June is celebrated as the Pride Month to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan which was a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States. And today, DC announced DC Pride, an 80-page anthology comic featuring LGBTQIA+ characters from across the DC Universe, and Crush & Lobo, a new eight-issue miniseries written by Mariko Tamaki (This One Summer, Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass) with art by Amancay Nahuelpan (Nightwing, Wonder Woman).
Crush & Lobo will launch on 1 June and DC Pride will publish on 8 June. DC will also publish a series of nine Pride themed variant covers in June, showcasing DC’s top characters as realized by the comic book industry’s leading artists.
DC Pride #1 will feature LGBTQIA+ characters from all corners of DC’s ever-expanding Universe, including cameos by fan favorites Batwoman, Renee Montoya, Alan Scott, Midnighter, Apollo, Extraño, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Constantine, and more. The DC Pride creative teams, and the characters they’re developing stories for, are:
- Batwoman (Kate Kane) by James Tynion IV & Trung Le Nguyen
- Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn by Mariko Tamaki & Amy Reeder
- Midnighter by Steve Orlando & Stephen Byrne
- Flash of Earth-11 (Jess Chambers) by Danny Lore & Lisa Sterle
- Green Lantern (Alan Scott) & Obsidian by Sam Johns & Klaus Janson
- Aqualad (Jackson Hyde) by Andrew Wheeler & Luciano Vecchio
- Dreamer by Nicole Maines & Rachel Stott
- Renee Montoya by Vita Ayala and Skylar Patridge
- Pied Piper by Sina Grace, Ro Stein & Ted Brandt
Additionally, DC Pride #1 will include full-page profiles of DCTV’s LGBTQIA+ characters and the actors who play them, and fans of The CW’s Supergirl will be thrilled to see the first comic book appearance of Dreamer, a trans woman superhero, in a story written by actor Nicole Maines, who plays Nia Nal/Dreamer on Supergirl.
Rounding out the DC Pride anthology is a forward by Marc Andreyko (Love is Love), single-page pin-ups by artists Kris Anka, Sophie Campbell, Mildred Louis, Travis Moore, Nick Robles and Kevin Wada, with more surprises to come! The DC Pride #1 cover is by Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Tamra Bonvillain.
The Pride themed variant covers showcasing DC’s leading characters through the month of June include:
- Batman #109 Pride variant cover by Jen Bartel
- Crush & Lobo #1 Pride variant cover by Yoshi Yoshitani
- DC Pride #1 Pride variant cover by Jen Bartel
- Harley Quinn #4 Pride variant cover by Kris Anka
- Nightwing #81 Pride variant cover by Travis G. Moore
- Superman #32 Pride variant cover by David Talaski
- Teen Titans Academy #4 Pride variant cover by Stephen Byrne
- Wonder Girl #2 Pride variant cover by Kevin Wada
- Wonder Woman #773 Pride variant cover by Paulina Ganucheau
But DC’s Pride plans aren’t limited to June! Crush & Lobo by Tamaki and Nahuelpan, spinning out of the pages of Teen Titans Academy, will debut with a cover by Kris Anka, a Pride variant cover by Yoshi Yoshitani, a 1:25 ratio variant by Christian Ward, plus an exclusive Dan Hipp team variant for participating retailers. In this new eight-issue miniseries publishing between June 2021 and January 2022, Crush, daughter of the Czarnian bounty hunter Lobo, is 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. Like father, like daughter?
DC will also publish GLAAD Media Award-nominated Suicide Squad: Bad Blood by Tom Taylor (Injustice: Gods Among Us) and Bruno Redondo (Nightwing) on 27 April, DC’s gothic LGBTQIA+ romance Poison Ivy: Thorns by Kody Keplinger (The DUFF) and Sara Kipin on 1 June, and Mariko Tamaki and Yoshi Yoshitani’s highly anticipated YA graphic novel, I Am Not Starfire, will publish on 27 July as part of the publisher’s overall Pride plans in 2021.
