It’s Pride Month, and I’ve decided to help celebrate in my own way, by drawing a month full of LGBTQIA+ superheroes/characters. As an 80% cis het dude, I do feel I probably should not be doing this, but I just wanted to draw some fun & kick-ass characters, and show my support to people who might enjoy and appreciate it, also realizing that I am fairly ignorant of the queer experience, and hoping for some forgiveness and blessings for my clumsy alliance.
I’ve said before, I don’t really know any members of the community, certainly not enough to call anyone a friend. But also, I am incredibly insular, introverted, and socially anxious. I have basically 5 friends in real life, and sometimes I think that’s like 3 or 4 too many. So it’s not that I don’t wish to have a more diverse circle of friends, it’s mostly that I don’t want to have a circle of friends.
I did grow up fairly conservative, despite being a non-white fatso who was bullied throughout my entire childhood through adult life for both the tone of my skin color and size and shape of my body. It’s honestly only in the last decade + that I have embraced a liberal perspective and become moreso as I get older. I am… just trying to learn.
So whether this is a stunt for attention or me just genuinely trying to celebrate a part of society I have no experience in, that’s up to you. I’m gonna hope I’m just here for a fun time. But I should also mention that my new ladylove is part of the queer community. She also did not like comics before meeting me. She’s opened up a bit, and so this is me trying to share with her my love of comics and show her it’s not all straight white male power fantasies.
So. D-Man.
While there are definitely some characters I know and love and wanted to draw straight away, I was going through a list of Marvel & DC LGBTQ superheroes to see of whom I was unaware, when I see D-Man’s name.
D-Man has always been kind of a joke loser character. He’s got Wolverine & Daredevil’s hand-me-downs, often portrayed as kind of slow or dumb, dirty, smelly, sometimes homeless and mentally ill. But I’ve always got a soft spot for the losers and D-Listers (pun?). He’s appealing to me more than your Spider-Manses or your Captain Americans. So when I saw him on the list, I had to look up the story from when was he outed. Apparently a few years ago in Sam Wilson’s Cap title, it was revealed he had a longtime boyfriend. Y’know what? Awesome. It makes him more well-rounded and gives him a backstory and a life beyond “that dude what looks like Dareverine”. (Sam Wilson: Captain America #15)
Day 1 (D-1?) down!
I just remembered I’m very tired and hate Sketch-A-Days!