Tag Archives: Philip Sevy

DC Pride 2025 is an ambitious comic that takes the time to dig into the characters’ individual hopes, fears, and dreams

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DC Pride 2025 #1 is a little different from the previous installments of DC Pride in that it’s not a collection of short stories featuring LGBTQ+ DC Comics characters, but is a single narrative centered around a gay bar that Alan Scott frequented in the 1930s and told predominantly from the POV of a new character named Ethan, who is a trans military veteran that ends up caught up a kind of multiversal/elemental saga. I applaud the scope of this comic book, which has big jam session energy as different characters end up in different pocket realities based on wishes they made at the gay bar or graffiti they scrawled. We get Apollo and Midnighter living in 1950s domestic bliss courtesy of Sam Maggs and Derek Charm, a single, psychiatric girl boss Harley Quinn from Maya Houston, Max Sarin, and Marissa Louise ; and a gorgeous sapphic romance between Jo Mullein and Nubia from Houston, Vita Ayala, and Vincent Cecil to name a few. The reading effect is like jumping from comic to comic and look at paths not trodden with some iconic queer characters and a few new or not so iconic ones.

As Tim Sheridan, Giulio Macaione, and Emilio Pilliu Alan Scott-centric frame story shows, fighting supervillains and having superpowers is a metaphor for being queer in DC Pride 2025. It might be tempting to give up and lie low, especially with the United States’ hard turn to fascism, and homophobia and transphobia promoted by folks in power, but Alan Scott, Ethan, and their companions’ actions in the comic act as a clarion call to resistance. The stuff with the Crimson Flame and Scott having his own Red Lantern is a little Geoff Johnsian for my taste, but it’s so cool to watch Alan Scott have a Sailor Moon type transformation sequence and return into action to help save the next generation of queer heroes symbolized by Ethan. I love Macaione’s use of greens to show a possible, idyllic future for Scott and a non-Red Lantern/Russian spy Johnny Ladd, but it’s a happiness based on a lie like the other possible futures in the book.

However, DC Pride 2025 isn’t all serious action and has a lot of humor and playfulness. Jude Ellison S. Doyle and Alex Moore recontextualize Golden Age Z-list Wonder Woman villain Blue Snowman coming to terms with their gender fluidity alongside nonbinary superhero Envoy in one vignette. I love how they poke fun at the restrictions of the gender binary using the classic tropes of a superhero brawl, and how even well meaning cisgender people can be just plain annoying at times. It’s so cool seeing this kind of story and voice in a mainstream, corporate comic showing that nonbinary characters don’t just have to be righteous heroes, but can be kind of messy too. DC Pride 2025 really hits the spectrum of queer identities, including asexuality with Connor Hawke getting a short story where he resists his father’s reputation as a womanizer and just wants to live his own life. I have to give a special shout out to Philip Sevy’s art in this short sequence, which seems like it’s right out of the late 1990s period where he was member of the JLA. Both the visual and character variety of DC Pride 2025 makes it an engaging read, and the book is a testament to the active work that DC Comics has done to cultivate LGBTQ+ characters in the past decade or so. (I need a monthly Midnighter and/or Apollo book though.)

After a wild and wacky cosmic adventure set in the DC Multiverse, DC Pride 2025 wraps up with a beautiful nonfiction story from Jenny Blake and Sara Soler about Blake coming out as a transgender woman earlier this year. It has gorgeous soft lines and a refreshing color palette to go with Jenny Blake’s honest and humorous script about how old comics about Clark Kent switching genders had an influence on her own gender identity journey. I love how Soler inserts different DC characters into the panel to blur the line between fantasy and non-fiction with Blake’s most famous co-creation Black Lightning making an appearance as well as transgender superheroine Dreamer, who shares coffee with Blake. The story shows that you’re never too old to be your authentic self and hints at a longer graphic memoir, which I hope Jenny Blake gets to realize at DC or elsewhere.

DC Pride 2025 is an ambitious comic with summer crossover energy that tells an epic story with DC’s LGBTQ+ characters while still taking time to dig into their individual hopes, fears, and dreams. It’s a showcase of queer representation on the page and on the issue’s creative teams, and Blake and Sara Soler’s memoir is a beautiful coda and rallying cry to continue to be queer and fearless in an increasingly dark and hateful world.

Story: Vita Ayala, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Maya Houston
Story: Sam Maggs, Tim Sheridan, Josh Trujillo, Jenny Blake
Art: Don Aguillo, Vincent Cecil, Derek Charm, A.L. Kaplan, Giulio Macaione
Art: Emilio Pilliu, Max Sarin, Philip Sevy, Sara Soler, Alex Moore, Skyler Patridge
Colors: Eren Angiolini, Jordie Bellaire, Triona Farrell, Marissa Louise
Letters: Aditya Bidikar, Frank Cvetkovic, Lucas Gattoni, Ariana Maher, Morgan Martinez, Jodie Troutman
Story: 8.9 Art: 9.3 Overall: 9.1 Recommendation: Buy

DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Purchase: Zeus Comics – Kindle

Dan Wickline and Philip Sevy Freeze You this December

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Writer Dan Wickline and artist Phillip Sevy team up for The Freeze, an all-new science fiction series coming this December from Image Comics and Top Cow Production.

The entire human population is frozen by a mysterious global event…all except Ray, and only he has the power to unfreeze them. Now—with the fate of the world in his hands—he must figure out what is going on, how to set things right again, and answer the question: does everyone deserve to be saved?

The Freeze #1 (Diamond code: OCT180028) hits stores on Wednesday, December 5th. The final order cutoff deadline for comics retailers is Monday, November 12th.

Review: This Nightmare Kills Fascists

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There has been an awakening in the public arena due to the 2016 American Presidential election. An election the world is still reeling from the ramifications. Artists, especially those who operate in the comic realm, were (and are) particularly incensed. This cognizance of international politics is very present in the excellent anthology This Nightmare Kills Fascists.

In “Diane The Hunter” the proliferation of violence on women is explored, as a pair of assailants, walk right into a “wolf trap”. In “Thermonuclear Hunger Strike,” a worst-case scenario of what the world will be under President Trump is played out, with an assassin taking apart the oligarchy that is left. In “The Pledge,” a young man despite his girlfriend’s pleas pledges a fraternity who is known for their misogyny and racism. During a hazing ritual they unleash an ancient evil. In “Dear Jane,” a woman who wakes up from a sleep undergoes a carefully constructed game, one that is the stuff of nightmares. In “Black Friday,” a man’s impulsive actions to leads to death of a stranger ad the one person he would kill for.

In “This Land,” America is reimagined as a country drawn along racial lines, literally. A family gets into a dangerous game of fox and hound, as a band of racist vigilantes chase them down, ending in the bloodiest way. In “Yellow,” a woman who has been emotionally abused by her husband over time, eventually hits turning point, one which she redefines her sense of self worth.  In “A Forest,” a man who was protesting deforestation, gets killed by something, not from this world. In “Devil Daddy,” a young lady who was raped by Satan himself, reclaims her power.

In “Long Division,” one woman who is helping to build the wall along the Mexican border, becomes part of it most horrific section, one where torture of American becomes legal. In “Thank God,” the evils of taking the Bible literally is played in this one high school. In “Do Unto Others,” the demagogue virtues of religious freedom is explored, ending up in just desserts. In “Fury From The Deep,” the dangers of fracking is brilliantly told and just how those who run in the industry has no limits on the evils they will do. In “Office Party,” a Senator who opposed heath care gets a Scrooge like visit, which leaves him not changed but horrified.

In “The Abyss Of Observation,” a writer’s observations about the Siege of Sarajevo, is played in dramatic fashion. In “The Price Of Fashion,” a young lady obsessions with clothes, proves deadly for one of her lovers. In “One In Heart and  mind,” a woman’s faith is shaken once she finds out exactly who her pastor is.

Overall, an engrossing anthology which pulls you into every page and highlights each artist and writer at the top of their game. The stories by each writer shows their depth at wielding a meaningful story while remembering to entertain. The art by each artist displays their synchronicity with each story providing readers with depth and warmth. Altogether, a book which means to stir the incendiary nature of every good human being. It not only does that but makes them aspire to higher.

Story: Vita Ayala, Justin Jordan, Ryan Ferrier, Michael Wernke, Erica Schultz, Forrest Helvie, Tyler Chin-Tanner, Ryan Lindsay, Matt Miner, Tini Howard, Christopher Sebela, John Bivens, Dave Ebersole, Joe Corrallo, Andrew Shaw, Eric Palicki, Fabian Lelay, Ryan Cady
Art: Eric Zawadzki, Crees Hyunsung Lee, Kelly Williams, Juan Castro, Claire Connelly, Joseba Morales, Yosam Cardenas, Soo Lee, Ariela Kristantina, Christian Dibari, Katy Rex, Matt Harding,  Jamel Jones, Sean Van Gorman, Don Cardenas, Fabian Lelay, Philip Sevy
Story: 10 Art: 8.8 Overall: 9.4 Recommendation: Buy