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popculturebuffet · 5 months ago

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Pride Month: The Pride Season 1 Review: Their Here, There Queer, Get Used To It (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people. It's pride month and once again i'm late to the party as things have been hectic, in this case catching up on stuff and then just having my body and mood crash entirely for a week. But we're back and once again Kev has some rainbow flavored treats he wants me to hand out. Also some stuff to review.

This time we're kicking things off with a look at 2011 comic The Pride, starting with it's first mini series later renamed The Pride Season 1 after coming to comixology.

The Pride comes from gay comic writer and gay rights advocate Joe Glass. Glass has written a ton of queer comics i'm curious to check out, with the pride being one of his first and most notable works and one that he still dives into ocasionally, writing a sequel for Comixology in 2017, a spinoff series the Pride Adventures, with a summer special and new mini series, Agenda Dysphoria, coming this year.

The Pride follows it's universe's first, and possibly comics first all queer superhero team after openly queer superhero Fabman feels the community isn't getting nearly enough representation on the bigger team, with this universe's justice league stand in being outright homophobic at best. So he gathers all the queer superheroes he knows and together they fight for truth, justice and acceptance, while dealing with a mad preacher who plans to turn people with the superhero gene into his servants to take over the world, as you do and be a homophobic jackass, as the church often do.

The Pride seemed to be a modest success, and is something I was curious to check out: I read the first issue years ago when season 2 was announced.. and wasn't impressed, but when Kev pitched it I figured it'd be a neat thing to look at. See if I was wrong about the book and it was better than I expected or if it was just meh. So join me under the cut for pride as their here, their queer, and they've got a bear, their the pride.

The pride is drawn by Gavin Mitchell, who does a decent job, having a cartoony style with sketchy lines I feel fits the book's old school tone with modern values approach well. The weird thing is.. Mitchell only draws HALF the series, drawing thesee first two issuea nd then issue 5, so the series does suffer a bit from the art being consitant, some is good, some is not, so keep that in mind as you see panels.

We open to a news report as some jerky reporters report on various other superheroes, including Crabman and Lobster boy, a mustached crabman.

And his young soon to be dead ward. I... badly want a spinoff with this guy I mean look at him

He's a crab man with a mustache, a human hand for some reason, and a sucession of lobster boys who died horribly but don't seem to be his fault. I also like how Fabman smiles at this. Like he just loves how rediculous the world of superheroics is. But seriously if a crab dealing with severe losses on a regular basis who dresses like Freddy Mercury isn't a spinoff pitch you want to hear, I don't know what I can possibly offer you as you clearly lost lost the abliity to feel joy long ago. Now if your against it because he MIGHT have murdered a teenager.. fair point. I don't think he did on purpose justding by his OH CRAP face, but still fair.

Fabman's in his civies.. kinda dealing with the fact the hosts of the newscast casually throw out homophobic shit about him rescuing "a hunk" and outright use the term trick. You know Kent Brockman may sell out to our ant overlords but he never pulled that shit.

This unease from the broadcast compounds when we cut to some kids playing with their toys.. and one brings out a fabman figure. The two other kids turn into homophobic shit lords... only for Fabman to show up and scare the crap out of them. They super run away and the kid, Billy talks to his faviorit hero, admitting he didn't choose to be diffrent, and wondering why people suck, hoping one day they can see how great fabman is. Fabman wonders that too.. and the gears turn in his head

We get a one page interlude as we meet our villians, the reverend and basher. The reverend has basher kill a guy for complaning about exploding a little, how dare he before rambling ominously about "Ma plans".

Fabman starts to round up the heroes who will be thwartin "ma plans". We first meet Frost, An english heroine, transwoman and lesbian into punishing "Naughty Boys". She's as cold as her power set, but game for whatever her friend has plan. She was beating up some assholes in an ally who made the mistake of trying to accost her. She's the best.

Next is White Trash, A tatooed white man with super tough skin who runs some gang bangers off a basketball court but has one of the kids he saved used the f slur. I do like this bit, with Fabman saying "it ruins the good feeling every time dosen't it".. that even rescuing someone as a queer person.. can have the person still be homophobic. White Trash brushes it off as while it does indeed suck, he's a kid: Kids can change... and is honored to meet fabman and hear him out.

We next meet my faviorites out of the pride as some homophic assholes are mid hate crime when one of them ups and hits another and we meet Angel, pansexual drag queen with the powers of a confusion field that messes up the brain pans for those nearbye and makes them attack their foes and Bear, hard gay man who can turn into a literal bear. While having a Bear turn into a bear is the most on the nose thing imaginable I can't help but love it for it's sheer audacity and the bear gets fleshed out so much over the series he's hard not to love. The two are close friends and a duo and Angel mentions Fabs offer.

The final initial member of our party is Queen Sapphire, an amazon whose black gay wonder woman, Nubia before she got to be that, and whose stopping an asshole throwing a brick at someone working at planned parenthood and who runs straight into fabman's abs. Lucky asshole. Fabman invites his new friend Sapphire to the meeting.

Th group meet at the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar Fabulosa, Fabman's hq. Fabman gets into it briefly with Angel over not including T in calling this a SLBG meetup.. this was long before non binary and asexual were as known or accepted, something I have heard the sequel corrects and is forgiviable given when this came out. I also like this as it shows queer people can mistakes in their own community. And having seen the massive dumptrucks of biphobia int eh owl house fandom (Though most of us are awesome) over Huntlow.. can confirm.

Speaking of which at least for this arc the team has none which does bother me a bit as there's a B in the term.. but no actually bi members of the team. I do respect Glass not adding one just to have one and going with the characters he had, so it dosen't ruin the book for me, but it is something I hope later mini series course corrects as the team DOES expand in season 2.

Fabman gives his full pitch

And it's sad that most of the speech still holds. The first part.. never really felt like a thing in comics: Sure homophobic jackasses exist and always have, but most queer heroes were taken seriously in universe. The problem was, and still is, that a lot of queer heroes are lower profiled, either due to being introduced later or being firmly established as straight. There's exceptions like Iceman and Wonder Woman, but both came out AFTER this series was published, and even now while there are more queer heroes than ever before, it tends to be a dice roll if any actually get pushed. As Fabman later points out, teams might have a queer member or two, but they generally tend to just hav eone. And when you look at the major super teams right now their pretty bone dry in terms of queer members: The Avengers, as good as the current roster is, has exactly zero queer members. The Justice League when last around had two (Black Canary and Hipolita). The Titans, dc's current main team has zero. I"m not knocking the writers, I get ediotrial has a say, but it gets to the heart of the issue: most of the biggest heroes were throughly established as straight. Jonathan Kent, Superman, is one of the few exceptoins and even then DC has no idea what the fuck to do with him after his initial push wasn't the roaring sucess they hoped for. While Queer Rep, IS way better these days, the lack of visablity is still an issue. For all this mini's issues i'm glad the pride exist for that reason alone: why NOT have an almost entirely queer superteam? one that welcomes the straights sure, but is mostly queer people being who they are and fighting for the world like any other team, while also repping the community. If the big two can't make superman gay, make your own superman who is. Who has all the ideals of the character, but just happens to like guys and wear even tighter fitting pants. Seriously I may not be into fabman but I respect his giant crotch bulge in the panel above. Size isn't evertyhing but it's still fucking impressive.

As for media rep while sexless is slowly being weeded out, he wasn't wrong at the time nad even now having the gay character be a joke machine is still a common device.

At any rate the team soon gets an audition: Twink.. who starts by taking his shirt off

I do love everyone's reaction to him stripping down and worry when he says he dosen't want to ruin his close. He dosen't have a super dong like fabman though, his power is instead.. basically colossus. This is Twink, a younger member.

And now as Fabman goes to recurit the team's final member with everyone on board, let's take a moment to adress the elephant in the room. Some of the cast falls into typical LBGTQS+ niches to the point it COULD feel sterotypical. I mean fabman runs a gay bar, gay bar, gay bar, and is camp as hell, and well.. do I really have to outline where guys named the Bear and the Twink fit into the gay community. And that's just what I do know as while being bi, I don't know how say Angel reads to a drag audience or Frost to a trans one.

From my limited perspective though it mostly works: The most overt refrences.. are coming from a gay man himself and feel firmly tounge in cheek, while the characters themselves are well fleshed out, something I missed on first read as I only made it one issue. As the series goes on they get depth to them that really helps them stand out.

With that they have a team.. but they need one last member. Naturally it's down to Fabman to go to a seedy bar to recurit him. Which may be an uphill battle as someone else in the community already tried.

Yeah our final member wolf.. is wolverine combined with batman but gay. Granted Marvel would have a gay wolverine soon after this, but props to Glass he did it first and Logan does have a lot of hairy gay man energy in him, so it makes sense. He has logan's gruff nature, love of bars and denim off duty, and batman's millions, detective skills and lack of powers. I love their back and forth: The two feel like old pals which is something hard to pull off sometimes in fiction, to make it feel that lived in without sounding force but the two trade barbs, Fabs treis to drink whisky and spits it out and eventually a barfight happens as a homophobic asshole makes a deal of it. Twink steps in to help and Fabs reveals WHY he needs Wolf for the team: Training. The team is good.. but haven't trained as a team and twink in paticular, while good for a rookie with his self training, hasn't had proper training yet. Wolf decides what the hell and our team is complete and so's issue 1.

We then get a few origin storys, something sprinkled thorughout the first few issues: First up is white trash, a kid in a poor community whose dad abused him, heavily implied to be because he was gay, and who eventually had enough, kicked the man's homophobic ass and became a force for good in his community. Then we have Wolf, who in a flashback is being considered by the justice division. Wolf is buisnessman thomas everett, who inherted a company when his parents died in a carcrash and had already been training to be a vigilinate. His massive success gets him the spot.. and we'll find out why he lost it later.

Next issue opens with Wolf in their danger room thing, having just cleaned up and showed off for a very impressed rest of the team. Fabman reveals he didn't just get wolf as a trainer: Wolf will be co-leader: while Fabs is the groups overall head, Wolf will be in charge in the field and of training the team.

Twink is super smitten by wolf and a big fan, having seen him in the justice division and wondering why he quit. As I alluded to earlier though.. he didn't. The bastards fired him and he's not ashamed to share why: Brian was closted as a hero as first, getting his big call to the majors, but teamed up with Fabs. While the two were never a thing, it was nice to have someone to confide in.

Unfortuantley the tabolids being the dicks they were caugh ton to the tow's friendship and glommed onto it. The Division.. were less than sympathetic, and asked if he was gay. When he said yes.. they dropped him. Mostly Superdude, the lead, who was concerned about their "family friendly image", which can go straight to hell and is also eerily accurate of how hard it was to get queer characters into children's media. Wolf's over it, though he also figures they weren't All on board with this shit, the Venusian in paticular being uncomfortable as their species has no concept of gender. It's nice nod to nonbinary folks and judging from tv tropes, this gets dug into a bit more next series. I do grant this is with the issue that most nonbinary characters tend to be aliens , but it dosen't feel like the cheat it usually is here, just a nod to a community just starting to pop out and the fact they explore what that means next time. I also wouldn't mind if mainstream jonnn was nonbinary, even if he still used masculine pronouns.

The next day the crew heads for their first training session, with Angel making sure Bear's up to this healthwise. We'll find out why soon enough, for now though he flirts a bit with white trash as the trio and frost head up to find Queen Sapphire and Twink duking it out. Turns out this is his plan: Have them spar so they can find out each other's weaknesses. They were also supposed to be here way sooner and he admits he's going to ride them hard. He dosen't use that exact phrasing because of the book we're in, but they need to be ready. They've worked indvidually but they haven't really worked with teams. It's something i've seen in superhero comics before, it was an issue when the x-men roster was cut in half by the mutant massacre and had to restock with people who either only had worked solo or with one othe rperson (Psylocke and Dazzler) or never done proper superhero work let alone team work (Longshot). The team is good, it's why Fabman recurited them but I like that they don't function as a team out of a box and don't have that team experince most superheroes have. In a mainstream comics universe 9/10 heroes have been on a team at some point and thus even if theirs synergy issues, the team can still work effectively enough.

Fabman interrupts as a fire has happened at another gay bar and they need to go save that shit as they really couldn't ask for a better debut. He's a bit TOO jazzed about that part, but still, even untrained, it's a simple search and rescue. Even if a villian is there, they don't need to be in top shape yet.

At the fire Wolf has Angel work crowd control and twink wisely points out he'll be more of a danger as a metal man inside a raging furance, so he's given back door duty. I swear to god these innuendos are not intentional.. they are fun though.

As frost uses her powers to cool things down a bit, they find the culprit holding some surviviors hostage:" Firebomb, a guy with charred skin, cool googles and a love of hate crimes. Seriously the guy throws the F slur around casually. The villians in this book.. are about as subtle in thier bigotry as a captain planet villian is at looting the enviromrment. And their bigotry.

Thankfully for our heroes Frost easily cancels out his powers while his attempt to flee gets interupted by a metal fist to the face. Our heroes first outing, I swear to fucking god they won't stop, is a rousing success. The pride then make their grand debut to the press, with Fabman even expertly fielding the slightly insenstive question of "Are you only going to rescue gay people" Of course not. This is simply about standing out and letting queer heroes shine. Their the pride and their here to stay.. and unforutantely for them the reverned is watching and one of them is now key to his plans.

Secret origins next. Angels is just a fun monologue of her other half explaning who she is and why she does this: Someone has to keep her "babies" in the community safe. Muscle Mary gets a more proper one, a nice twist on Wondy's origin: Like the amazons of theymiscera, they had man visit for the first time in forever but it was less plesant with one killing her mom. Showing ultimate compassion she choose to take them back instead, going herself to find the good in the world and protect it, debuting at a pride parade, hence the muscle mary moniker.

So next issue opens with the news. They even called april o neil the star reporter, who took a break from turtles business to do a man on the street. That also implies some form of ninja turtles exist in this universe. Crossover when IDW?

There's a mix of genuine support, your usual bigoted idiots, and one oprah knockoff questoning if they need yet another super team. The short answer yes, the long answer go fuck yourself. The worst of it though is that one journalist outs that the bear has HIV. Be sure that you see that he has HIV but it's not aids. He dosen't got the AIDS.

Twink is shocked by this and leaves for some air. Bear follows him and the following scene.. is one of my faviorites. While Twink is nervous and dosen't know much about AIDS, worrying it might be an issue in their line of work, Bear assures him it's fine: it's only transmitable fluid to fluid and he takes goo denough care of himself that it transfering by blood, imprable enough given he has super endurance meaning the only person who could bust him open is someone likely invunerable, is VERY unlikely and already is as it'd take a lot to get there. The two are good and with a ton of calls coming in the team answer them.. badly.

Twink gets the worst of it though as his parents called. They hadn't contacted him since they sent him to a camp to cure his powers.

We cut back to the reverend plotting ominously. Yeah this happens.. a LOT over the series and is most of what he does. You'd THINK this would be a way to flesh him out, figure out who this guy is as a villian and why he's sucha homophobic piece of shit. I'm not asking for a tragic backstory, but i'm asking for more characters than "BLER RELIGION GAYS BAD BLEGH". While, especially on diving in closer for this review, the main cast is good, the antagonists are just.. pahtetically one note. The Reverend is just a hateful old man who wants to take over the world. There's nothing to it.

Compare this to X-Men, because that's my baseline and it always will be: This comparison is a little left field as they had their own evil reverend, reverend stryker. Striker was also an evil old man plotting genocide and who hated a minority, in this case mutants, a stand in for real live evangelicals.. but the diffrence is the reverend.. was smart. Instead of Doing his evil work out in the open or relying on a convoluted scheme like this rev, he simply pedaled his ministries on tv. And given this rev has mind control powers, you wonder why he didn't just think to do that in the first place and work on broadcasting it before he got excomjmunicated. Striker is both more intresting and more dangeorus because like far too many bigots, he THINKS he's right, and tries to use respectablity politics. This guy.. is juts one lunatic with magic knowledge of genetics and a hulk literally named basher.

Back with our heroes they have isssues as Angel and Frost are refusing to train figuring their experinced enough, not getting their good ALONE not as a team. Even Bear sides with Wolf on this one. Unfortunately this argument about training.. comes just as someone else wants to argue with the team: The Justice Divsion ar ehere. Turns out the scanner for HQ hadn't been setup which Wolf is rightfully miffed by.

The JD are led by Superdued, the guy at the forfront of the "Kick wolf out for being gay" charge and head of the team. Think worst timeline shaggy rogers but with super powers. They've come to tell the team to stop.

I do like this bit as it riffs on a common trope in comics that frustrates the hell out of me and i'm glad to see it torn apart here with a much less sympathetic team to boot. See DC has a VERY bad habit of having the Justice League act like judgmental asses and try to put a stop to a super team. The Avengers have done this on occasion too, see the New Warriors series from marvel now, but it's very much a league thing. They've done it to Young Justice, the 2003 Version of the Teen Titans, the rebirth Titans, the rebirth Teen Titans, and just casually flipping through the redhood and the outlaws graphic novel from web toon while at barnes and noble, those versions do it to the outlaws. There's likely more I have no idea about. And that's not getting into Bruce's uber dickish habbit of trying to run any vigilante he dosen't like out of gotham. Sometimes the instinct is right like with Savant, most of the time he just dosent like not having control. The League is the big name in the land sure, I can respect that, but their not god. They shouldn't have a right to judge other teams unless said teams are say edgelord harmful asshats like the elitie or outright super villians. Yes the titans and YJ were their sidekicks, but they were also overseen by one of their own in the case of young justice, and experinced heroes in the case of The Teen Titans.

So it's very satisfying to see the pride. stonewall their wish.com counterparts, especially since Superdued talking over everyone.. actually stops the venusian from making actual progress as they make the valid point they might not be ready and may of got them to agree to simply not go out in the field for a bit instead of Earth 3 Spicoli and his bird friend trying to convience them to "stand down" or "Join other teams', both options they clearly don't want nor asked for. It's a nice exercise in false allyship: how most of the division just wants to shut them down.. when if they REALLY cared about them not dying: offer to train them. No reallly. Wolf is doing it and he got his tactics from them, if your that concerned about them dyign and not about them being openly queer if inexperinced as a team on this level, offer team training. They'd still likely refuse.. but the fact they jump right to disbanding instead of helping them be better unmasks how they simply don't want to deal with a superteam that's both this gay and clearly wont' just bend the knee because the big 7 showed up.

So naturally a fight insues. and our team do hold well.. till Angel makes a mistake and uses her powers. Problem is.. Venusean is a telepath so it broadcasts it to EVERYONE and destroys the place. The Justice Assholes leave.. but proved a point: They may not be ready. And wolf agrees.. not that they shoudln't be a team, fuck those guys, but that they weren't ready and Angel now gets why train as a team: because you don't know how your powers might interact in a fight. In good situations you can create a circut and do a super teamwork combo. In bad... it trips up your allies and you. Still Wolf's calling a break and while Fabman is worried this might've been a bad idea, wolf assures him no, he did what had to be done and this willw ork promise.

The two have a longer talk, and Wolf makes a valid point, and a meta point about why this team exists: The big teams often have maybe ONE person of color or two women and the women rarely lead. A team that's diverse stands out. And he's sadly not wrong. Marvel IS having Captain Marvel lead the avengers right now, but previously leaders were Cap, Sam Wilson Cap, and Cap again bitches. Sam is black, so that helps a little, but in general marvel tends to default to cap, while DC defaults to supes. John Kent wasn't even in the league in his time as head superman. These aren't bad characters, I love Supes and Cap a lot, but it's tied to my point earlier: There aren't a ton of a-list, big powerful queer characters in marvel or dc. Plenty of queer characters but for DC"s biggest it's just harely and wondy (And Ivy when she's on the good guys side), with Alan Scott for the JSA and for Marvel it's Teddy, Wiccan and Hercules for the avengers, no one for the fantastic four, and Iceman, Magik, Captain Britan, and Kitty Pryde out of the major x-men (Though to the x-men's credit there is a lot more queer characters than most comics stables) and Magik and Kitty haven't really gotten to explore their bi sides yet, both being confirmed bisexual in a one off joke and a panel that went nowhere repsectively. The PRide has it's faults.. but it is very nice for the core of a superhero universe to be it's queer characters. Hopefully they get more poc, but it's still more gay than most teams have.

Meanwhile Basher kills a bussload of people and kidnaps one. This turns out to be Bear's son with Bear getting the whole we have your kid speil after coming back from a night out with White Trash, who he also brought home. So a bit of a wash all things considered.

Origins again: This time it's , Da Bear, and his origin is one of my faviorites: he was a closted gay man who didn't realize he was gay till he became a bear man one day. In this verse, some people get their powers from the "X-Cel Virus" basically their verison of the x gene mixed with the viral nature of generator rex's nanites. He found out he was gay, got a divorce , and soon got HIV but soldiers on anyway.

We then get Fabmans one I honestly love. He's Stephen Wainwright: he always knew he was gay and not only did his parents catch on before he came out, but they were fully supportive, being nothing but proud of their son. Stephen, like the hero he's modeld after, is a kind hearted soul who only wants to help, helping consule those in his community and offer support. He later opened his bar simply to give his community a place to relax and be safe. It's this kind, open nature and pride in who he is that attracted some aliens, who had been watching him.. which would be creepy if they weren't clearly looking for a pargon of virtue to bestow powers on. Okay i'ts still a little creepy but hey they gave him powers for being a good person who isn't remotely ashamed of who he is and who always wanted to help people. I'm not going to judge too harshly. So like his parents and Stephen himself they coudln't be prouder.

The next issue opens with the team all meeting early in the morning, most not in costume. Angel had a show already so their the only one ready besides the Bear. We also get details on his relationship with his son and heartwarmingly.. it's really good. While The Bear and his ex wife naturally weren't on the best terms after the breakup, she never hid his son from him nor kept him. So while Jacob didn't grow up near his dad, the two did know each other and Bear couldn't be prouder

While the Bear wants to go after basher NOW, Wolf tells him to ease up a bit: not because he dosen't care.. but because it's an obvious trap. Bear naturally can't wait for common sense and rushes off. Thankfully.. Wolf saw this coming and his assuring shoulder pat included a tracer. He's going to have Angel fill him in, try to figure out who the hell basher is and hopefully fast enough to get there before this guy can really hurt bear.

Bear meets basher and Basher is naturally a dick, using the f slur, calling bear "Riddled with diseas" and generally being punchable. He wants bear though, and easily wrecks our poor ursine pal. Luckily our pal has pals of his own and a fight begins. The fight takes up most of the issue and is nicely tense with Basher essentially being a homophobic juggernaught. And while as a character his characterization begins and ends with "I don't like the gays", he is a decent threat at least. OUr heroes try EVERYTHING.. and come up short. They do dent the guy a bit.. but not enough and while Bear's son , Jake, chimes in, Bear's rage after Basher punts him gives the asshole the opening he needs to knock out or pal and run off with him.

Origins time again. This time frost is first as she has an interview with a reporter.. and freezes his research as she's worked hard to hide her past pre transition. She's not ashamed of being trans, and it seems Fabman knows, but her family disowning her fo rbeing who she always was is clearly a sore spot.

Next is twink who writes to his parents. It tells us mostly what the text has: he's a big superhero fanboy who always was one. Getting powers was the happiest day of his life.. but his parents instead feared this and sent him to madman to try an dcure him. Given the gay conversion therapy parallels you can probably guess WHO they sent him to. I certainly did. He's happy with who he is though and his freedom.

Issue 5 opens with the pride having a wake. Naturally assholes are protesting it. It's a weird thing.. but I respect the comic for using the f slur. It's not for shock value, it's simply being realistic, and it's something queer people face every day. It's something a lot of comics would censor but glass knows is necessary.

The pride haven't given up... but have a good justifcation for doing this: as Fabman points out superheroes have learned to "hope for the best, expect the worst". Given how many heroes end up dead but come back or were never dead, fair point. It's also been a few weeks, giving the team time offscreen to train. Speaking of which.. wolf asks Owen, aka Cub, to join the team. While Cub is straight.. Wolf genuinely dosen't care. It's not about exclusion, i'ts about family and right now Cub coudl use one. He tearfully accepts.

We also get introduced to Angel OUT of costume, Kele Amos and his wife. Everyone's happy to meet her and finds out Angel is pansexual. There's four absences though: Fab Man is taking the loss personally, even more than Angel and Owen who vow revenge, so White Trash went to find him, while Frost... seemingly didn't care to show up. Sapphire was absent.. because she went to go confront her at the gay bar gay bar, but not the gay bar gay bar gay bar in front of their HQ.

Frost is seemingly not effected.. but Sapphire sees through it: she's afraid to cry and be vunerable and while Frost is offended for a second.. she breaks down. The two end up embrasing and while Frost tries to come out at trans, Sapphire assures her she knows all she needs to know.

Their not the only hookup either as WOlf and Twink have a training session, with Twink frustrated they have no leads an daccidently bodying Wolf across the room. He kisses him in the heat of it, Wolf kisses him back. Another couple paired off.

Finally we get to White Trash and Fabman. Fabs naturally blames himself, but White Trash shuts that shit down: Harvey knew the risks, was out there every day in spite of them, and was proud of who he is and this team. He makes a cabaret refrence, for a drag queen he once knew and life is a cabaret: sometims it's good, sometimes it sucks balls. But you'll never get the good if you don't live it.. and making this team.. is living. So White Trash gets him ready to go out.. they don't kiss thoguh. Not his type. Also can Fabman mystically sense when other people ar ebanging or are the others hooking up that much of a forgone conclusion he just assumes it's happening.

After all this hooking up, Wolf gets a spooky spirit message from Bear, whose alive... Basher's using him for his evil mind control plot, revealing it's an evil mind control plot. Seriously is there anything about this guy that isn't a cliche wrapped in hate speech?

At any rate we get a brief scene showing the team's been training hard, leveling up.. and after Cub takes on the highest level of training bot himself, beheading it.

We end the issue on Bassher making a grand announcment to the world as he holds up Bear's bloody body hooked to the machine.

Final issue. As basher makes his announcment Cub, White Trash and Angel and Twink wonder why nothing's happening to them. Their all x-cel positive while the rest of the team has diffrent means. Since it's the only one I forgot to mention, frost got hers via surgery.

Taking an art break the art this issue is decent. Not as good as the other issues but fine. The other issue.s. minus the last one which swapped artists constantly including weirdly ending on Mark ellerby's art. And I fucking love mark ellerby's art but it's more cartoony and din't fit the ominous ending at all.

Our heroes have bigger issues as it turns out most of Justice Division is X-Positive, and thus only Morningstar (the bird asshole form before ) and the Venusian are left as they crash into Pride HQ. Luckily our heroes have been training for this.. both combat and specifically kicking the Justice Divisions assholes which give no homo zonker harris just suantered in trying to shut them down and a fight broke out rather easily, fair point. It pays off as the Pride easily take them down, with Angel in particular getting a nice subtle bit of redemption for botching the last fight, narrowing her focus to just superdude and sending him to the moon. After finishing up with a ncie combo attack, using fabs and morningstar's light powers on Twink's shiny skin to drive the last Divison Member left, a midnighter knockoff who also can move through shadows, down. Wolf also bluntly tells the Venusian and Morningstar to stay put for two reasons despite their insitance that, as the big team they should do it: One, they just koed most of their team, and two, they need someone to protect the city while they hopefully handle this. On this reread for transcribing this review as it's a perfect contrast to the first fight: The first time out most of the team squared up against someone, fighting one on one, a subtle detail I didn't notice but highlights how while they are a team, their not WORKING as one. While tw oget taken out solo, frost targeting bluebird's vocal cords and Sapphire/Muscle Mary easily handeling Mighty Miss (Their wonder woman at home), the first is a strategy they worked out just in case wolf prompts her for, and the rest are all taken out with team work. While it disapointing all the actual training happend off screen, it's an excellent way to show how it's paid off. I would've liked to see them come together as a team, no comment, but I also understand Glass likely could only get the six issues and judging from the fill in artists and especailly issue 5 being a whole GAGLE of various artists and clearly not being intended for that kind of setup, self publishing was a nightmare. It's no wonder the second volume had comixology's help and the third was funded with Kickstarter, to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. So it's that Hazbin Hotel issue of having to cram EVERYTHING they can into 6 issues as they may not get more. It hurts the story a little, but I understand the impulse and thus i'm a bit more forgiving if the story still mostly works.

Thankfully said dream earlier allowed Wolf to track them. As he explains when they get into their dope jet the crusier, there was some sand at the scene that was diffrent, coming from a former nuclear test site. Luckily for our heroes the radiation has gone down enough that the radiation isn't an issue.. but allowed them to track the Reverend down. We also get his backstory: the Reverend is Reverend William Franklin, who was kicked out after he was caught using his powers to brainwash his congregation. I like to think bibleman did it. At any rate his powers didn't work on X-Cels, hence his need for bear.

The team split up: Most of the team stays out front, with Angel taking out most of the brainwashed heroes the rev's summoned, while the team as a whole minus fabman, wolf, twink and frost fight basher. Wolf, Twink and Frost take on the rev's forces.. and it turns out.. they were also a distraction as Fabman cleans house. Outside the res tof the team has an excellent rematch with basher another nice reflection; Before each member fought him one at a time, this time they all work together and angel uses her powers to allow the others to sucker him. It's something I wished i'd noticed on first read as this book is REALLY good at having the team.. work as an actual team once their good and pumped in this last issue. Most team books tend to have them hit em one at a time, but if you have a team.. why not have them do a circuit. I'm not against the group fighting alone, but this and x-men 97 show why a good super circuit is awesome.

White Trash ALMOST kills basher but backs away.. unfortunately though.. cub does not and slits his throat. WEll I mean Basher did deserve it but i'ts not good for the kid himself to murder a guy ya know? As he sobs to his dad as he's freed though Fabman.. is also close, ready to go full red eyes superman on the homophobe.. but being the bigger man dosen't. He destroys the reverends book so he can't channel his powers again, which was just directly pulled out of his perfectly toned ass but whatever. The day is saved.

Their greeted by the entire superhero community they just saved.. who all cheer them. The Pride proved themselves and it while basher's about as complicated as a piece of cardboard, I give the comic credit for having an organic way for them to earn the superhero communites respect.

With that there's just one last bit of buisness, an epilogue finishing up where we began: two months later the Pride are now one of the world's most popular superteam, with both of the anchors no longer being homophobic jackasses.. I doubt they've actually changed, they just recognize they can't make snide queer jokes about the world's saviors. The pride are getting medals of valor while, fair play to them, the justice division not only admitted they had a don't ask don't tell policy but have removed it. The latters the bear minimum and never should've been a thing. The formers.. the part they get more credit for: it's rare for a public figure not forced into it by overwhelming evidence to admit they did something awful, so the divison not only admitting what they likely did to wolf, but likely apologizing for it is big.

Fabman meets with billy and the bullies have also changed their tune finding him awesome. Fabman is here because Billy.. is the one that inspired him to do this. The world wouldn't of been saved and he wouldn't have his new family without them. Billy returns the favor giving fabman his old action figure after fabs gives him a new one, wanting to give fabs a token of where this started.. and his thanks. The why.. brings a tear to our heroes eyes. He fought hard.. and now the world sees Fabman the way billy did, sees all of the pride that way and we end on fabs proudly flying away with the kids telling him to go change the world. Cheesy but it works.

The Pride... is pretty damn good. When I started writing this review, I found it okay. But as often happens my opinon changed the more I engaged with the work. Sometimes that goes the other way: I liked temple of Doom and Lion King II less the more I had to think about them. But here seeing all the little touches, how it has a decently fleshed out cast in such a short time span (With only Sapphire feeling underdeveloped by the end and even she's still decently fleshed out), and how the team slowly grow. It's not perfect: A LOT of the commentary is on the nose with all the villians being one not ebigots. I'm not asking them to be likeable, i'm asking for their to be layers to thier bigotry and hatred, how they operate. The book is not subtle and while it hurts it in the antagonist department, and the rev himself is dispatched cartoonishly easy, it helps everywhere else: As I thought about it the book does raise some really valid points about the big two. it'd be nice if the justice divisoin weren't cardboard cutouts themselves, but it's still a nice commentary on how superhero books tend to have one or two queer people on a team if at all. The Pride isn't subtle, is a tad messy at times.. but i'ts a lot of fun an da concept i'm shocked took this long to happen. An all queer super team is a brilliant concept and I can't wait to see what happens with them next time, next year. I'm all for making the Pride a permenant pride month fixture if this does well enough. For now it was a fun ride and I hope you enjoyed me jawing about it. Thanks for reading.

#the pride #pride month #gay #lesbian #transgender #pansexual #drag #comics #joe glass #queer comics #lbgtqia+#fabman #the bear #angel #wolf #twink #sapphire #frost #cub

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