DC announces non-binary version of one of its biggest Justice League heroes in historic multiverse crossover event
DC’s A Very Merry Multiverse. (DC Comics)
DC Comics is set to introduce a non-binary version of the Flash in a major gender-swapped comic crossover event next month.
Jess Chambers, aka Kid Quick, will debut in DC’s Very Merry Multiverse, an anthology of seasonal sagas landing in stores on 6 December.
The speedster, whose aunt is the current-day Jesse Quick, will be introduced in an eight-page story focusing on the Teen Justice team from Earth-11, a world where the heroes are gender-flipped versions of the heroes of the traditional DC Earth.
They’ll then take on the official mantle of the Flash for the Future State: Justice League storyline coming to DC comic books in January and February.
“In DC Future State, the Multiverse has been saved from the brink of destruction, but the triumph of DC’s heroes has shaken loose the very fabric of time and space,” the publisher said in a release this year.
The new non-binary Flash was created by Ivan Cohen and Eleonora Carlin as part of a plethora of gender-flipped Teen Justice heroes, including Aquagirl (Jacqui Hyde), Supergirl (Laurel Kent), and Robin (Talia Kane).
The new non-binary Flash is coming to DC this Christmas (DC Comics/Very Merry Multiverse)
Cohen said he felt it was important to create a new, different version of the Flash that readers haven’t seen before.
“I suggested that Kid Quick could be Earth-11’s first genderfluid character, and once editors saw Eleonora Carlini’s terrific take on the character design, there was suddenly a lot of interest in them for stories beyond the Merry Multiverse special in December,” he told Screen Rant.
“In the DC superhero universe we’ve got a superfast character, Kid Flash. And I thought about how ‘Kid’ can really be any gender,” he added to NBC News.
“There are all these choices we can make — why don’t we do something besides what we would have made up if it was 1965?”
It was important that Chambers’ identity feel organic and not be a plot point, he continued, especially in a story only eight pages long.
“That’s always a concern — you don’t want to just disrupt things for the sake of disrupting,” said Cohen. “Kid Quick’s identity is baked-in enough that another character just asks, ‘Are they seeing anyone?’ and it’s understood.”
