A clear cut case of how Western society currently condones the most pernicious forms of censorship under copyright regimes while deluding themselves into thinking that robust free speech is alive and well.
Maybe the artist will have the ability to stand up to the entertainment conglomerates - but why should he have to spend the money and the resources in the first place? Most likely, the speech will be chilled. This is Barbie redux I'm afraid.
This is also a perfect example of how the "parody" exception to copyright schemes are simply unworkable and why courts must adopt Levine's First Rule of Law. Is the Batman work a parody of the characters' sexuality? Or is it supposed to be a "serious" "derivative work" wherein Batman exists in an alternate reality where he just happens to be gay? Or is it more of a comment on homosexuality itself rather than Batman - with our hero only being requisitioned to comment on a larger topic in society?
The answer: Who can possibly know?? But judges certainly should not be able to decide issues of substantive law based on their personal subjective interpretations of artistic works.
And let me once again respond to the unimpressive argument that true censorship must stem from governmental actions rather than private disputes - if the first two branches of government create and enforce laws that enable private citizens to drag others into courts (the third branch of government) to punish them (or drain their resources) for speech that they would otherwise be free to articulate on their own, then it is every bit a case of governmental censorship than if the government were to directly craft a law fining people directly for portraying heterosexual heroes as homosexual. Transferring this function to a private proxy with discretion on when to sue does not change the fundamental character of the censorship via governmental action. The "governmental action" in this case is the passage and enforcement of laws conferring artificial "rights" on one group of people and enabling them to stifle expression of others who wish to comment on the works of the first group.
Outrageous...
[Tyranny of Copyright Part VII here.]