Supergirl may have ended its six-season run on The CW, but actress Nicole Maines isn't done with her character Dreamer, who broke new ground for being the first transgender superhero character on television. Maines has already penned several DC Comics stories featuring Nia Nal, including a recent issue of Superman: Son of Kal-El. Now Maines is teaming with artist Rye Hickman (Lonely Receiver) for a full-length graphic novel called Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story.
IGN had the opportunity to speak with Maines and learn more about how Bad Dream fills in some major gaps in Dreamer's story. Check out a preview in the slideshow gallery below and read on to learn more about how this book reveals Dreamer's full origin story at long last.
Bringing Dreamer From the Arrowverse to Comics
It's easy to assume that Maines' previous Dreamer comics were a sort of trial run for this lengthier graphic novel. But in truth, she's been working on Bad Dream for several years. This is a story Maines specifically reached out to DC to tell, though she didn't initially plan on being the one to write it.
"I had an idea for solo comic and I went to DC to pitch it and I was like, 'Hey, I don't know what the plans are. I don't know what we want to do with this character. This is a character who's really, really special and this is a character that's really necessary right now. This is my idea. I don't know how this process works. Here's my idea. I think you guys should do it. I don't know if you're going to find a writer and do something, but I just think this is something you could do.' And they said, 'Well, why don't you write it?' And I don't know why I didn't see that coming, but I was like, "I think you guys have misunderstood what it is I do. I dress up and I say the words that other people write. I'm not the writer." And they said, 'No, do it, You'll be great.'"
Maines admitted that writing Bad Dream has been a slow and difficult process, particularly as she started signing on to write other stories in books like Superman: Son of Kal-El, DC Pride 2021 and the recent Lazarus Planet crossover. Fortunately, she found some guidance in the form of her Superman co-writer Tom Taylor, who had some useful wisdom to impart.
"The best piece of advice he's given me was use your best ideas now," Maines says. "You will have other ideas, but there's no use in having a great idea and sitting on it. It's not doing anyone any good if you're sitting on your best ideas, so use them. You'll come up with more stuff to use later, but that has been really, really helpful and that's been great. If I have a good idea, I'm using it. I'm not going to second guess it. If I like it, it's going in."
As for what led Hickman to join the project, Maines said she was immediately drawn to Hickman's work after reviewing several candidates.
"First of all, they have the perfect art style for a young adult graphic novel format," Maines says. "The way that Rye has been able to craft this world and the environments are so beautiful, because we go through so many different places in this story. We go from Parthas to Metropolis to A-Town and Rye has done such a spectacular job of bringing this to life and seeing the dream sequences come to life. Seeing what Rye has done with making them these beautifully surrealist, nonsensical Alice in Wonderland spreads is spectacular. "
Dreamer's Secret Origin Revealed
Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story is part of DC's growing YA graphic novel line, which also includes stories like Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale and Beast Boy Loves Raven. But where most of these books are intended as standalone stories not connected to the larger DC Universe, Maines specifically envisions Bad Dream as being set in DC's main comic book continuity. This is meant to be the definitive origin story for a character who has never really had one.
"We've never seen her backstory before," Maines says. "This is the first anybody's hearing of it. So for all intents and purposes, that is her origin story. Because there hasn't ever been an issue stating otherwise, and so now we're going to have upwards of 200 pages detailishly chronicling how she came to possess these powers and what she did in the immediate aftermath. The whole story takes place over three days, so it's just this intense fight or flight response from her in response to her awakening."
The book focuses a great deal on Nia Nal's troubled relationship with her sister, Maeve, the family's golden child and the one whom everyone assumes will inherit their mother's Naltorian ability to see the future through dreams. But when Nia manifests this ability after a schoolyard accident, she runs away from home and attempts to suppress her gift.
"Her entire motivation for running away is, 'I have to protect my sister.' This is all [Maeve] ever wanted. These powers are all she's trained for. Since she could read, she has been studying with her mother to become a powerful seer. And Nia realizing that she has these powers is like, 'I can't take this from her. I can't.' And there's such a power dynamic between them, where Maeve is so obviously the alpha, she's the front woman, she's the featured player, and she's always happy to let Nia be Nia, as long as that doesn't take any of my light and doesn't take away from my time on stage. And so Nia realizing she has these powers is like, 'I have to get away. Until I can figure out what's going on, I cannot be near my sister.'"
The Supergirl TV series frequently used anti-alien prejudice as an X-Men-style allegory for for real-world persecution. Dreamer was always a unique character in the series in that she struggled for acceptance both as an alien and as a trans woman. That dual struggle will certainly be reflected in the graphic novel, though Maines is adding an extra wrinkle when it comes to depicting Naltorian society. In this version, only a lucky few Naltorians possess the ability to see the future, creating a rift between those with powers and those without.
"Without revealing too much, there is a direct link between the alien communities and the queer communities, especially in Metropolis," Maines says. "They're both groups that people make unjust presumptions about and make assumptions. And as queer people are being legislated against, as are aliens in this universe, and so they find commonality in that. But where Nia comes from, it's starkly different. It's a situation of, 'I've grown up in this very, very diverse place, where everyone is so different and everyone has their own stuff going on. Why am I the odd one out?'"
Maines continues, "For me, it feels very much directly linked to the real world in the way that marginalized groups and even other members of the queer community find time in their own suffering and in their own struggle to say, 'But we're still better than these people. We don't like it when we're discriminated against, but I believe it is completely justified if this group of people is discriminated against.' And that lack of self-awareness in their own situation drove some of the inspiration behind building Parthas because, of course, in the show it was this very utopian, very idyllic place to grow up, but I think it's more possibly realistic if in this diversity, they still find time to put someone at the bottom of the food chain and that person being Nia, which is another driving factor in why she is so ready to leave."
Dreamer in The Flash: Season 9
Supergirl may have ended, but Arrowverse fans are being given one last chance to reconnect with Dreamer thanks to The Flash: Season 9. Maines is one of a number of Arrowverse alumni reprising their roles in this final season. With Maines' return coming up in the episode "Wildest Dreams," we were curious how it felt to revisit the character in live-action one more time.
"This is the thing: I will always say yes to Dreamer," Maines says. "Sometimes that results in me having way too much work to do, working on the graphic novel and Lazarus Planet and filming The Flash all at the same time while doing Yellowjackets. I had a moment where I was like, 'Why do I think feel like I'm dying? Oh, maybe because you need to stop saying yes so much,' but I can't. I can't stop saying yes to Dreamer because I'm so excited about her and I'm so excited to see her appearing in all the places that she's been appearing. DC's willingness to rally behind this character and to push her forward has been really rewarding and makes me really, really happy because, I mean, I'm this character's biggest fan and I want to see her everywhere."
Maines also teased what to expect from Dreamer's Flash appearance, revealing that the episode pairs Nia with Candice Patton's Iris West-Allen as the two find themselves trapped in the dream realm while the rest of Team Flash struggle to free them.
"When she's coming back, she's coming back as Nia, less Dreamer," Maines says. "It's not crime fighting. It's not, 'Let's go out in the super suits and let's kick some butt.' This is Iris and Dreamer trapped in a vision, trying to put the pieces together, and racing against the clock. The focus on Iris and Nia's friendship was really great because I love Candice so much, and so her and I getting to run around together in the dream realm was a blast. Getting to lean into the comedy where we could and lean into the terror where we could was really fun."
The Flash: "Wildest Dreams airs on March 29, 2023, and Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story will hit bookstores and comic shops in April 2024. For more on The Flash's final season, check out IGN's review of the premiere episode and find out why the villain the Red Death isn't who we thought.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/supergirl-nicole-maines-dreamer-graphic-novel-bad-dream