Each June since 2018, it’s been my honor to showcase queer characters and voices for Pleasure Month in DC information, highlighting LGBTQIA+ storylines, historical past and creators bringing their private experiences to the DC Universe and its numerous viewers. Because of numerous supportive editors, my position on the “delight beat” has change into a staple of my annual comics protection and has opened doorways to most of the most optimistic and vibrant folks I’ve ever met within the comics neighborhood. With so a lot of our social establishments selecting to disregard or disregard anybody who doesn’t match a slender definition of a suitable solution to dwell or love, Pleasure Month is not only a celebration, however an integral mechanic of survival. It’s a time when marginalized folks on the sexual and gender spectrum can all examine in to assist each other, and affirm not simply their validity, however their primary proper to existence—an idea which to today will not be at all times taken with no consideration. Some of the significant methods to do that is thru the ability of story: to point out our heroes and icons contending with the identical problems with identification we really feel ourselves.
That is precisely why final 12 months’s DC Pleasure particular felt so necessary to so many people, and why it’s so significant to have it again once more this 12 months. DC Pleasure represents a dedication to acknowledging a far wider illustration of who our heroes could be by showcasing them in an anthology helmed by queer creators themselves. Yearly brings extra room for tales about homosexual heroes, bi heroes, trans heroes, nonbinary heroes. However whilst we see extra variety in our heroes than ever earlier than, it nonetheless doesn’t cowl all people. Till this 12 months, it nonetheless didn’t cowl me.
After I was rising up, I assumed I had invented the phrase “asexual.” I had by no means heard of anybody else who didn’t really feel bodily attraction to anybody, no matter intercourse. I recoiled when Batman strayed from his mission to fall for the charms of Catwoman and cheered as he resisted Poison Ivy. When the media round me insisted that every one males needed, universally, was “only one factor,” I couldn’t for the lifetime of me determine why they needed it. The adults I knew known as me a “late bloomer.” The children have been…much less form. I wouldn’t study there was anybody else on the earth like me till I used to be in my twenties. In my awkward teenagers, after I couldn’t assist however think about that one thing about me was basically damaged, effectively…a hero actually may have helped.
In 2013, DC launched a comic book by Gail Simone and Freddie E. Williams known as The Motion a few workforce of radical younger heroes consultant of backgrounds not often seen in comics. One member of the workforce, the geokinetic Tremor, was a spy who had been embedded there by Amanda Waller to report on their exercise. She was additionally the primary character in DC historical past to determine as asexual.
However whereas Tremor finally defected to the Motion in earnest, her background as an infiltrator into this largely queer neighborhood fostered an disagreeable feeling. As an asexual particular person, I felt anxiousness for years that I someway wasn’t “queer sufficient” for delight—that as a result of I had no sexual emotions, delight in my identification was much less necessary than others. We had no vital rights to combat for, no huge social machine which insisted that our life was immoral. We may simply fade away and fake to not exist. Identical to the world insists we don’t.
In contrast to her former teammates, Tremor has confirmed as much as the previous couple main DC Pleasure displays, as a member of “JLQ”—a brand new workforce of younger, queer DC characters. Positive, she’s primarily within the background, and barely will get greater than a line or two, however she’s there. At one level in ‘Tis the Season to Be Freezin’, Tremor voices her shock that she was even invited. Which, as an individual who has all-too-often heard (incorrectly) that the “A” in “LGBTQIA” stands for “Ally,” felt uncomfortably actual.
What I had at all times longed for, what felt like an unattainable dream, was a hero whose asexuality was a cornerstone of their identification, as a lot as Batwoman or Dreamer’s sexualities and gender identities are to theirs. A hero with a wealthy and sophisticated historical past with sexuality which helped form them into the particular person they’re as a lot as folks like me have needed to take care of a tradition which took sexual attraction as an inalienable a part of the human expertise. Because it seems, a lot to my delight, that does actually describe a fan-favorite hero who’s been a canopy star since 1994: Connor Hawke, son of Inexperienced Arrow.
From his very introduction in Inexperienced Arrow #0, Connor’s relationship to sexuality has been one of many issues that separated him from his often-libidinous father. Steadily performed for comedy as he inherited the mantle of the Inexperienced Arrow, the very enticing Connor Hawke appeared “clueless” when it got here to the advances of ladies round him, failing to understand their delicate advances, and outright rejecting the extra overt. When Roy Harper confronts Connor about this in 2003’s Inexperienced Arrow #32, Connor and Roy have a dialog about his sexuality which, whereas frank, leaves a variety of room for interpretation. Connor insists he feels no must “chase” ladies, however nonetheless experiences romantic emotions.
The concept that one can expertise love, with out feeling bodily want, is one thing that lots of people have a tough time getting their heads round. It’s precisely why, at some point in sixth grade, I felt like I needed to invent the phrase “asexual.” Like me, Connor Hawke had a sense about who he was earlier than he even had the language for it.
In 2011, Oliver Queen obtained aged down a bit, and in consequence, his grownup son disappeared from the comics for some time. However Connor returned after an extended absence final 12 months as a brand new good friend of Damian Wayne’s in Robin. All of it set the stage for “Consider Me,” a Connor Hawke story on this 12 months’s DC Pleasure particular. A narrative written and drawn by Ro Stein and Ted Brandt, two asexual comedian creators themselves. One which, in just some deeply significant pages, offers Connor the decades-delayed reckoning and acknowledgment of his personal sexual identification which he, and an often-ignored inhabitants of comedian readers, have been longing to see in print for an extended, very long time.
Connor Hawke, like a lot of my favourite characters, isn’t only a hero, however a thinker. He’s a deeply considerate determine who would fairly commerce Zen koans than costume-based puns within the warmth of battle. An individual to whom archery isn’t a method to an finish, however a type of meditation. Connor Hawke’s lack of bodily attraction has by no means meant he was damaged, as I as soon as feared about myself. In his religious pursuit of private enlightenment, it’s been an asset. In “Consider Me,” and retroactively by his historical past, Connor Hawke illustrates that, like all types of queerness, asexuality will not be an aberration, however a present. {That a} lack of want for bodily intimacy makes us no much less worthy of affection.
Just by current, by showing to point out others rising up with the identical doubt in themselves that I as soon as had, Connor Hawke is a hero. Connor Hawke is my hero. And as I take my place this 12 months within the DC Pleasure parade as soon as extra, I really feel no disgrace.
DC Pleasure 2022 #1, that includes “Consider Me” by Ro Stein and Ted Brandt, is now obtainable in print and on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.
Alex Jaffe is the creator of our month-to-month “Ask the Query” column and writes about TV, motion pictures, comics and superhero historical past for DCComics.com. Comply with him on Twitter at @AlexJaffe and discover him within the DC Group as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed on this characteristic are solely these of Alex Jaffe and don’t essentially replicate these of DC Leisure or Warner Bros.
