Perhaps I say the same thing every time I read a DC Pride collection, but what impresses me most of all is how tied to continuity at least some of these stories are. It would be too easy for DC to remand the stories in DC Pride: To the Farthest Reaches to being “just so” stories, as easy to take or leave as the latest DC holiday special, but instead one or two fit or conceivably fit into the DCU’s day to day. When the whole point here is acceptance and belonging, that’s not a small thing.

The contrary voice says, “But it’s not as though what you have here is the major part of a crossover,” and that’s true, but then again, there are three Titans: Beast World tie-in stories included here. As I’ve mentioned before, I adore that Circuit Breaker is a character with tight story-to-story continuity living from anthology to anthology. The fact that that’s been mainly in DC Pride volumes but isn’t limited to DC Pride volumes also says a lot for the admirable ways DC has positioned their Pride books.

[Review contains spoilers]

On Circuit Breaker, I was pleased to see Calvin Kasulke writing “Phantom Rodeo” instead of Jules Jourdain’s creator A.L. Kaplan — not any shade on Kaplan, but because the more writers who can handle a character, the more mainstream and less niche that character becomes.

Plus that Kasulke’s writing of the story — which leads in to Circuit Breaker’s appearance in Simon Spurrier’s Flash, one of those continuity notes — is indistinguishable from Kaplan, the same camp and humor. Also that Len Gogou’s art is very similar to Kaplan’s, so the visual look of the story is consistent. My only complaint here is that DC collects Kaplan’s Circuit Breaker Beast World story after Kasulke’s story in this book, when time-wise it came first, and that flubs a clever joke of Kasulke’s that repeats a line of dialogue from Kaplan’s.

Too that Joe Corallo’s story from DC Pride: A Celebration of Rachel Pollack references events in Dennis Culver’s Unstoppable Doom Patrol. I’ve read neither Pollack’s Doom Patrol nor Culver’s — I am being too precious perhaps in my plans for a grand Doom Patrol reading — and so some of what was here went past me, but again I’m glad to know it matters, it’s not incidental, and I’ll revisit it some day after I read Culver’s book.

I also particularly liked, controversies aside, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Poison Ivy story. Though not set in any particular point in G. Willow Wilson’s Poison Ivy series, Janet from HR is in tow as Ivy visits an alien planet, making this not just an Ivy story but one set in the here-and-now-ish. Claire Row’s art also fits in with the aesthetic of the ongoing series, weird and alien and ultimately horror-tinged. Where many of the DC Pride stories necessarily tend toward themes of love and support, I appreciated that DC allowed for queerness plus horror here, bucking the fear that either lends any negative connotation to the other.

Animated cozy stories aren’t usually in my wheelhouse, Wayne Family Adventures and DC GO! and the like; I have and do appreciate, however, the sometimes-a-little-out-there interpretations of the characters that DC Pride often provides. Here, that’s most specifically in “Bros Down in A-Town,” a food-manga-inspired tale of Super Son Jon Kent, boyfriend Gossamer Jay Nakamura, Bunker Miguel Barragan, and Ray “The Ray” Terrill hanging out, by Speed Force’s Jarrett Williams.

We’ve got Jon in his cut-off shirt as depicted by DJ Kirkland, towering over Jay (and they’re so flirty, considering what’s to come!), Miguel talking about his crush’s “post-gym smell,” and Ray feeling he’s not as cool as the others. Perhaps in contrast to the “cross over” Circuit Breaker stories, this is the kind of thing we’d never see in the mainstream DC Universe, and that’s another value of DC Pride: valid interpretations of these characters that wouldn’t be tonally right (or, unfortunately, might see too much backlash) in the official books. See too Jamilia Rowser’s wonderfully imaginative Steel Natasha Irons story, which mish-mashes far flung elements like Nat’s brief stint in the “New Justice” Titans with Alyssa Wong’s Spirit World.

Maybe I need to go back and read all Nicole Maines' Dreamer stories in order, but “Lessons in Astral Projection” was an uncharacteristic miss for me — I just have no idea where Nia Nal ended up on the last page, what’s the significance, and so on. But the book wraps up perfectly with the autobiographical story from Phil Jimenez, a long-time favorite. I thought particularly interesting was Jimenez' study of queer coding among the Legion of Super-Heroes, “a queer future created by some of the least queer people I know”; really fascinating stuff.

I’m late on DC Pride: To the Farthest Reaches, I know; insofar as I’m always reading the DC Pride collections a year after their specials came out, I missed reading this 2024 one in 2025 and now I’ve got the 2026 collection of the 2025 special, DC Pride: The Heart Wants, on the shelf. That’s said to be one connected story, though clearly I can see it’s another anthology with a more defined frame — and, uh, no Circuit Breaker? We’ll see how that one works out.

[Includes original and variant covers]