Features

Tate McFadden | August 4, 2026

There is a long and rich history of trans women in comics, but that history becomes far shorter when applied solely to superhero books. Writing a comprehensive list of all the trans women who have worked big two capes comics wouldn’t take very long. Which makes Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol, which began in 1993 and ran for two years, an improbable piece of comics history. Pollack is not best known for her work as a comics writer. Although she penned a few comics after Doom Patrol, including a run of DC’s New Gods, a couple one-shots and a few short series such as Time Breakers, it is her time writing Doom Patrol for Vertigo in the early ‘90s that defines her comics work. Pollack is far more known as a fantasy writer and Tarot practitioner and theorist. She was nominated for an Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1989, a Nebula in 1995, was shortlisted for a James Tiptee Award, and in 1997 won a World Fantasy Award for her queer fantasy novel Godmother Night. She wrote several seminal books on the Tarot including the widely acclaimed and beloved Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot.

In order to discuss Pollack’s run, one must go back to the Doom Patrol’s inception. The team first appeared in 1963 first under the title My Greatest Adventure. Created by writers Bob Haney and Howard Drake, and artist Bruno Premiano, Doom Patrol was an odd child in the DC roster, as it consisted of several characters who gained superpowers after horrible accidents. Notable members include Cliff Steele, aka Robotman, whose brain was transplanted into a robot body and Larry Trainor, aka the Negative Man, who gained the ability to project a radioactive spirit of himself from his body. The team is headed by Professor Niles “Chief” Caulder, a super-genius confined to a robotic wheelchair. The 1963 run of Doom Patrol is a strange title with much darker, more alienated characters, and far wackier silver age-y villains, compared to its contemporaries,

This weirdness of the original run appealed to a young Scottish child named Grant Morrison, who found its grim and strange world unsettling in the midst of the brighter, most standard superhero fare. In the front matter to Morrison’s Doom Patrol Vol. 1, they write “When I was a kid, I hardly ever read Doom Patrol; that comic frightened me, and the only reason I read any of the stories at all was that there was a certain glamour about those four characters.”

Rachel Pollack's Shining Light Tarot, a deck drawn and created by Rachel Pollack.

By the time Morrison was approached by DC to write Doom Patrol in the late ‘80s, he was well-established as a solid writer in the DC bullpen. Their run on Doom Patrol. which lasted from 1989 to 1992 before being picked up by Pollack, and was drawn largely by artist Richard Case, retained the surreal, darker tinge that had first captivated young imagination, but took on a more intellectual, and decidedly more queer, aspect, with Morrison’s reintroduction of Larry Trainor as a sort of intersex, nonbinary character, along with a whole host of other queer supporting characters.

Much like the ‘60s era Doom Patrol did for Morrison, Morrison’s own run quickly became beloved by Pollack, who said in an interview with TCJ that “it was such an incredible, brilliant thing.” But in Doom Patrol #64, Pollack quickly made it clear that her version would resonate with Morrison’s work without being beholden to it. She said of her run’s first issue: “I wrote it based on what [editor Tom Peyer] told me [about how] Grant was going to end it, and where I would want to go with it. Basically I just had them move to Rhinebeck. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to move the cast who are weird super cool wild strange superheroes to some nice little village in upstate New York.” Pollack’s choice of setting grounded the fantastical characters in a community, humanizing them. Morrison’s more absurdist tone made for riveting storytelling and fascinating conceptual devices, but often relegated the interiority of the characters to second fiddle. There is a tangible coolness to their comics which vanishes almost immediately once Pollack takes over.

Even as Pollack transitions the title from Morrison’s hands to her own, the focal shift is evident. Far more page space is dedicated to characters’ social interactions, their emotions, and their interpersonal conflicts, than to fleshing out grand metaphysical concepts. That isn’t to say that Pollack abandoned the absurdity of Morrison’s run. If anything, many of Pollack’s stories push the envelope further than Morrison ever did, but she never feels like she’s in a hurry. The first three issues of Pollack’s run focus on Dorothy Spinner, character created by Paul Kuppenberg and Erik Larsen. Dorothy is a girl with a facial disfigurement who can bring imaginary friends from her childhood to life in order to help protect herself. Despite being a part of the team during Morrison’s run, she gets short shrift in both characterization and action. Under Pollack, however, Dorothy gets more attention and development. The first arc introduces a central conflict that will play out for the rest of her run, as Dorothy, increasingly bullied and abused by the world around her, attempts to process her ongoing traumas while struggling to keep her dangerous powers in check. As that first arc closes, Pollack also bids farewell to longtime artist Case, before starting a long-term creative partnership with the first woman to draw the title, Linda Medley.

From Doom Patrol #67: Dorothy encounters her new home and mysterious friend: Charlie the Inner Child. Written by Rachel Pollack. Art by Linda Medley and Graham Higgins.

The stories Morrison wrote for Doom Patrol were often detached from the emotional landscapes of their characters. It was likely by necessity that they remained short and sweet before they started to drive readers mad. Once Pollack and Medley had the series firmly under their belts, however, they abandoned the more episodic structure in favor of longer stories that could tease out the interiority of the cast. Pollack’s second arc lasts over 200 pages compared to the first’s 80, and slowly develops its antagonists and conflicts in a way that feels more contemporary than the stories during Morrison’s tenure. In the first page of issue #68, Pollack establishes the emotional journeys of both Cliff and Dorothy. Cliff remains unable to let anyone close to him, refusing to trust after Caulder’s betrayal, while Dorothy, whose youth has not been thoughtfully engaged with until now, says to herself forlornly while sitting alone on a swing set, “We can be happy here. We can. We just have to try.”

There are tinges of EC horror in the early issues of the arc. As the characters are watched by shadowy figures in the forest, Dorothy befriends a strange doll calling itself the Inner Child, and talking ravens lure children into becoming wild in the woods. It is easy to think that Pollack is taking the story in a surprisingly straightforward direction. The arc exhibits classical haunted house motifs and poltergeist-esque happenings, but in typical Doom Patrol fashion, everything is turned on its head. Pollack reveals that the house in Rhinebeck used to be a sex club, and the ghosts haunting the place aren’t malevolent, but are merely psychosexual echoes of previous occupants, called the SRS. The SRS are watched over by the two newest members of the Doom Patrol, a mysterious bandage-wrapped couple named George and Marion who take on a kind of caring, familial role towards Dorothy, and offer Cliff and the other members of the Doom Patrol some much needed emotional maturity and balance.

It’s in the second and third arcs where Pollack begins to write Doom Patrol as a truly queer comic. Morrison’s Doom Patrol isn’t exactly straight, with frequent references to drag or cross-dressing, and several gay characters appear throughout the run, but for the most part, the title remained largely aromantic and asexual. George and Marion are the first unapologetically horny characters to join the team, and from issue #68 on out, the pages of Doom Patrol are littered with the surreal sexual exploits of the SRS. The team’s antagonist in the second arc is called the Master Cleaner, a cosmic entity who was tasked by the universe to clean the karma of everything and everyone as they change from one state of being to another. Driven mad by the sheer magnitude of his work, the Master Cleaner becomes a zealot in his duty, and begins permanently cleaning everything in existence, killing them for eternity, and leaving little pieces of paper with the definition of the thing in its place. There is an obvious queer-phobic allegory going on in the battle between the Master Cleaner and the Doom Patrol, who are joined by the Master Cleaner’s arch nemesis, a hero whose power is to change from one surreal character to another every few minutes.

The Master Cleaner is the first major antagonist in Pollack’s run, and he serves as an introduction to what I think of as Pollack’s antithetical narrative structure. Pollack’s four major arcs serve as thematic and formal counterpoints to Morrison’s own arcs. The Master Cleaner, who values order to such a degree that he wishes everything in the universe to be distilled into its linguistic definition, is the antithesis to one of Morrison’s most famous villains: Mr. Nobody and his Brotherhood of Dada. Where the Brotherhood seeks ultimate chaos, the Master Cleaner strives for fatal order. The Brotherhood of Dada arc is also largely an absurdist comedy, with the Brotherhood cast as entertaining villains with benign goals, but the Master Cleaner is a tragic figure crushed under the weight of his noble calling, driven to truly terrifying and explicit degrees of violence.

I don’t mean to suggest that there was any animosity between the two writers. Pollack’s work on Doom Patrol challenges the constraints and weaknesses of Morrison’s run, pushing it towards greater emotional vulnerability and depth. If the silver age antics of the original Doom Patrol set a precedent for the truly weird in DC comics that Morrison could build upon, so too did Morrison’s incredible experiments in the absurd set Pollack up to ground the absurd in weighty emotional realism. The strength of Pollack’s Doom Patrol comes to the fore in the third arc, when Pollack introduces Kate Goodwin aka Coagula, her most standout character after Dorothy, and DC’s first ever trans hero. Kate is a former sex worker with the power to melt and coagulate anything. She plays a crucial emotional and narrative role through the rest of Pollack’s run, and remains the longest-standing trans character to hold an important role in a DC superhero book.

From Doom Patrol #70: Kate makes her first appearance in order to help the Doom Patrol defeat the evil Codpiece. Written by Rachel Pollack. Art by Scot Eaton and Tom Sutton.

Kate is first introduced in one of the few single-issue stories in Pollack’s run, which is itself a kind of comedic response to Morrison’s one-shot Doom Patrol parody of The Punisher. In an early jab at what would eventually become known as incel culture, Pollack creates Codpiece, a man so convinced women hate him because of his small penis that he makes a super suit that shoots weapons out of its massive codpiece. When Kate/Coagula defeats Codpiece handily, she’s brought to the Doom Patrol’s headquarters. During her induction, we learn that Kate chooses, very explicitly, to do sex work on her own terms, despite the fact that she is both a talented hacker and a superhero. We also learn that she tried to join the Justice League, but “I suspect they liked my powers but couldn’t handle me.” In lesser hands, Kate would have become little more than a political mouthpiece preaching to readers, but under Pollack’s pen, she is one of the most compellingly fleshed out characters to ever grace a DC comic.

Kate’s integration into the Doom Patrol isn’t easy. Despite the fact that the team is made up of misfits, Kate is routinely accosted by Professor Caulder, who makes fun of, harasses, and physically attacks her all in the name of training, before Kate tells him off and storms out. Caulder and Kate’s relationship remains rocky throughout the series, and the difficulties Kate encounters while joining the team mirror the real-world difficulties trans folks have in finding community even in the queerest corners of society. Kate is a somewhat minor character in the third arc, titled The Fox and the Crow, but she serves as an important adult emotional interlocutor for Cliff, opening him up to what will become one of the more virtuosic emotional journeys of the run.

"The Fox and the Crow" revolves around a lovers’ spat between two ancient figures who are connected to the sun and the moon respectively. In the dispute, the Fox recruits an army of senior citizens to fight the Crow’s army of wild children, and chooses Cliff as his champion to counter Crow’s selection of Dorothy. Dorothy and Cliff each have their emotional traumas taken advantage of, which clouds their judgement. Dorothy finds adoration and acceptance from the children who love her creations, calling her Story Lady and worshipping her. Meanwhile, Cliff is sent into an existential spiral as he is offered the chance to turn back into a human by the Fox, who reveals he granted Cliff’s boyhood wish for an indestructible body to stop his bullying.

Throughout their manipulation, Kate acts as an emotional counterbalance to the turmoil that Dorothy and Cliff are subjected to. For Dorothy, Kate offers the possibility of unconditional acceptance and care, without expectation of reward. And for Cliff, Kate is a powerful interlocutor who Cliff can talk to about his dysmorphia. In one of the most beautiful and somber conversations in the book, Cliff asks Kate “Have you ever found out that everything you believed — everything about yourself, who you believed you were — was just wrong? Do you think you can understand what that feels like? Just a little?” to which Kate replies “Yes. Yes I think I can understand that.” Then, Cliff walks off into the forest to join the Fox’s army.

"The Fox and the Crow" is Pollack’s riposte to Morrison’s "Lost in Space" saga in which two extra-dimensional armies fight an endless battle for reasons long forgotten. "Lost in Space" is a satirical condemnation of violence and war, but the stakes are purposefully alienated from us, whereas the battle between Fox and Crow takes place in small town New York, between two very human armies for the very human reason of a breakup. Pollack’s choice to foreground the emotional desires and stakes of the human characters over the emotionally cold, metaphysical conflicts of idea vs. idea allow conflict to act as a window to explore not just concepts but characters as well.

The beauty of Medley’s pencils really shines through in "The Fox and the Crow," with Medley managing to inject a strong sense of emotional interiority in every panel. Cliff, whose robotic face often made emotional visual storytelling difficult, is rendered with such care that every movement and angle of his character is imbued with emotional weight. Both Fox and Crow are depicted with an art nouveau beauty tinged with the feral edge of punk and paganism, scenes that Pollack was heavily influenced by herself. Both animals have resonances in various shamanistic and pagan traditions — the sun and moon, after all, are also major arcana in the Tarot, a magical practice that Pollack and Medley draw upon for their run.

Medley’s most notable contributions to the Doom Patrol world, however, are the SRS. The SRS are a product of the increasingly metaphysical bent of DC’s less mainstream titles, in which writers like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman started exploring the archetypal building blocks of their medium in series like Saga of the Swamp Thing and Sandman. The SRS represent archetypes of sexual relationships and narratives that Pollack uses to explore the sexual fears, discomforts and desires of her characters. It's yet another parry against Morrison’s bid toward absurdism in favor of significance and meaning. Medley and Pollack use the weirdness of Doom Patrol to channel a kind of semiotic magic akin to that of the Kabbalah, or Greek Hermeticism.

From Doom Patrol #78: Kate and Cliff meld bodies. Written by Rachel Pollack. Art by Ted McKeever.

Pollack’s final two arcs, "The Tiresias War" and "Imagine Ari’s Friends" bring Pollack’s expertise and practice in the Kabbalah to the fore. "Tiresias War" sees the return of the secret military organization known as the Agency that seeks to create ultimate normalcy across reality and is led by the sinister General Somervel. The Pentagon, led by Somervel, has resurrected a sect of godlike beings called the Builders, who worked on the biblical tower of Babel. As the Builders are resurrected, so too are the Tireisiae, a race of omnisexual, omnigendered creatures named for an ancient Greek magical figure who changed their sex from male to female. "Tiresias War" shifts its focus from Dorothy to Kate and Cliff, and their budding but fraught flirtation. In order to defeat the fascist goals of the Pentagon and the Builders, Kate and Cliff must combine bodies, minds, and spirits to become one of the Tireisiae and literally queer the language of Babel. In the emotional and physical climax of the arc, if not the entire run, Cliff and Kate meld completely in an orgasmic sex-magic ritual in order to save the world. In "Imagine Ari’s Friends," an ancient evil rabbi uses the powers of a corrupted tree of life, a symbol of Jewish mysticism, to destroy the world and reshape it in his image. Dorothy, along with her friends, must come together to stop him and embrace the world as it is in all its flaws, wounds, and beauties.

Pollack’s last two arcs are emotionally explosive conclusions to her run that demonstrate how much understanding and control she had from its inception. The presence of real mystical imagery from various traditions that Pollack practiced sets her Doom Patrol apart from many of its Vertigo contemporaries, which often made foggy claims to mystic connections without any grounding in real traditions. Pollack remains one of the great Tarotic scholars of our time, and her combination of mysticism grounded in practices of queer community building and intimacy elevated Doom Patrol from a piece generic experiment to one of heart-wrenching beauty and shocking realism.

Where Morrison pioneered the comics writer’s freedom to experiment with character and concept, Pollack paved the way for contemporary comics to be both formally experimental and emotionally nuanced. What sets Pollack’s run of Doom Patrol apart from Morrison’s is the tenderness with which she treats her characters, suffusing her stories with empathy just as Dorothy does her imaginary friends.

A Note on What to Read Before Pollack’s Run

I strongly recommend reading all of Morrison’s Doom Patrol run because it is excellent comics, but if you want to just get enough of a taste to know what’s going on before diving into Pollack, these are my recommendations:

• Doom Patrol #19: Gives you Morrison’s basic revamps of the members’ backstories.
• Doom Patrol #25: You get a taste of Morrison’s brief reintroduction of Dorothy to the story and an overview of her powers.
• Doom Patrol #28-29: The original Brotherhood of Dada saga.
• Doom Patrol #42-44: The original Pentagon story arc is probably the most important piece of canon to know about for the second half of Pollack’s run.
• Doom Patrol #57: The reveal of Professor Caulder’s sinister plot sets up much of the emotional tension between Cliff, Caulder, and the rest of the team going forward.

A note on publication history

DC inexplicably failed to collect Pollack’s run of Doom Patrol in any hardcover or paperback form as is standard in the capes comics industry until three decades after the series had begun. Many fans saw this as the publisher’s dismissal or even quiet erasure of a transfemme author’s work, given that Morrison’s Doom Patrol has been collected in several different paperback runs since its inception. In October 2022 they published the series in a hardcover omnibus format. Pollack passed away in April 2023. DC announced this year that they will finally be releasing a DC Finest paperback of Pollack’s complete run on Oct. 20.