Pride Week

When you look at the sheer range and number of original stories being told in comics form today, it’s hard to imagine a better time to be a comics reader. Online and in print, from all around the world, artists and writers are telling stories with their own voices and styles, and there’s so much to choose from that it’s sometimes difficult to know what to read next. With Should I Be Reading… ?, ComicsAlliance hopes to offer you a guide to some of the best original ongoing comics being published today. Imagine a future in which you could easily modify anything you wanted about your body. You could have feathers instead of hair, give yourself wings, enhance your memory, stop sweating in the summer. Imagine a world in which this is totally normal, and you could purchase body modifications as easily as you can grab a cup of coffee. Now imagine that you live in this world where everyone else can get mods, but you can’t. Welcome to Austen’s life.

“It’s like this now.” Those four words are about as DC a phrase as one gets in comics, more than any quote from any comic, because they summarize DC’s approach to all of its worlds and all of its continuities: we want it to be like this, so It’s like this now. It’s why there’s been anywhere from two to five reboots of the universe during the time I’ve been reading comics. It’s why there’s a multiverse, and why any attempt to bury the multiverse never lasts. And that multiverse is how we’ve wound up with Bombshells, the digital-first series based off a collection of statues issued by DC Direct, written by Marguerite Bennett and illustrated by a team that includes Marguerite Sauvage, Wendy Broome, Laura Braga, Stephen Mooney, Ming Doyle, Ant Lucia, and Bilquis Evely.

Kate Kane was the character the Bat-Family needed. An adult woman who takes inspiration from Batman without being his protégé. In other words, his equal, although she still respects him as the guy who was doing it first, and the clear leader of the Bat-franchise. Her military background gives her training in combat and strategy that makes her an asset to the group, as well as a formidable hero on her own. So with this being Pride Week, it's all the more appropriate that we celebrate Kate Kane with a gallery of fan art. It features many gorgeous depictions of her in the iconic Batwoman costume, but also some of her stylish civilian looks, and her baseball-oriented Bombshells incarnation.

Since the dawn of the Silver Age, legacy characters have been a staple of superhero fiction, and having a new character step into a well loved role can open up new opportunities for writers and artists to tell different kinds of stories. In The Replacements, we’ll look back at the notable and not-so-notable heroes and villains to assume some of the most iconic mantles in the superhero genre. This week, we're celebrating Pride Week at ComicsAlliance and changing things up a little bit. Instead of looking at a singular identity and the legacy it created, we're looking at eight distinct LGBTQ+ characters who stepped into iconic superhero roles.

Should queer characters be introduced "organically" into stories? The word started being tossed around in this context last year, after SlashFilm asked asked Kevin Feige about the possibility of including gay characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he said he'd like to find "an organic, meaningful and natural way for that to happen." But is anything in fiction ever done "organically"?

Between the new television cartoon, last year's remarkable CGI movie, the new comics put out by Kaboom and the themed strip collections put out by Fantagraphics to supplement the The Complete Peanuts series, it's been a good time to be a fan of the work of Charles M. Schulz. But in absorbing a lot of this stuff, something leaped out at me that I can't push aside: Peppermint Patty --- formally known as Patricia Reichardt --- should be bisexual.

One of the most notable things about queer characters in comics, especially in the heart of the superheroic mainstream, is their absence, at least on a textual level. Queer subtext, though? There's plenty of that, whether it's same-sex relationships that read as romantic, or in the use of mutants as a metaphor that can be applied to LGBTQ experiences. Which brings us to Generation Hope #9, “Better”, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. It's not an issue explicitly about the LGBTQ experience, but it uses the mutant metaphor to tell a standalone story about real-life events that very much are.

Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with over 75 years of superhero comics behind us right now, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite names in comics in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know! This week we're taking a look at the magical-est magical girls of them all, Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts. Since the '90s, Sailor Moon has been one of the most popular manga and anime series of all time, and this video takes a look at the history of the series, from its inspiration and creation to its production and success to the wide variety of media to which it has been adapted, including a truly shocking number of live action stage musicals.

When you look at the sheer range and number of original stories being told in comics form today, it’s hard to imagine a better time to be a comics reader. Online and in print, from all around the world, artists and writers are telling stories with their own voices and styles, and there’s so much to choose from that it’s sometimes difficult to know what to read next. With Should I Be Reading… ?, ComicsAlliance hopes to offer you a guide to some of the best original ongoing comics being published today. There are a ton of webcomics out there, but not all of them have great art and compelling stories. Even fewer feature queer people of color as main characters. Mooncakes has all of the above, in a modern world with fantasy elements.

There was a time not so long ago when one could count off all the LGBTQ superheroes at Marvel and DC on the fingers of one hand. We’ve seen an increasing number of queer heroes make their debuts in recent years, and a few established heroes have come out as LGBTQ, but the number of queer superheroes at the Big Two in any given month is still sometimes small enough to count on one hand. To celebrate Pride, and the many LGBTQ heroes that have appeared at Marvel and DC over the years, we’ve assembled a panel of ComicsAlliance contributors to hold a fantasy draft. Our writers will take turns building up seven-member dream teams of LGBTQ superheroes from the ranks of both publishers.