Mindless Ones

About fifteen years ago, I had the idea to write a comic script about a shapeshifting superhero, and in particular to have that superhero be trans. Perhaps they could be one gender in their secret identity, and another as their superhero identity?

Thankfully, a trans friend quickly persuaded me that this would be a really, really, really bad idea and that I should instead not do that, and do literally anything else instead, because I am a cis man, and I’d have ended up writing the most grossly offensive thing possible, in the name of “dealing with the issues” and performative allyship.

However, I’ve been very surprised that in the intervening years, especially with gender being an increasingly controversial topic, no-one in the superhero comics world has decided to do exactly that, or something very like it. It’s all too easy to imagine the angry twitterstorms as some cis man called Mark or Nick attacks all the “trolls” who “abuse” him by asking him “why are you doing this bad thing?”

Thankfully, we now have the first serious attempt to present a trans superhero, and rather than being that kind of hateful pseudo-wokeness, it’s actually rather good.