LGBTQA Theme: Coagula

[alliterator]

Joe: How did you go about creating Kate Godwin, a.k.a. Coagula?

Rachel: I was told that the current artist needed a break and I should do a one off story that could be done with a different artist. And I wasn’t pleased with the idea because I always tended to think in large story arcs. So I had to think of something and I came up with this ridiculous villain called Codpiece. And then somehow I just decided without even really thinking about it to introduce this transsexual lesbian superhero.

At the time I was involved in transgender activism and someone asked me if Kate Godwin was based on me and I said to answer the question, she’s based on a couple of friends of mine. But it wasn’t this big decision like I was trying to have this crusade. I just thought it was a cool thing to do.
-- Joe Corallo: Rachel Pollack – The ComicMix Interview



Kate Godwin is a transwoman sex worker who becomes a member of the Doom Patrol during Rachel Pollack's run. Unlike with Neil Gaiman's Wanda character, Kate really isn't treated any differently and, in fact, she seems perfectly fine with herself and the way she is. (In fact, when a later villain called the False Memory gives her fake memories of being abused, she is livid.)

The first issue she appears in is Doom Patrol #70, which also introduces the supervillain the Codpiece. Yes, it's that issue, where the Codpiece has a mechanical fix for his, ahem, size issue:

(By the way, that bandaged couple is George and Marion, the Bandage People, two other characters Rachel Pollack created.)

Anyway, we're introduced to Kate showing off for her friends and telling them her origin story:




Finally, Kate comes across the Codpiece's rampage and decides to do something.



After that, George and Marion invite Kate to join the Doom Patrol. Kate/Coagula would become a main character during Pollack's run, but wouldn't appear afterwards. When she did show up, in John Arcudi's Doom Patrol run, it was just to kill her off, which was a shame. Hopefully, the next season of the streaming show will use her and they'll bring her back in the comics, too.

Comments

[silverhammerman]

The older I get the more i think it’s a shame that Coagula didn’t really appear beyond Pollack’s (apparently never reprinted) run. Admittedly, that does mean that we’ve been spared a couple decades of boring dudes having no idea how to write a trans lesbian, let alone a sex worker, but had she become a stable of the series it might have lead Doom Patrol in a much different and more radical direction than the varying degrees of traditionalism we got leading up to Gerard Way, and even his run is deeply rooted in nostalgia.

[alliterator]

While Pollack's run was never collected, it's all on Comixology right now, so there's that. I did hear something about it being collected but I guess DC decided not to do that for some reason. (It's kind of like all of the Swamp Thing runs after Alan Moore or the Animal Man runs after Grant Morrison -- although those were eventually collected.)

[icon_uk]

They killed Coagula? Good grief, how shitty a message does THAT send?

I liked her, I thought her powers wre actually kinda cool, and she herself was an interesting character.

I think she was probably the first "trans and at peace about that" character I'd come across (and only something like the second trans character at all, as the 80/90's were not big on such thing.

[alliterator]

Yeah, Arcudi had Dorothy accidentally cause an explosion which killed Kate and put her into a coma, just so Cliff could have more angst.

[themajesticmoose]

I choose to believe that and everything else from that run never happened

I mean

Would anything of value be lost if that entire mess of a run was retconned away?

[themajesticmoose]

I love Coagula so much

It's so rare to see decent representation in any medium but especially comics of characters who are queer or trans or who are sex workers...so seeing a character who is a queer trans sex worker who is written as this amazing vibrant alive person and not as a victim or a monster or a joke is just so beautiful to witness

I keep hoping she'll join the main cast of the Doom Patrol tv show.

I would also love to see her return in the comics though only if she's written by a writer who could be trusted with her. The only person I can think of off the top of my head that I'd let near her character would be Marguerite Bennett