In a world not too dissimilar to ours, where every day, people are discovering that they have been granted extraordinary gifts and powers, a young transgender woman decides to use her newfound powers to become the superhero known as Chalice. Brought to us by Paul Jenkins, Leila Leiz, Tamra Bonvillain, and Ryan Hill, “Alters” is said to be a new era for superhero comics. Let’s put that to the test, shall we?
Read on below for our full review of “Alters” #1, but I must warn you about spoilers because I’m going to have to break this thing wide open to really explore it.
Written by Paul Jenkins
Illustrated by Leila Leiz
A world where a war between heroes and villains is being fought to a stalemate, with humanity becoming the collateral damage part of the equation…The heroes know they are losing the war. And in the middle of this world-changing conflict, a new threat seems to be emerging: the Alters. They are mutants, possibly – or perhaps they are some kind of ultimate end to our genetic road map. Whatever the case, Alters seem to be emerging all around the country… and they are met with fear, distrust, and prejudice. They manifest new, dangerous powers that emerge without warning.From a diverse team of creators composed of differing genders, gender identities, ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations comes a groundbreaking first-ever superhero series with a central transgender protagonist created by a mainstream writer.
As the world struggles to accept the emergence of these Alters, a young woman begins her transition from male to female only to find herself also transitioning into a powerful Alter. Faced with persecution by the multi-powered fascist known only as Matter Man, she will face the world as Chalice–a hero for a new age. But as Chalice navigates the path to becoming her true self, she must juggle the complications of her civilian life and the responsibilities of her newfound power.
This groundbreaking series–years in the making–begins the saga of a young woman who can only really be herself…whenever she is not herself.
The problem with “Alters” is not that it exists nor that it wants to explore the concept of a transgender superhero. The problem with “Alters” isn’t even that it’s a comic about a transgender superhero written by a cisgender man. The problem with “Alters” is that it has no idea what it wants to be. Much like its main character, “Alters” #1 is stuck at a crossroads between wanting to be a superhero epic that shows the devastating, world-changing effects of emerging superpowers whilst also being a personal drama showing a young trans woman who is only just beginning her transition and feeling trapped by the world around her. With only twenty-something pages to introduce these concepts, writer Paul Jenkins and artist Leila Leiz end up serving up these ideas half cooked and at odds with each other.
For starters, this is a superhero comic where superheroics essentially don’t exist. Jenkins and Leiz spend all the space the issue has to explore the existence and the nature of the Alters themselves burdening the reader with exposition as to the factions and science of their discovery instead of actually showing them be superheroes. There’s an undercurrent to the comic that seems to hint that the emergence of the Alters has changed the entire political landscape of the world with Matter Man giving a publicly televised speech that suggest that he, essentially rules the world (while announcing that he’s declaring a jihad which is a whole can of worms I won’t even touch), but it’s something that’s glossed over entirely.
An important scene early on showing the discovery of Chalice’s powers has her simply float in mid-air while another group of Alters spout important sounding dialogue about quantum energies without actually doing anything before Chalice just flies off. That’s all you get of Chalice herself in this issue barring another last page appearance that’s supposed to end on a cliffhanger, but this issue hasn’t given us a hook to want to read more. This is touted as the first superhero book with a transgender main character, but it is not in the slightest bit interested in showing her being a hero.
Continued belowInstead, Paul Jenkins is very much interested in exploring the identity of someone who is transgender but is still living under their assigned gender. Chalice’s alter ego, Charlie, is said to be only just starting hormone therapy and is still not out to her family including her dad and two brothers and Jenkins seems more interested in milking that for all the angst in the world than actually exploring Charlie as a character. This issue gives us no idea of Charlie’s personality beyond being trans. Every narrative caption she has (which is given to us in the form of a diary entry that is shown being written in the opening scene, framing the rest of the issue in a flashback, except the issue just forgets about that scene after two pages) is filled with every cliche sentiment about lack of identity and being stuck in place that cis writers burden trans characters with.
Let me break down this wall of reviewer professionalism for a second here and get real: I’m transgender and I love superhero comics. I should love this issue. The problem is that “Alters” #1 is not interested in either showing Chalice (or any of the Alters) as superheroes or showing Charlie as a character who is happy to be transitioning. Being trasngender is shown to be nothing but a source of angst for Charlie, a burden to weigh on her shoulders while she must play into this masculine facade around her brothers or her male best friend. This is something I experience daily, this is something I get, but this not the defining transgender experience.
Nothing in this issue actually communicates why or how Charlie came to the realisation that she is trans. Nothing communicates the idea that transitioning is something Charlie wants to do and instead provides the idea that transitioning is some torture trans women must go through in order to be whole. Jenkins is so fascinated by the hardships that trans women experience on a daily basis that he has created a superhero that exists to fetishise gender dysphoria instead of giving trans people a superhero that they can relate to and see themselves in.
I hate to be ragging on this issue like this because, frankly, I wanted to like it. In fact, there’s a lot to like about outside of the gross fetishising in the writing. Leila Leiz is clearly the MVP here as her artwork is fantastic. It’s light with clean, crisp lines and brings a very clear style that would be perfect for a superhero book and completely fits the larger than life aspects of the Alters as well as the suburban domestic life of Charlie. The downside is that Leiz is never allowed to explore the former aspect. The frustratingly short scene with Chalice encountering Octavian in the beginning of the issue shows that Leiz could ably put together exciting action-packed scenes. Her use of slanted panels and shot framing creates a sense of tension and adrenaline, but she is only given one page before the rest of the issue is a series of domestic dialogue scenes.
This is what I mean when I say this is a superhero comic that fails to capitalise on what’s exciting about being a superhero. Jenkin’s script is so focused on injecting trans angst into the “I’m a superhero, but my life still sucks” formula of every Peter Parker story ever that it fills up its space with scenes of Charlie’s family going to a baseball game while Chalice gets a grand total of two scenes of her just standing around talking. Leiz’s artwork is gorgeous her and the colours by Tamra Bonvillain brings it to life with a very bright naturalistic palette. Bonvillain brings a grounding to the world with naturalistic colours, but the vibrancy and the use of purple and yellow light (theming colours based on Chalice’s costume) brings an otherworldly feeling that makes the superheroic aspects of the artwork gel with the domestic life of Charlie.
“Alters” #1 is a first issue that wants to be two things at once and ends up stuck somewhere between the two meaning either idea ends up underserved. Paul Jenkins’ attempt to write a transgender superhero exposes a lot of fetishisation that cis writers have for the experiences of transgender women. Instead of celebrating Charlie’s life and gender, her transition is shown as a burden and nothing but a source of angst. This gives “Alters” a very dark underlying current that cuts through the joy a superhero comic is meant to bring and the joyous world that Leila Leiz and Tamra Bonvillain create with their artwork. The lightness of the linework and the vibrancy of colour palette is utilised for yet another scene where a trans woman looks at herself in the mirror with a wig on and narrates wistfully about how her life is only complete when she’s her.
I could go on and on about how out of sorts this comic is, but I don’t want this review to be some kind of beatdown. I want this to be a good comic. I want Chalice to be an important superhero. I want Charlie’s transition to be treated with respect and show the positive sides of being trans. The only way this will happen is if the creators of “Alters” will listen to reviews like this and the voices of trans women to improve in the coming issues. If not, I’m worried about where this comic will go based on this issue.
Final Verdict: 4.0 – I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. I can only hope “Alters” will get better from here. In the meantime, please support the creative output of trans women in comics.
