DC Comics will be honoring Pride Month this June with a sweeping initiative that will celebrate the publisher’s LGBTQIA+ heroes with DC Pride, an 80-page anthology celebrating the DC universe’s traditionally marginalized heroes. Additionally, a Crush & Lobo miniseries will follow Lobo’s daughter Crush shortly after her breakup with her girlfriend and the fallout that ensues. And if that wasn’t enough, DC will also be releasing a series of nine Pride-themed variant covers throughout the month.
A litany of comic book writers and artists contributed to Pride, which DC bills as a book “celebrating a parade of LGBTQIA+ characters & creators.” Some of the characters set to make appearances are Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Midnighter, John Constantine, Renee Montoya, Nia Nal’s Dreamer, and many, many more. The addition of Dreamer is an especially big step toward inclusion in comics. The character is an original invention for The CW’s Supergirl series and holds the distinction of being the first transgender superhero on mainstream TV. Pride will be her first foray into the comic book realm.
Crush & Lobo – written by Mariko Tamaki with art from Amancay Nahuelpan – is scheduled to drop June 1 and the eight-issue miniseries is planned to wrap up by January. Just a week later, DC Pride will release, featuring the work of a who’s who list of comic book writers and artists. Check out the cover art for DC Pride and Crush & Lobo, along with some variant covers, below:
Along with the usual adventures one could expect from a DC anthology, Pride will also feature full-page profiles on DC’s LGBTQIA+ characters, a foreword by Love is Love writer Marc Andreyko, pin-ups, and more.
According to DC’s announcement, Crush & Lobo will see Crush “in full-on self-destruct mode! After rage-quitting the Teen Titans and blowing up her relationship with her girlfriend Katie, Crush decides it’s time to finally confront her father in space jail and get her baggage sorted before she wrecks everything.” So it should make for a wild ride when the daughter of the intergalactic bounty hunter, who’s seemingly already going to be in a fragile state, challenges her unpredictable Czarnian father.
But DC has even more Pride offerings for fans in the pipeline. A new graphic novel from Kody Keplinger and Sara Kipin, Poison Ivy: Thorns, which the publisher describes as a “gothic LGBTQIA+ romance,” will also release June 1. And the celebration won’t stop at the end of the month. Mariko Tamaki and Yoshi Yoshitani’s YA graphic novel I Am Not Starfire, which will follow the teenaged LGBTQ daughter of Koriand’r as they try to forge their own path in life and escape from their mother’s shadow. That book is slated for a July 27 release.
This emphasis on inclusion is a very welcome step from DC in an industry that is oftentimes cis-male-dominated and one that continues the publisher’s trend of giving center stage to what some may call “non-traditional” relationships. Just last year one of the more resonating events throughout the DC universe was the marriage of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy in Injustice: Year Zero, and 2020 also gave readers a definitive origin story of the relationship between Wink and the nonbinary Aerie. This new initiative is a welcome sign that DC is going to continue its push to bring overlooked and underrepresented characters and communities to the forefront. Join in DC Comics‘ celebration of Pride Month when DC Pride and Crush & Lobo drop in June.
