The star of Kevin Keller continued to ascend last weekend at Comic-Con International in San Diego, where it was announced that the first openly gay Archie Comics character would graduate from his in-progress miniseries to a full-fledged ongoing series next February. Not only that, Kevin's popularity with readers (and the media) has earned him a spot in the Life With Archie series, which explores the lives of the characters as they extend into the future. In Keller's feature, the character will be married to another man.

Introduced last year in an issue of the Veronica series, Kevin Keller is an aspiring journalist who also wants to follow in his father's footsteps by joining the U.S. armed forces. The character has earned lots of attention and praise for tackling the subjects of gay teens and gays in the military, but as Kevin's creator Dan Parent told ComicsAlliance in May, Archie Comics readers -- like the Riverdale gang themselves -- just simply love the guy for who he is.

Kevin is the all-American teenager who just happens to be gay. We wanted it to be an important factor, yet it doesn't completely define him either. The reaction from the Riverdale gang is basically a non-reaction, because Riverdale is an accepting and tolerant community where it's OK to be gay.


However, Parent told The New York Times that Kevin is not universally beloved, at least in the pages of the Archie comic books.

"Even the most popular kids are not popular with everybody," Mr. Parent said. "There's some adversity he'll have to deal with."

In 2012 an issue of Life With Archie will see Kevin Keller grown-up and married. Archie CEO Jon Goldwater elaborated:

"We needed to figure out how to get Kevin into that book and, frankly, not sidestep the issue," Mr. Goldwater said. "It deals with the fact that he's a gay man and has gay relationships."

[Via Robot 6]