Team Interview - Kaldur's First Pride 🌈
1) What inspired you to write this story?
Kaldur Ahm was done dirty. He was done dirty in his debut show young justice, he was done dirty in a comic I read where his white country boyfriend dumped him when he found out he was a Meta.
The whole scene felt so weird to me. Like you are okay with being in a gay, interracial relationship with beautiful Kaldur Ahm, but can’t stomach that he’s got powers? He got in your rusty 4 x 4 so you can cart him out to the dessert to stargaze, but him controlling water is The Dealbreaker? Homeboy wasn’t even that cute!
Also WHY’d they change his origin story for THIS? And WHY do they always give beautiful Kaldur the most awful haircut possible?!
I’ve always dreamed of giving Kaldur a better story with a better companion and a better haircut. I’ve wanted to see Kaldur loved and supported unconditionally, and I wanted to write a callback to Kaldur’s weirdo ex. Just give him the punch he’s always deserved. Idiot! How are you gonna squander Kaldur the Ahm?!
2) What does this story mean to you?
It means a weirdly huge amount for me. I have always been a huge advocate for diverse representation in media, especially since I have worked in daycare and schools my entire life, and seen good representation in action, in real time, and the devastating effects on kids socially when they don’t have rep.
For instance, years ago, when I was working at a daycare, some little white boys were playing avengers in the play area, and a little black girl got excited and went over and asked to play with them. They told her no, because they didn’t know of any black woman heroes, and she was going to slow them down.
Me, being a black woman myself, and also a huge Comic fan, go over to intervene, and I start listing black women heroes, but quickly found myself scraping the bottom of the barrel for names, and quickly getting more and more obscure. I also knew that none of these heroes were on Disney XD, the channel the boys were probably watching.
They said ‘never heard of them’ and the black girl told me ‘it’s okay.’ And gave up and went inside to go color instead. A travesty for all those kids, for the little girl who was too discouraged to play, *and* for the boys who didn’t see value in her as a playmate because of the segregated media they watched.
It was then I decided to go harder into comics. Rep matters! I think Kaldur being encouraged by seeing a queer mentor he respects acknowledge him in a queer space was too good of a moment to not apply to this zine. It’s been knocking around in my head for ages and I’m happy to finally write it.
3) What has been your favorite part to illustrate?
I’ve decided I’m gonna have Miguel do Kaldur’s braids to get him ready for pride, that’ll be so sweet. Also I’m gonna draw Kaldur’s little finger webbies.
I’m gonna draw Diana like a titan! She gonna be a BIG LADY and, y’know, we stan big ladies. 7 feet of Diana. I hope my panel of the water splitting for Kaldur’s rescue comes out like how I want it to.
