REVIEW: ‘Marvel Voices: Pride 2023,’ Issue #1

Marvel Voices: Pride 2023 #1 is an anthology from Marvel Comics showcasing a litany of queer characters from across the Marvel universe alongside interviews and personal essays. The book is contributed to by Mary Chieffo, Marieke Nijkamp, Pablo Collar, Michael Wiggam, Stephanie Williams, Héctor Barros, Oren Junior, Andrew Dalhouse, Katherine Locke, Joanna Estep, Manuel Puppo, Shadi Petosky, Roberta Ingranata, Ceci de la Cruz, Sarah Gailey, Bailie Rosenlund, Rachelle Rosenberg, H.E. Edgmon, Lorenzo Susi, Kelly Fitzpatrick, Stephen Byrne, Steve Foxe, Rosi Kämpe, Kelly Fitzpatrick, VC’s Ariana Maher, VC’s Travis Lanham, and Amy Reeder.

What perhaps may have begun as a truly meaningful series designed to celebrate the diversity of Marvel Comics’ characters and creators while recognizing the storied histories of exclusion, broken ground, and progress has fallen into an unfortunate mess of corporate synergy and buzzword check ticking. Previous renditions of Marvel Voices projects, including past Pride issues, struck a balance between showcasing current characters and their ongoing adventures while also telling impactful stand-alone tales or drawing from a historical well of representation in need of rectification. Unfortunately, Marvel Voices: Pride 2023 #1 lacks almost altogether interesting, meaningful, or creative storytelling. Instead, it is mostly an advertisement for various ongoing or new series and where it takes creative liberties it still comes up short by telling its queerness rather than trying to show it.

On their own, I don’t dislike most of the stories. “Purim Spiel” draws from ongoing Spider-Man stories with a character I didn’t know existed in the form of a gay, Jewish Spider-Man. The story itself is mostly innocuous, with a plot that desperately makes me wish he could have a whole series devoted to learning more about his Judaism, for which he claims to know virtually nothing, through his Black Jewish boyfriend. But the issue offers no indication whatsoever that we should expect to see Cooper Coen again in the future.

Others like “Be Gay, Do Crime,” “Jumbo Carnation’s Ultimate Creations,” or “Everything’s Comic Up Aces” feel like simple celebrations of pride with no stakes and a fine amount of celebration. Which is cool, because certainly not everything queer needs to be high stakes or serious all the time. But there’s also something unsettling about a comic full of characters just running around declaring their eclectic queer identities out loud through long exposition flashbacks ad nauseam. “Everywhere” is about a cool, ancient trans character, but the entire story is told as one giant and slightly confusing exposition dump. Will she ever show up again?

Sure, there’s an awesome spectrum of gender, sex, and romantic identities on display, but they feel on display. It feels like a lot of “hey, it’s me, Gwenpool, I’m ace now and if you want to read more about me, subscribe to Marvel Unlimited!” Or, “ah, yes, I am a villain who so happens to be trans, and you can see me again in an upcoming Spider-Man issue!” Half of the comic’s stories fit that mold while the other half just aren’t very interesting. A short story about a queer fashion show sounds great in theory but didn’t endear me to any particular characters to drive me toward their comics. “What May Bloom” did nothing for me as it strived to draw excitement around a potential new queer hero but was so over-stuffed with connections to other stories and exposition that I couldn’t follow a single panel of it. “Today’s Lesson” had me somewhat interested in the upcoming Dark X-Men series on account of the full team it displays, but it’s also probably the story that was the least loud about its queer elements.

There’s nothing wrong with stories that act as pure celebrations or ones that are meant to generate excitement about a character or a series. But Marvel Voices: Pride 2023 #1 just doesn’t feel like it knew how to do either very well. The most exciting characters don’t seem to have any immediate futures and too many of the stories were drowned out by their massive exposition dumps or their uninteresting plots.

Marvel Voices: Pride 2023 #1 is available now wherever comics are sold.