Nicole Maines & Rye Hickman
Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story
(DC Comics, April 2024)
Featured in Publishers Weekly‘s Spring 2024 Preview
One of Comic Book Couples Counseling‘s Most Anticipated Comics of 2024
Read the IGN Exclusive Interview with Maines & Preview Hickman’s Art Here
The never before told origin story of DREAMER: the first trans superhero ever to appear on TV!
Nia Nal’s spent her whole life taking a back seat to her older sister, Maeve, who’s expected to inherit their mother’s Naltorian powers––the ability to see the future through dreams. They’ll soon learn the dreaming powers had other plans…
When Nia’s hit in the face with a kickball, the powers that weren’t meant for her are suddenly triggered. Saddled with guilt, Nia resolves to suppress her powers in an attempt to protect her relationship with her sister. But Nia can’t keep the dreams out forever…
From Nicole Maines, the actress, activist, and writer who originated the role of Dreamer on the groundbreaking Supergirl TV show, and with stunning art by Rye Hickman that captures Nia’s fan-favorite personality, comes the origin story of a girl who must accept her own power to fulfill her destiny in a long lineage of female superheroes. Luckily, Nia won’t have to go through it alone.
Praise for Bad Dream:
“This is the best kind of story about a trans character: one where the core plot is interesting and compelling whether the main character is trans or not, yet being trans affects the character and their life in realistic ways, and their identity isn’t merely tacked on … The art, awash in vibrant colors, is beautiful and expressive while remaining unfussy and imaginative.” – Kirkus Reviews
Nicole Maines is an actress, activist, and writer paving the way for LGBTQ+ youth on and off the screen. Maines’s breakout role came on The CW’s Supergirl, where she starred as Nia Nal, a.k.a. Dreamer, making her TV’s first transgender Super Hero. She wrote Dreamer’s comic book debut in DC’s 2021 Pride anthology and has since gone on to pen numerous other comics for DC, including Superman: Son of Kal-El #13 with Tom Taylor, Lazarus Planet: Assault on Krypton #1, Harley Quinn, and DC’s upcoming Dreamer YA graphic novel. Maines has been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award and was a Variety Power of Young Hollywood and Power of Pride honoree. She was also a 2020 Human Rights Campaign Upstander Award honoree for her activism and continues to be a tireless champion for trans rights. Her biography, Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family, was a Stonewall Honor Book in nonfiction, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for transgender nonfiction, and a New York Times bestseller.
Rye Hickman is an illustrator/comic artist, and co-creator of Lonely Receiver, Moth & Whisper, The Dead, Test, artist on SFSX and colourist on The House, Feathers, Kingdom Bum. They are a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Sequential Art program.