30 years later, DC Comics’ first transgender superhero is still the genre’s best

polygon.com:

In the last decade trans inclusion in Big Two superhero comics has exploded. 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. The introduction of Alysia Yeoh in 2013 marked the beginning of a wave of trans characters appearing in superhero comics that attempted to show them in a less sensational light.

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. However, they were all preceded by trans superheroine Kate Godwin, created by writer Rachel Pollack in her 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. Bringing a trans woman into that thematic space makes perfect sense. Kate Godwin was not simply there for inclusion dressing. Her transness and experiences informed the story.

The Doom Patrol, created in 1963 by Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, and Bruno Premiani, was a group of normal people whose superpowers had made them extraordinary outsiders to society, debuting just a few months before the similarly themed X-Men. Famously, the team included Robotman, a race car driver who was forced to live the rest of his life