Marvel’s Voices: Pride: Space Royalty Honeymoon Roadtrip or a New Character Intro?

Dear artists at Marvel,

Jewish people do not wear crosses. Not regular crosses, not upside down crosses, not crosses of any kind.

Kindly, please stop drawing Billy with them.

Sincerely, Jewish comic book fans.

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So let’s begin by saying this is not a Billy and Teddy story. Their second honeymoon, as adorable as that concept may be, stands them with a new friend. A pretty cool friend named Lacie Lorraine.

My issue here is that the previews focused so much on Billy and Teddy that, despite Lacie’s cool backstory, two well-known characters, who lately only exist in poorly conceived Marvel Unlimited stories, are relegated to background fodder to introduce a new character. This is not a Billy and Teddy story. This is a Lacie story, a fantastic new trans character with a fascinating history.

This would have worked better as an independent story to set up a future character. Billy and Teddy could easily have been substituted for any other characters and have the same level save for one minor element at the end, which could have easily been remedied differently.

Now there’s nothing wrong with introducing a new character, and Lacie’s personality and background present a fascinating character whose future remains mysterious and uncertain. It would have been cooler if Lacie’s story was more than just a “hey, cool story, see you later” and perhaps served as a way to inspire the next generation or provide some comfort. But maybe that wasn’t what writer Shadi Petosky had in mind. The direction of the entire story feels like it wants to be bigger but is limited in its page count.

Shadi Petosky used her own story to craft the character, her hopes, her dreams, and her internal struggles. It is fun to see writers use their background and history to create something new and add some superpowers; we get about half of Lacie’s incredible, history-spanning space adventure story. Petosky has much more to say about Lacie, and I hope she gets the chance to explore this aspect.

One part about Billy and Teddy that I did enjoy is the notion of trauma and how even though Billy and Teddy are compelling individuals who have fought some of the biggest world threats. They, too, still deal with after effects of their experiences. Power and trauma do not cancel each other out; I think that was an important point. No matter who we are, our traumas stay with us. Their character designs were rather dull and not particularly interesting, except for the annoying earrings Billy wears. Why are they in here?

On top of it, there were some illustrative errors, like Teddy’s shirt tears being in the wrong places.