The Pride is a comic-book series, created by Joe Glass and Ryan Cody, and published by Queer Comix.
Frustrated by a lack of representation in the superhero big leagues, FabMan decides to assemble his own team, made up exclusively of gay and lesbian heroes, but in the process, draws the attention of the Deacon, a shadowy figure who sees them as an easy target for his sinister plans.
This series contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Gender: According to Wolf, Venusian's people don't understand gender as humans do, and thus he's not entirely sure what Venusian's actual gender is. This becomes a plot point in the second series, as Venusian begins to question their gender and alters their form.
- Applied Phlebotinum: The Reverend utterly (and hilariously) refuses to explain how his evil mind-controlling machine works - "Can't we leave it at I made a super mind masher, y'all?"
- Ascended Extra: Venusian of the Justice Division was slightly more prominent than their teammates in the original miniseries, but becomes integral to the second series when it turns out the Big Bad is an old enemy of Venusian's race.
- Assimilation Plot: The Reverend's master plan is to take over the minds of everyone with an X-Cel gene.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Angel is gorgeous when she's wearing her full makeup.
- Badass Normal: Wolf has no powers of his own, but has trained extensively to become a hero.
- The Beard:
- Back when he was still plain old Harvey Castro, the Bear was married to a woman, in a desperate attempt to convince himself that he was straight. Naturally, it didn't work, but it did produce a son.
- The second series features Wolf having one in his civilian life, who discusses why he continues the charade of being straight. The last issue features Wolf publicly coming out when he reveals his secret identity.
- Beary Friendly: Harvey is an actual bear.
- The Big Guy: The Pride has The Bear. The Reverend has Basher.
- Bury Your Gays: Thankfully averted; Harvey turns out to be alive at the end, and presumably recovers from his near death at Basher's hands.
- Butch Lesbian: Muscle Mary, as her name suggests, is a tall, muscular woman.
- Condescending Compassion: After the Justice Division learns of the Pride, they immediately seek them out in their headquarters and try to discourage them from forming the group through a mixture of concern-trolling (acting like they're merely worried about the Pride's safety and reception by the public) and open bigotry. Luckily The Pride is having none of it.
- Connected All Along: In one of the short-stories in the second series, Wolf and Fabman apprehend a lion-themed villain group. Unbeknownst to everyone, the leader of said group is the son of Muscle Mary who believed him to be dead.
- Cure Your Gays: Played with; Owen's parents sent him away to be "cured" of his X-Cel gene.
- Expy: Many of the characters are expies of characters from the Big Two:
- FabMan = Green Lantern
- Wolf = Batman
- The Bear = Beast
- Twink = Colossus
- Muscle Mary = Wonder Woman
- Superdude = Superman
- Venusian = Martian Manhunter
- Bluebird = Black Canary
- Fast-Track = The Flash
- Cub = Wolverine
- The Justice Division = Justice League
- Morningstar and Nightstalker = Apollo and Midnighter
- Additionally, the final issue includes cameos by guys who are thinly-veiled expies of Hellboy and Sabertooth, among others.
- Handicapped Badass: Speedster Shango lost his legs in an explosion, but now uses prosthetics.
- Happily Married: Angel's alter ego, Kele Amos, has a wife back home.
- Heteronormative Crusader: Being a series with gay superheroes, naturally the Big Bad and his minions are all evil homophobes. The second Big Bad is not this trope, though.
- An Ice Person: Frost has the ability to generate ice.
- Ice Queen: Frost, befitting her name, is quite chilly, even with her teammates. It turns out she can control heat and flames as well as ice, but stopped using her fire abilities after an accident where she burned down her old home in a rage against her transphobic parents.
- I Just Want to Be Special:
- Twink has wanted to be a superhero ever since he was a little kid. Luckily for him, he turned out to have an X-Cell gene.
- Frost paid a lot of money to get endowed with superpowers.
- Jumped at the Call: Many of the Pride's members have to have their arms twisted a little bit to get them to sign up, not wanting the kind of spotlight that comes with being on a team. Twink, on the other hand, eagerly volunteers.
- Light 'em Up: Both FabMan and Morningstar have light-based powers.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Frost is a very feminine lesbian.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: Bluebird has super-screaming abilities.
- Meaningful Name: Several of the Pride's members are named after gay icons. For instance, Wolf (Brian Wilde) is named for Oscar Wilde, FabMan (Stephen Wainwright) is named for Rufus Wainwright, and the Bear (Harvey Castro) is named for Harvey Milk and Castro Street.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Owen's parents were horrified with themselves when they realized what was done to Owen when they tried to cure his powers, especially because they genuinely believed they were helping him because they thought his powers might lead to his death. They eventually reconcile with him.
- Named Like My Name: In-universe. A lion-themed villain group tries to label themselves 'The Pride', before Fabman and Wolf show up and Fabman informs them that the name is already taken.
- No Bisexuals: Barely averted; Angel is pansexual.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Reverend is basically a stand-in for notorious homophobe Fred Phelps. Even his name is similar - Franklin Philips.
- Non-Human Non-Binary: The series chose to explore non-binary experiences through the Venusian, who, as the name implies, is an alien.
- Pals with Jesus: Morningstar, one of the Justice Division guys, derives his powers from the god Ahura Mazda.
- Papa Wolf: The Bear is normally the nicest guy on the team, but when his son is kidnapped, he goes looking for blood.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In one of the stories in The Pride Adventures, the team tracks down Outrage, a grieving gay man whose lover was killed by gay-bashers, and who now hunts down and kills homophobes.
- Sex for Solace: In the wake of Harvey's apparent death, Wolf and Twink hook up. So do Frost and Muscle Mary.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Deconstructed. After Fabman unintentionally outs Hyperon, he seeks the latter out on his base on the moon to apologize. Hyperon is reluctant to accept the apology at first and berates Fabman for being a walking, talking stereotype of gay men. Fabman, however retaliates by reading Hyperon the riot act and pointing out that without "stereotypical" queer people like him who are out, proud and not afraid to be themselves, the LGBTQ+ community as it is in present day wouldn't exist and that it's no one's business how a queer person chooses to express themselves. Hyperon afterwards admits that wasn't an okay thing to say.
- Stripperific: Mighty Miss' costume leaves very little to the imagination.
- Totally Radical: Superdude talks like this, dude.
- Weight Woe: Mass of the second series suffers from severe body image issues and uses his powers to make his body more muscular despite the strain it causes on his health. Fabman offers to help Mass start an exercise regime so he can develop a more sculpted body naturally, which will also allow him to use powers without risk.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Wolf and Hyperon are both outraged when Fabman unintentionally outs Hyperon as an asexual, asking how he could be so thoughtless.
- Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: The Pride gathers at Fabulosa, FabMan's upscale nightclub for the LGBT community.
