New trans/nonbinary superhero from DC: Circuit Breaker

Pink News reports that DC Comics  will present a new transgender and nonbinary superhero on Valentine’s Day. Say hello to Circuit Breaker AKA Jules Jourdain.

The first story will appear in Lazarus Planet: Dark Fate #1.

Popverse explains that the transmasculine hero channels Still Force energy. This is apparently the mirror opposite of the Speed Force, which powers the Flash.  Using inertia or entropy Jules should be able to suspend motion, and even aging.

Andrea Shea of DCD Comics tweeted:

CIRCUIT BREAKER is gonna be your new favorite character! @alkcomics breathes life into Jules Jourdain’s first adventure this February, in which our new hero is blessed (or cursed?) with the dreaded Still Force during LAZARUS PLANET: DARK FATE. 

That’s all we know so far.

Superman gets a rainbow Pride cape and DC gets a new trans superhero

The new Superman, Jon Kent and his boyfriend, Jay Nakamura, will appear in  DC Pride 2022, which will  be published later this month.

Jon, who is the bisexual son of the original Superman Clark Kent and Lois Lane, gets a new Superman cape with the colors of various Pride flags – including the pansexual, bisexual, trans, ace and non-binary flags. This is a gift from Jay.

Illustration from Tríona Tree Farrell.

Pink News has more about this story.

DC is also introducing a new hero, Taelyr, a princess from another planet, who is forced to live and present as a boy on Earth. I am sure there will be a discussion about whether she is truly trans or not, but I don’t care. It seems like an excellent way of presenting concepts like gender variance and gender dysphoria.

Supergirl’s new transgender heroine makes a must hear speech

The latest episode of the superhero teen drama Supergirl is highly political. The writers are using the concept of alien refugees on Earth (Superman and Supergirl obviously being two of them) as a starting point for presenting and discussing xenophobia and the fear of “The Other”. 

The aliens from other planets takes the role human refugees and “illegals” play in the current American political landscape, but the bigoted hatred shown by American racists is the same. 

Now that we know that the Trump administration is planning to remove the official recognition of the real identity of transgender people – a reflection of a similar hatred of the unknown and the unfamiliar – this episode comes right on time, because this news season also presents Nia Nal, the first transgender hero in the DC universe. She is a new journalist in the newspaper Supergirl is working for. 

This episode includes a nasty scene where the identity of one alien is revealed in a pizza restaurant where Nia Nal is buying her coffee. The man behind the desk becomes openly hostile when he realizes that the man ordering pizzas is from another planet, and only Nia Nal stops this from becoming very violent.

In the scene embedded below Nia Nal tries to convince her editor, James Olsen, to write an editorial condemning the increasing racist violence, and she does so by explaining the similarities between xenophobia and transphobia.

This is a clear call for action in a dark time.

Nia Nal is played by transgender actress Nicole Maines. I wrote about her two years ago in the blog post Identical twins: one boy, one girl.

Illustration by Geeks of Color.