Comic book publishing giant DC Comics has captured the interest of fans with a new pledge: the publishing label will release an all-queer version of the Justice League later this year, should fans show enough interest.
DC, the label behind the iconic heroes Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, made the announcement as part of a new reader engagement campaign designed to help the publishing house steer its output.
Dubbed the “DC Round Robin,” readers will vote on a number of potential titles they want from the company with the winner hitting newsstands later this year.
One of those potential titles: Justice League Queer. A brief plot synopsis describes the story as “Eight young queer heroes investigate a series of monstrous manifestations around the world and discover that something much more terrifying is coming.”
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Color us interested.
Related: DC Comics announces Pride anthology to celebrate its LGBTQ characters
While online interest has already begun to swell around the possibility of a new, queer superhero team, Justice League Queer still has some stiff competition. The potential book is one of 16 possible titles under consideration by DC.
Others include Green Lanterns: Underworld On Fire, a team-up between popular Green Lantern characters Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner; Suicide Squad Seven, in which Harley Quinn will lead a band of super-criminals against an evil cult; Paws Off the Justice League, which would follow the adventures of “super pets,” the animal companions of Superman, Batman, et. al. and Robins, a story in which all the former Robins (and in the comics, there are a few) meet up to tell stories about their adventures.
The first round of voting has already begun, with Justice League Queer squaring off against Robins in a tournament-style match-up. At the time of this writing, Robins has a significant lead, with 53.8% of the vote. Five days remain in the campaign, however, so that may yet change.
Interested fans can take part in the polling on Twitter via the official DC Comics Twitter account.
The possibility of Justice League Queer follows DC’s increasing commitment to diversify its comic book titles and their subsequent spinoffs.
DC made history with the debut of Batwoman in 2019, the first superhero series to feature a lesbian lead character. The forthcoming Green Lantern Corps. series will also feature Alan Scott, an openly gay version of the Green Lantern. Last month, the publisher also announced a special Pride anthology featuring stories about its LGBTQ characters.
Mandrake
Wait till ‘Million Moms” hears about this!
ted
It’s really just 1 person, Monica Cole.
basils_Herald
On the one hand, I want to make everything queer.
On the other hand, I’d rather see new queer heroes made by queer people personally (and is this just an attempt to make queer people rebrand characters for DC?)
caris
Well, it sounds like (despite the illustration with the article) like they are using establish characters who are queer (Batwoman, Obsidian, etc.), new queer characters or some combination of the two as opposed to just making characters queer just for this (not that I couldn’t see them having a universe where all the character’s are qureer in the old pre-Crisis multiverse).
bivector
Oh god, a little too on the nose. A better approach is like the one Young Avengers took, where everybody ended up all over the Kinsey scale without making a big deal about it:
Prodigy, Wiccan, Hulkling and their love triangle, plus Kate Bishop (bi), America Chavez (gay), and the heteroflexible Noh-Varr and magically genderfluid Loki make the team super queer, though they’ve got a couple of other ostensibly hetero teammates. That feels like better, more realistic representation to me.
Prinny
Kate is straight noh-varr is bisexual
bivector
Oh yup, I stand corrected
little Alex
Actually, can I ask where the picture that accompanied this article come from? I tried googling it, but nothing is coming up.
greekboy
Yeah, one million moms are like gay men, always inflating their size…all 60,000 of them
Pxlforge
I feel like this is going to end up being a cruel April Fools Day joke.