PRIDE MONTH 2024! When we launched our Pride Month coverage earlier this month we promised you that our coverage would venture into territory not usually traversed at Broken Frontier. For us, of course, that means super-heroes who get plenty of spotlight time on comics review sites elsewhere. However, for Pride it feels important to mark positive depictions of trans characters in wider popular culture, especially given the frightening rise in transphobia online and in the media over the last few years. Hence today’s look at Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story featuring DC’s Nia Nal, code name Dreamer, who originally appeared in the Arrowverse TV franchise before going on to make her mark in the print incarnation of the DC Universe.
Written by Nicole Maines, the actress who played Dreamer on television, and illustrated by Rye Hickman, Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story gives us a YA self-contained story that nonetheless retains plenty of nods to DCU history. The story commences in Parthas, a self-sufficient alien sanctuary on Earth where Nia, a young trans woman, lives with her sister Maeve and her mother.
The trio are refugees from the planet Naltor and Maeve is expected to inherit her mother’s Seer powers, allowing her to see the future in her dreams. But when Nia begins to experience precognitive visions she flees to Metropolis, terrified at the impact this will have on her sister. There she discovers her own found family – three queer girls Taylor, Kat, Yvette and their dog Argus – and a new life. But Nia’s family’s past is catching up with them and she is about to realise her destiny and her identity are inextricably intertwined…
Maines’ “origin story” for Dreamer provides a Young Adult narrative that is both self-contained and accessible. As a trans woman herself Maines brings an added level of authenticity to Nia’s story, making it feel all the more personal in the process. Even in an alien community Nia is othered for being trans and we are carefully drawn into her perspective, vulnerability and sense of misplaced guilt. Metropolis becomes a kind of environmental metaphor for a safe space where she can be herself but it’s in the story’s denouement where plotlines converge that Maines delivers a two-pronged thematic finale. It’s one that is beautiful in its moments of trans affirmation while, conversely and simultaneously, reminding us all of the prejudice that the trans community still face, sometimes even from those closest to them.
Hickman’s cartooning is delightfully expressive with powerful sidesteps into symbolic illustration in the dream sequences. Visual characterisation is outstanding while Bex Glendining’s colouring is suitably mood-setting from moments of vibrant character interplay to the atmospheric drama of the dream sequences. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, meanwhile, proves once again why he is one of the finest letterers of his generation with work that adds so much to emotional characterisation.
Books like this are absolutely essential in reminding younger trans readers that they are not alone. Bursting with positive energy Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story is an unforgettable story about acceptance, identity and finding your place in the world.
Nicole Maines (W), Rye Hickman (A), Bex Glendining (C), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (L) • DC Comics, $16.99
Review by Andy Oliver
Read our Pride 2024 articles all in one place here
Check out our LGBTQIA and Trans and Non-Binary Resource Lists here
