Review: DC Pride: Better Together hardcover (DC Comics)

Last year I praised DC Comics' Pride special for its relevance, centering many of the adventures of their LGBTQIA+ characters within the ongoing events of the DCU. There is less of that in DC Pride: Better Together, collecting the 2023 special plus additional, but it’s made up for by some pretty exceptional team-ups.

It’s a thrill this book includes perspectives from Phil Jimenez, an artist/creator I’ve enjoyed for decades. In his introduction, Jimenez says he hopes the book “feels like an invitation … to experience life the way queer folk do. We want everyone to celebrate joy, to elevate beauty, to embrace frivolity.” For a comics fan, what fits that intersection of joy and frivolity better than the unlikely or unexpected team-up, especially one that just feels right when you hear it? Crush with Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, Green Lantern Alan Scott with Midnighter and Apollo, Ghost-Maker and Catman(!), Nubia and Steel Natasha Irons, Superman Jon Kent and John Constantine, and more — Better Together gets to the heart of one of the best things about shared universe superhero comics.

[Review contains spoilers]

Among the most notable stories for me was Nadia Shammas and Bruka Jones' teaming (or re-teaming) of Robin Tim Drake and Green Arrow Connor Hawke. There’s considerable, correct meta-context here, in that Tim is perturbed that Connor is suddenly back on the scene but has been hanging out with Robin Damian Wayne instead of Tim; fans of Tim and Connor’s 1990s friendship say, “We’re upset about that too!” Bringing them back together is welcome and momentous, and it’s a credit to DC as well that they blessed DC Pride 2023 with it.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

I also thought Shammas did well in “re-positioning” Tim and Connor’s sexualities such to have made them part of their friendship all along. I don’t want to say “retcon” here, in that I think a case could be made for both of these characters' current interpretations having been valid all along, but Shammas positions it earlier, that Connor came out to Tim and that Connor perhaps recognized Tim’s identity before Tim himself did. This is all equally valid, the kind of thing could just as soon have happened between the panels, and what we need more of as DC interprets and reinterprets their characters.

I appreciate that Grant Morrison’s Earth-36 story starts unapologetically in medias res, as good Grant Morrison stories often do. I admit I had to look back between Multiversity, Superman, and The Green Lantern to orient myself to what came before, but I was set from there. (The reader conceptualizing a sentient Nothing in the story is easy in comparison, par for the course in a Morrison story.) I’m always game for more Multiversity; Morrison teases us with a “To be continued …,” though my guess is that’s more a thematic throwback to Final Crisis than it is an actual indication of something.

Among other thrills, it’s always nice to see Secret Six’s Catman Thomas Blake. I’d a momentary hope this was written Gail Simone; it’s not, instead by Rex Ogle, but he does a fine job. There’s lots of layers to pairing him (superheroically and intimately) with Ghost-Maker, verily the gay Batman; for a volume that overall this year feels less about romance and more simply about team-ups, it’s good there’s at least one story with a steamy ending. (Now get Simone to do a classic Secret Six story!)

Indeed anecdotally I thought we saw fewer stories about characters' gender and sexual identities here and more general team-ups of DC’s LGBTQIA+ characters; these anthologies need both, I think, but again I thought this volume leaned toward the general team-ups. The Jon Kent/Constantine team-up could as easily have appeared in an anthology for either character; if anything I was confused why Constantine was working against Jon in the beginning, but that resolves itself by the end. The Nubia/Steel Natasha Irons team-up is in the same vein; Mildred Louis' Nubia felt surprisingly out of character to me, but her artwork in the story is great.

Both the Circuit Breaker and Spirit World stories unite their Lazarus Planet: Dark Fate and DC Pride stories respectively. Spirit World, aside from protagonist Xanthe Zhou, teams Batgirl Cassandra Cain and John Constantine, and it's a book I’m eager to read; and I thought it auspicious that a few stories like Spirit World don’t begin and end in DC Pride but rather point the audience out to other series. On the other hand, having read two Circuit Breaker stories now, I’m curious where else the character might show up, but this volume doesn’t tell me.

Toward the end of the book is a tribute to Doom Patrol writer Rachel Pollock, on account unfortunately of her recent passing. The contextualizing of Pollock having created the first out transgender superhero at DC is both inspiring and fascinating, a bit of history that, as Tom Peyer notes, has been eclipsed in history by other Doom Patrol runs for some time. I’d be happy to see especially these “collections” reprints of the future DC Pride anthologies use their extra space to explore some of perhaps the less-well known LGBTQIA+ history of DC; how much better if these books could not only spotlight the characters, but also the creators that got us to this point.

Reading DC Pride: Better Together, I’m a year behind on DC’s on-the-stands Pride specials, but I’m pleased to see we’ll do this again next year — more from Phil Jimenez, plus Nicole Maines writing Dreamer again, Circuit Breaker, and Mikaal Tomas, who I guess we’re calling “Blue Starman” now! Always a good time and I’m glad DC is sticking with this.

[Includes original and variant covers, pinups, introduction by Phil Jimenez, Rachel Pollock tributes]