed as gay in a letter to Sally Juniper at the end of Watchmen #9.
Just as lesbianism is treated as a straight romantic fetish [by Darwyn Cooke in the Watchmen prequel comic Minutemen], so male homosexuality is treated as an object of abomination. Bizarrely, Cooke appears to think that romanticizing lesbianism has earned him a license to gay bash with impunity. While Moore’s Nelson Gardner/Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice were hardly paragons of virtue, nothing in Watchmen prepares one for the hatchet job done on them in Minutemen. Cooke has rehashed almost every negative gay stereotype in his jaundiced revision of these characters. Nelson is a nincompoop, a publicity whore, a drama queen, a pillow biter; Hooded Justice is a sadist, a murderer, a rapist, a suspected serial paedophile. Cooke has no interest in exploring or understanding these men’s history, relationship and psychology. (Read more)
William Leung, "Who Whitewashes the Watchmen," Hooded Utilitarian, May 2013.