DC announces Pride special and covers

[icon_uk]

Edit: Now with Wonder Woman cover added!






First off, details of the special

DC today announced DC Pride, an 80-page anthology comic featuring LGBTQIA+ characters from across the DC Universe, and Crush & Lobo, a new eight-issue miniseries written by Mariko Tamaki (This One Summer, Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass) with art by Amancay Nahuelpan (Nightwing, Wonder Woman). Crush & Lobo will launch on June 1 and DC Pride will publish on June 8. DC will also publish a series of nine Pride themed variant covers in June, showcasing DC’s top characters as realized by the comic book industry’s leading artists.

DC Pride #1 will feature LGBTQIA+ characters from all corners of DC’s ever-expanding Universe, including cameos by fan favorites Batwoman, Renee Montoya, Alan Scott, Midnighter, Apollo, Extraño, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Constantine, and more. The DC Pride creative teams, and the characters they’re developing stories for, are:

• Batwoman (Kate Kane) by James Tynion IV & Trung Le Nguyen
• Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn by Mariko Tamaki & Amy Reeder
• Midnighter by Steve Orlando & Stephen Byrne
• Flash of Earth-11 (Jess Chambers) by Danny Lore & Lisa Sterle
• Green Lantern (Alan Scott) & Obsidian by Sam Johns & Klaus Janson
• Aqualad (Jackson Hyde) by Andrew Wheeler & Luciano Vecchio
• Dreamer by Nicole Maines & Rachael Stott
• Renee Montoya by Vita Ayala and Skylar Patridge
• Pied Piper by Sina Grace, Ro Stein & Ted Brandt

Additionally, DC Pride #1 will include full-page profiles of DCTV’s LGBTQIA+ characters and the actors who play them, and fans of The CW’s Supergirl will be thrilled to see the first comic book appearance of Dreamer, a trans woman superhero, in a story written by actor Nicole Maines, who plays Nia Nal/Dreamer on Supergirl.

Rounding out the DC Pride anthology is a forward by Marc Andreyko (Love is Love), single-page pin-ups by artists Kris Anka, Sophie Campbell, Mildred Louis, Travis Moore, Nick Robles and Kevin Wada, with more surprises to come! The DC Pride #1 cover is by Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Tamra Bonvillain.

And what we've seen of the covers so far are impressive, though interestingly, of the one's which actually have LGBTQIA+ characters, two are of Harley and Ivy and all three are of lesbian couples.

I wonder if Dreamer will be mainstream DCU canon, or whether this will be a story set in the Arrowverse.

Also, I'll be interested to see if they come out and say that any DC character is asexual, as beyond a single character in Gail Simone's the Movement I can't think of any.




Jen Bartel on a variant of the special itself.




and Yoshi Yoshitani on Crush and Lobo


No offence to ladies who love ladies, you deserve all the representation, but I'd like to have seen an equally romantic looking cover for a couple of guys, maybe in the one's to be announced.

And of course, we have our high profile allies on covers too.

David Talaski on Superman



Kevin Wada on Wonder Girl



And, IMHO saving the best for last (though I might be a tad biased), Travis Moore on Nightwing



and of course, if you choose to take these covers as tacit endorsment of your favourite "not as straight as the powers that be would like you to believe" headcanon then I'm not going to be the one to stop you.

PS Here's Paulina Ganucheau Wonder Woman cover too!

Comments

[lucean]

Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are on again? They really need to figure out what they want that relationship to be.

[deh_tommy]

They’re together until they’re not unless they are where they’re in an open relationship except when they’re monogamous unless otherwise.

Is Ivy back from the dead yet? What happened to Harley and Booster Gold?

[themajesticmoose]

Thankfully that worthless and tedious Booster/Harley nonsense is being ignored like the bad idea it was and the new Harley Quinn writer is going to focus on having Harley and Ivy being an openly queer couple together in the ongoing, which is as it should be

It's the only kind of content that I want to see from DC with these characters

[themajesticmoose]

DC have wisely decided to commit to making their relationship be two queer women who are in love with each other which is what it always should be portrayed as.

No more of that crap about them being "Best Friends". They're now canonically queer and in a romantic relationship with each other

[iamrman]

Unfortunately, it looks like they have forgotten that Wonder Woman is bi.

[icon_uk]

Wonder Woman is getting her own cover, which will be revealed later on, so here's hoping...

[themajesticmoose]

I'll be looking forward to that!

[cyberghostface]

It’d be nice to see Joker on a variant (Batman #109 maybe?).

“No offence to ladies who love ladies, you deserve all the representation, but I'd like to have seen an equally romantic looking cover for a couple of guys, maybe in the one's to be announced.”

This seems to be the case for popular culture in general nowadays for some reason. Unfortunate but not surprising.

[deh_tommy]

Apollo/Midnighter or Aqualad would have been cool to see.

[juniper6]

Lesbians are way less threatening to the patriarchy, apparently.

[janegray]

I think part of the reason that queer women are more willing to fight for it at great personal cost than queer men.

Rebecca Sugar threatened to quit, and essentially self-nuke her whole career, unless they let her have a gay marriage. Noelle Stevenson also put her entire career on the line for the goal of Catradora.

[caivu]

I'm crossing my fingers for some romantic fluff between Kate and Renee. It's been over a year since anyone's done that, despite them still being together. It's been that long since their rekindled relationship has even been mentioned. I'm starving over here!

[themajesticmoose]

That would be wonderful!

I love Kate and Renee together as a couple and it has been too long since we got to see them together

[crinos]

the lack of Bunker is disappointing. Bunker was probably the only thing about the new 52 Titans I actually liked.

[gnarll]

Sometimes, I just think "How far we've come!"

[deh_tommy]

Wait, isn’t Lobo male?

[thezmage]

Lobo isn't in that picture. That's his daughter Crush

[mcbangle]

The Harley/Ivy variant cover is gorgeous, and I do love that Nightwing cover. His pose is so joyful and acrobatic and him!

[jeyl]

"No offence to ladies who love ladies, you deserve all the representation, but I'd like to have seen an equally romantic looking cover for a couple of guys, maybe in the one's to be announced."

Oh, come on! Let women be dominant in one thing in the industry!

[bruinsfan]

Dominant is one thing, but exclusive representation rankles a bit when the subject is same sex relationships. It feels like the message of the event is "celebrate pride and diversity, but only if it's two hot chicks straight guys can drool over!"

[cyberghostface]

Yeah those gay men are really dominant in the media. They're all over the place. Talk about missing the point.

[leahandillyana]

If anyone made a special focused on men loving men, for every queer man buying it you'd get at least two fangirl customers. That said, Marvel's pride special has more equal gender proportions with characters featured.

[leahandillyana]

Why is Crush with an OC and not Djinn on her cover? :/
*I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the Green Lantern's issues being adressed rather than another story consisting solely of back clapping, even if it's unlikely*

[kamino_neko]

Oh, is Crush/Djinn canon (as a past thing)...I wasn't sure if I was reading into it last time I was reading Teen Titans, since Djinn/Damien seemed more blatantly end-game (since Djinn presents closer to Damien's age than Crush's).

[themajesticmoose]

This and the Harley Quinn ongoing book are the first new comics that DC have announced that I've actually gotten excited for in quite some tme.

I couldn't care less about Death Metal, Infinite Frontier or any of the other overrated event nonsense but this is absolutely the kind of thing that I want to see out of the comics I read and the kind of content that I consider to be worth spending my time and money on. I can't wait to buy both this anthology and the Crush and Lobo miniseries when that gets started.

This is a fantastic line up of talent they have working on this anthology as well and the fact that it's featuring nearly every single DC character that I love and care about means it's going to be a must buy for me