30 years later, Coagula is still the best trans superhero in comics

Trans inclusion in Big Two comics of superheroes has increased dramatically over the past decade. There had been trans and trans-adjacent characters before, but in eras when trans issues were generally seen as little more than a curiosity — and those characters were often treated as such. Alysia Yuoh was the first trans character to appear in comics.

Since then we’ve seen a number of trans characters introduced by DC and Marvel, such as Dr. Victoria October, Charlene McGowan, and most recently in the DCU, the superheroes Dreamer and Jess Chambers, all mostly followed by great fanfare and media attention. They were preceded however by Kate Godwin (trans superheroine), who was created in Rachel Pollack’s book. Doom Patrol run. Kate’s story remains — even 30 years later — among the deepest portrayals of the trans experience in mainstream superhero comics, fueled by Pollack’s own trans experience.

Doom Patrol “was all about people that had problems with their bodies,” Pollack tells Polygon. This is at the heart of her vision of the series — it’s what makes them outsiders even in the fantastical setting of the DC Universe. It makes sense to include a transgender woman in that space. Kate Godwin didn’t just exist to be inclusive. It was her transness, and personal experiences that shaped the story.

Image by Bob Brown/DC Comics

Bruno Premiani and Arnold Drake created The Doom Patrol in 1963. They were a normal group with superpowers. Their debut came just a few weeks before the similarly named X-Men. Robotman, an ex-race car driver, was part of the Doom Patrol. He had to survive the next few months in a robotic body because he suffered a serious injury from a crash. Negative Man was also there, although he suffered severe radiation poisoning and became capable of regaining control of his body, becoming a powerful Negative spirit. He had to use specially-treated bandages to keep others safe. Elasti Girl was the final member of this original trio. She had the power to shrink or expand her body. But she could not control the process and was forced to abandon society. All of these original members were brought together by Niles Caulder (a paraplegic genius who is cold and grumbly).

Over the years that followed the team’s initial debut, Doom Patrol had been relaunched as a more conventional superhero comic, but that changed when Grant Morrison took over the series, beginning with 1989’s Doom Patrol #19. The writer partnered with (predominantly) artist Richard Case to turn the book to a cult success for the first time and helped set the stage — alongside other boundary-pushing series at the time, such as Swamp Thing and Hellblazer and Morrison’s own Animal Man — for what would later become Vertigo, DC’s former imprint for stranger and more adult-oriented comics.

Morrison’s Doom Patrol was not just a return to the book’s original focus on a team of outsiders, but took the concept even farther, with characters like Crazy Jane, whose powers came from her multiple personalities, and Rebis, a new person who had come to be when Negative Man became fused with a normal woman, giving them both male and female characteristics. Morrison added villains to the team, like the Brotherhood of Dada. They were against logic and reason. When the author concluded his run, Doom PatrolIn 1993, Rachel Pollack (a transscience fiction author who was just starting to write comics) was ranked #63.

Later that year, Pollack presented Kate Godwin as a transwoman superhero. Doom Patrol It was very subtle. It was done without much fanfare. Kate was just shown shopping with a friend. Our only indication that she lived a life different from others is when she said, “When you come down to it, freelance is freelance. Whether it’s programming or turning tricks.” Kate’s trans status was simply and elegantly revealed to the reader with a close-up of a button on her jacket that said “Put a Transsexual Lesbian on the Supreme Court.”

Pollack’s creation process for the character was relatively simple. Pollack tells Polygon that a friend from a trans support group, Chelsea Goodwin, asked her, “Oh, can I be a character? I’ve always wanted to be a character in a comic book.”

“So I thought of her,” Pollack says. “Well, maybe this is a chance to introduce a trans character who would be within the theme of the series.” Kate’s first name was borrowed from activist and theorist Kate Bornstein. And Kate was a trans character shown in a way that we’ve rarely seen since in Big Two superhero comics. It was an outsider that found family in other outsiders. That is what many transgender people are still used to.

Image: Rachel Pollack, Scot Eaton/DC Comics

After Pollack’s takeover of the book, things had changed. Robotman and Niles Caulder — now nothing more than a disembodied head — were still around, along with Dorothy, a young girl with ape-like facial features who was a major character in Morrison’s run; George and Marion, a couple always wrapped in bandages; and the Inner Child, a doll filled with the innocence of ghosts. These were a bizarre bunch, even according to the Doom Patrol’s standards.

But unlike the rest of the team, it wasn’t Kate Godwin’s powers that made her an outsider. Although her ability to dissolve and coagulate any substance was useful, she was not accepted into the Justice League. “I suspect they liked my powers but couldn’t handle me,” she tells the rest of the Doom Patrol. Kate Godwin’s trans identity was what made her outsider.

Alysia Yeoh, created by Gail Simone and Ardian Syaf, the first major contemporary trans characters to hit Big Two comics, was first introduced in 2011’s Batgirl #1 as Barbara Gordon’s new roommate. Her identity as a trans woman isn’t revealed until issue #19, when Barbara opens up to Alysia about how she had once been shot and paralyzed by the Joker. After learning this, Alysia says, “I’m transgender, Barbara.” In a touching moment, Barbara responds by saying, “The people I love call me Babs.” However, while Alysia has stayed around as a supporting character over the decade since, her transness is rarely touched on.

Image: Gail Simone, Daniel Sampere/DC Comics

Within two pages we know Dr. Victoria October, introduced in 2017’s Detective Comics#948, trans. A scientist brought in to help Batman on a case, she doesn’t outright say she’s trans. Instead she refers to how she worked with Batman in her “pupal stage before [she]entered [herself]” and followed it up by saying to Batman, with a playful smile, “I did appreciate the card.” It’s in the next panel that she references having a “deadname,” confirming for the reader that she is a trans woman. Like Alysia she fades into the background, with her transness only rarely revealed.

Al Ewing and Lee Garbett created Dr. Charlene McGowan. The Immortal HulkEwing and Garbett also revealed that #6, while not being a super-hero, her trans experiences shaped her life. The 50-issue series featured Ewing and Garbett. Charlene, who was accused of running a black-market hormone supply business, was forced by the U.S. government to support its efforts against the Hulk. Finally, Charlene lied to her captors and switched sides for the Hulk.

Connecting her “secret origin” to her transition allowed for a deeper understanding of a character that otherwise didn’t have a ton of time on the page. Also, like the character of Kate Godwin, being part of Hulk’s group of renegades also allows the reader to see that despite McGowan’s brilliance as a scientist, being trans has still made her an outsider, a contrast to Yeoh and October, who spend time with heroes like Batman and Batgirl.

McGowan is now a regular in the miniseries of team comics Gamma Flight, Al Ewing and Crystal Frasier (a transwoman) co-wrote the script. While personal moments for McGowan are rare, they’re often rooted in her transness, such as when her teammate, an extremely mutated Doc Samson, compares his body being wrong to how she feels about her body, upsetting her.

Image: Rachel Pollack, Linda Medley/DC Comics

Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol also explored how Kate’s own outsider status could clash with the rest of the team of outsiders. Robotman started to fall in love with Kate during her later run. However, when he learned that she was transgender, his anger and feelings of betrayal grew. Even though — or maybe because — he existed simply as a brain in a robot body, he clung to his own self-image of masculinity.

“[Robotman] is the straightest person on the team,” Pollack tells Polygon. “And he’s the one who is also most threatened by the issue of bodies. As far as he’s concerned at that point, he doesn’t have one. His robot body is just a piece of machinery that he’s forced to inhabit.”

At one point Robotman screams out at Kate, “You had a penis, right? It could have been chopped off, but it was there, correct? In my book that makes you a man.” Kate shuts this down by replying, “Really? Cliff, what do you think? Is it possible to have one? What are you?”

The trans women who populate modern superhero comics as side characters aren’t all bad — there’s a place for them. When I bring some of the non-hero trans characters of the last decade to Pollack, she even responds by saying, “A trans superhero gets attention, but I didn’t realize this other thing was going on… I think it’s very nice.”

True representation, to me is seeing our lives and experiences in these characters through a non-cis lens. It’s important to see characters that reflect your life back at you beyond just the surface level of the experience, including trans experience.

Image: Rachel Pollack, Scot Eaton/DC Comics

”We got some very positive letters,” Pollack says, of the at-the-time reaction to Kate, “including one or two letters from people who quite simply said their lives were saved by this. [That] it kept them from killing themselves, this character.” It’s important to branch out in what we read and not just read stories about ourselves, but there’s also great value in seeing your life in art, in realizing you’re not the only one feeling what you’re feeling. It’s something any piece of trans representation, or any kind of representation, should be striving for.

Pollack’s approach to a trans-character in a superhero story if it were written today. “I would have her be the main character. I would definitely have her in the current situation,” says Pollack, referring to the heavily politicized battles over trans rights. “And I think if I was doing a story where she was the main character, or a supporting character, I’d have there be some controversy around her. You would know her. She wouldn’t be hidden. This would lead to the public, and there’d be a whole big thing about it.”

With Dreamer and Jess Chambers looking to have a bigger role in the DCU — and even characters like Marvel’s brand-new mutant hero Escapade, co-created by Charlie Jane Anders — maybe it will be possible to get stories of superheroes who are also trans and the difficulties that would come with that. Perhaps we could have a trans character “experiencing the current situation.” Until then, we still have Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol.