From Girl Detective To Gay Meme
Toni Gayle is one of a variety of good girl characters from the Golden Age who back then were usually just into innocent teenage mischievousness. Beginning in Young King Cole from Novelty Press, she was a model whose father Gregory was a renown police detective that was assaulted by a killer called the Ape who pins the blame on reformed criminal Biff Muggson. Toni decides to hunt for the real killer and gets the ingenious plan to snoop around dressed in her father's clothes which were way to stocky for her. The Ape calls her ruse pretty fast, even though Toni brings him to justice. From this point on Toni became a girl detective aided by Biff as they rounded up murderers and other criminals all around the globe in the comic of Guns Against Gangsters. Even her father Gregory got his own feature in the same title under the handle Gunmaster because of his expertise in firearms, even though he seemed to lose a little weight between his first appearance and getting his own adventures, plus having his eyes fixed so he didn't need glasses anymore. After a few more cases in the pages of 4 Most Comics, Star Publications bought up Novelty's characters and recast our intrepid heroine into a yet another pretty girl, from competent sleuth to modeling sweetheart. She drops Biff for a boy more her age with the unfortunate name of Butch Dykeman, and they went on to typical Archies-themed escapades. For reasons never revealed, Toni's last name went from Gayle to Gay, and her father the former Gunmaster was just now referred to as Mr. Gay. This is during a time when the term gay wasn't used for referring to LGBTQ individuals, nevertheless this did carry over into modern day internet culture as a meme. When Tony and Butch's feature was simultaneously running in Star's comic of Popular Teen-Agers, an issue had a story where Miss Gay is in a gym being told by teacher to "Straighten up Miss Gay! Way up straight!" as she is stretching. The teacher than gives the boy named Butch a playful smack on the backside instructing him to "Straighten up, Dykeman!". Anyone not being given the context of this comical couple's backstory would think that the teacher was a homophobe performing some kind of conversion therapy. Going from Gayle to Gay, Toni's journey of being a daring Nancy Drew to a Veronica clone was shameful enough, even though if they had remade her as a gay icon along the lines of Jem or She-Ra would've been met with an immediate halt back in the close-minded 1950s.
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