Archie Comics’ first trans character makes her solo debut

polygon.com:

Riverdale’s resident secret girl genius created a time machine that needs demonic energy to power it — so naturally she turns to her best friend, a teen exorcist and half-demon. That’s all in a day’s work for Danni Malloy, the leading character in Strange Science, Archie Horror’s next spooky series. She’s a musician who used to be a teen genius and she would rather not talk about her past. And, oh yeah, she also happens to be Archie’s first trans character.

Now, Danni isn’t a new character, but a reimagined one. When she was introduced in the 1980s, originally in Dilton’s Strange Science, she was the sometimes-girlfriend of Dilton Doiley, Riverdale’s teen genius, and a talented scientist in her own right. But this version of Danni is the star of her own Strange Science, introduced in Archie Horror’s The Cursed Library as Jinx Holliday’s best friend.

Jinx is also reimagined Archie Comics character, rebranded from a mischievous small child into a half-demonic necromancy-practicing teen exorcist — a perfect fit for the Archie Horror world. Danni and Jinx partnered up again in Jinx: A Cursed Life, released earlier this year. Jinx’s big reboot was spearheaded by writer Magdalene Visaggio, who is also behind Strange Science.

“So, the really funky thing about Danni Malloy is that, way back in her first appearances in the original Dilton’s Strange Science mini-series, there’s this running gag that people assume she’s a boy based on her name, even continuing past the point of being corrected,” Visaggio said in a press release. “It starts with Dilton, right off the bat, and never really lets up. It’s a delicious kind of gender anarchy that reads trans as hell now in 2023 in that way that representation-starved desperate trans