A Little Housekeeping Here – And The New DC Pride
Attending to a little long overdue blog housekeeping. The right hand column of the blog page has been static for far too long. I’ve updated all the little graphics about my current interests in Books, Comics, Music, and Home Video. Not that it’s of interest to anyone but if something really catches my attention I feel like giving the artists a shout out.
DC Pride this Pride month instead of several stories by different LGBT artists and writers, is a single story told by several by different LGBT artists and writers. Very well done.
This year, for its fifth anniversary spotlighting DC’s LGBTQIA+ Super Heroes, the DC Pride anthology transforms from a collection of short stories into a singular story arc of interweaving narratives told by comic book creators Tim Sheridan, Vita Ayala, Josh Trujillo, Skylar Patridge, A.L. Kaplan, Max Sarin, and more.
DC Pride 2025 brings DC’s heroes together when a century-old tavern, the center of queer life in Gotham City, unexpectedly announces its imminent closure. It’s a huge loss to the community, and generations of patrons return to pay respects to a space they’ve endowed with entire lifetimes of memories, wishes and dreams—including Alan Scott, the Green Lantern. Alan returns, for one last time, to the place he fell for his first love, Johnny Ladd, to touch the wall on which they carved the symbol of their love, to remember the days before everything went to hell for them…and to say goodbye.
But love is a kind of magic, and, in Alan’s experience, magic can take on a life of its own. Before anyone knows it’s happening, heroes, villains, and civilians alike from across the DCU with powerful ties to this mysterious place—the Question, Midnighter and Apollo, Harley Quinn, Green Lantern Jo Mullein, Bunker, Connor Hawke, and Blue Snowman among them—find themselves spirited away to strange, alternate worlds where everything they ever thought they wanted can be theirs…but at what cost?
I especially like the new female The Question character. Initially yet another Steve Ditko Ayn Rand homage like Mr. A. The Question was the basis for Alan Moore’s Rorschach, who Moore created after the copyright owners found out Moore intended to kill off The Question in Watchmen. Like a lot of characters who were able to escape the clutches of Ditko’s abject Rand worship, it evolved into an actually interesting character.
Currently, and relevant to DC Pride, the character is now embodied by Renee Montoya who was once a detective in the Major Crimes unit in the Gotham City Police Department. After being outed as a lesbian and framed for murder, she resigned from the police force and began operating as The Question after the original Question was killed.
“DC Pride 2025 is a celebration of life, love and the power of community—even and especially in uncertain times,” said Tim Sheridan, writer of the GLAAD Media Award-nominated series Alan Scott: The Green Lantern. “The roster of talent shaping this story is as epic as the story itself—so all I can say is buckle up for big action, bigger fun, and the biggest stakes yet. This book, as it has been in years past, is a way to reach out to our community and remind them we’re all in this together.”
So…all in all, another excellent edition of DC Pride. I’m so grateful I lived to see a world where characters like these could exist.
