Author’s Note
A brief note: DC PRIDE 2024 takes place in the contemporary DC universe, the details and machinations of which I am largely unaware, so my apologies if some of the specifics below are incorrect!
DC has been releasing their DC PRIDE queer anthologies since 2001, predominantly to celebrate Pride month but also to extoll the efforts of comic book creatives to broaden the spectrum of those behind the masks, to help inspire and comfort all, especially teens.
The latest iteration of these — DC PRIDE 2024 — features the gamut of familiar young queer tales: portrayals of seeking comfortable spaces, finding belonging, having altruistic mentors or guides, celebrations of ‘ordinary day in a queer superhuman’s life’, facing persecution from bigots and homophobic and religious zealots and so on.
A few examples:
Gretchen Felker-Martin’s words and Claire Roe’s angular pens detail coupled-up Poison Ivy and Janet from HR navigate a planetary package pick-up that goes sideways when they encounter universe-hopping fundamentalist hate mongers!
Steel awkwardly attends her ex — Traci 13 — Pride party! Writer Jamila Rowser and artist Oneill Jones drag John Constantine into the drama!
Jarrett Williams and DJ Kirkland give a glimpse into an afternoon with Jon Kent (the new Superman), Ray (the new Ray)and friends as they roam around A-Town! (I can’t help but think of my Chicago current neighborhood Andersonville, affectionally called Aville.)
And others that are also noteworthy — including Al Ewing scripting some combative fun and downtime relaxing for Starman — but you can discover them for yourself.
There’s little something for everyone, all energetically and vibrantly told via DC characters young and old. I especially enjoyed how each pin-up is spaced through the anthology to sequentially comprise the colors of Pride flag. It’s a great book to hand to any teens that may appreciate some solace that, while sometimes couched in fantasy, is still grounded.
(I will note that, if you aren’t up-to-date with some of the more modern characters, you may find yourself somewhat lost due to the number of new-to-you heroes as often there aren’t enough pages to catch you up, but just roll with it!)
However, if you’re older and have encountered many of these narratives before, they can begin to feel a bit well-worn. While I certainly appreciate these endeavors, enthrall in the imagination and deft artwork and writerly craft, and am thankful that others will find comfort in them, it’s the reflective stories that resonate with me more, and why Phil Jimenez’s auto-biographical contribution SPACES particularly struck me.
If you aren’t familiar with Phil Jimenez’s work, he’s a long-time DC artist and writer and a comic book fan even longer. He even came out publicly for the first time via his mini-series TEMPEST.
SPACES features Jimenez recounting his youth, young him all full of imagination and yearning for idyllic and fantastical islands that were bewildering but comforting. It was Paradise Island, full of characters from WONDER WOMAN including an absolutely wild Hippolyta, but also detached from the isle of Themyscrira. It was a place of joy and weirdness, where Amazon women rode huge rabbits and everything and everyone was unbridled. (Well, except for the rabbits.)
In time, Jimenez finds himself drawing WONDER WOMAN, then penning her and drawing Themyscrira and he gets to revel in the spaces and utopian ideals that inspired him so. As time goes on, the utopias shift and change, and he changes with them in the ways that life shapes us all, how the spaces are pieced together shift, and how you look at them and live within them changes over time.
All of the above? Conveyed in under ten pages.
It’s also worth noting that alongside DC PRIDE 2024, DC has released another Pride anthology, one extolling much-missed Rachel Pollack and her contributions to the DC universe. The anthology — DC PRIDE: A CELEBRATION OF RACHEL POLLACK — includes a story from her DOOM PATROL run, as well as THE GEEK one-shot she did with Mike Allred, all in one convenient place!
DC PRIDE 2024 #1 is available via your local comic book store or can be digitally purchased through all of the normal online storefronts.
If you want to read more? The prior DC PRIDE anthologies are available through DC’s website with a free DC Universe account!
Addendum
I will admit that, given that I bought the Babs Tarr variant cover of DC PRIDE 2024 featuring Harley and Ivy glowing in each others arms, I was really looking forward to a somewhat older Harlivy ‘be gay do crimes’ lark. While we do get a Harley and Ivy tale, it’s a preview of the upcoming Y/A graphic novel THE STRANGE CASE OF HARLEEN AND HARLEY. It’s not exactly what I had expected, but enjoyable nonetheless!