Green Arrow’s son Connor Hawke comes out as asexual in heartfelt Pride-themed comic

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Green Arrow’s son Connor Hawke will come out publicly as asexual in a new comic that is part of the highly-anticipated DC Pride 2022 series. 

DC Comics will publish a new edition of its popular anthology series DC Pride on 31 May, just in time for Pride Month. The series will feature some of DC’s most notable queer characters and will debut the comic book giant’s newest LGBT+ hero – Connor Hawke. 

Hawke is the son of Oliver Queen – the original Green Arrow – and eventually takes over the mantle from his father, becoming the second Green Arrow. The young hero is set to come out as asexual in the eight-page story titled “Think of Me”, them reported. 

In the story, Hawke will face off against supervillain Music Meister, who uses his hypnotic singing ability to mind control a captive audience at an opera. However, Hawke – who is a highly-skilled hand-to-hand fighter – uses high-tech earplugs to resist the musical villain’s magical powers. 

The young hero composes a heartfelt coming out letter to his mother as he fights Music Meister, a character that was created for Neil Patrick Harris in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. 

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The DC Pride comic was created by an asexual creative team featuring Ro Stein, Ted Brandt and Frank Cvetkovic. Brandt told them that it was an “extra little bit of help” to have the “entire team be asexual”. 

“It really felt like it was a personal story for all of us on some level,” Brandt said. 

Stein and Brandt explained that Hawke’s new earpieces – which were gifted to him by Batman’s son Damian Wayne, AKA Robin – are meant to serve as a metaphor for the hero’s disconnect from allosexuals. 

Brandt added that they were “very aware of the logistics” of the letter as it needed to not only help the hero come out but also to explain “what asexuality feels like” because “a lot of people can’t imagine it”. 

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“And that makes perfect sense to me, especially because I’m also autistic,” Brandt said. “I get not understanding what it’s like for someone who experiences something different to you.”

“We were splitting it into the actions of the script,” Stein added, “and it was like ‘these lines fit really well with the actions we’ve picked … this is kind of creepy, actually!’”

Brandt and Stein told them that they worked on last year’s DC Pride anthology and said editor Andrea Shea was a “tireless champion” in including an ace hero in this year’s LGBT+ anthology. 

“She wanted to make sure that the ace community felt that there was something for them,” Brandt said.

In recent years, DC Comics has introduced a host of new LGBT+ superheroes from Jon Kent’s Superman, Tim Drake’s Robin and the first trans Amazon in Nubia and the Amazons. Wonder Woman even got a queer romance in the limited series Dark Knights of Steel where she shared a beautiful kiss with her girlfriend, who was Superman’s sister. 

DC also introduced an asexual superhero in its CW TV show Legends of Tomorrow. In January, the Legends’ members Zari Tomaz (Tala Ashe) and Esperanza “Spooner” Cruz (Lisseth Chavez) had a heart-to-heart while sitting at a bar. 

Spooner admitted that she doesn’t “really get those types of feelings for anyone”, and Zari suggested that her teammate might be asexual. When Spooner said she was ace, Zari joked: “OMG, did you just come out to me?”