Continuing its walk down the ultra woke path, Archie Comics is now announcing the introduction of a new transgender character.
In an upcoming issue of its offshoot line, Archie Horror, the company is set to introduce a brand new “transgender woman” character named Danni Molloy, according to an exclusive sneak peek published by Gizmodo.
While the gender angle is new, the Molloy character itself is not exactly new. The character was first introduced in the 1980s and was portrayed as a sometimes girlfriend to Riverdale’s resident genius, Dilton Doiley. But now, for issue #1 of Archie Horror’s new comic, Chilling Adventures Presents: Strange Science, Malloy will be retconned as a “transgender woman.”
The entire purpose of this one-off comic book, which is set for release in August, is to erase Molloy as a woman and recreate the character as a man who now identifies as a female.
Not mentioned in the advanced gushing over the book is whether scientist character Dilton Doiley will now be portrayed as gay or if he was duped by Molloy since the character has dated Molloy in past issues of the Archie series.
“I’ve been wanting to make this happen for a long time, and it’s really cool to see it finally come to fruition. I never wanted Danni’s trans identity to be gimmicky, or for her to feel like she was only created to be trans. So, I’d like to apologize for sneaking her over the line like this,” the writer of Archie Horror’s series Jinx’s Grim Fairy Tales, Magdalene Visaggio, told Gizmodo.
“I wanted you to have a chance to fall in love with her for who she is, not what she is. I’m honored I got to make it happen, and I’m grateful to Archie for never, not even once, pushing back on my insistence on making their books a little bit more queer,” Visaggio added.
Archie Comics senior director of editorial Jamie L. Rotante insisted that the new book is “one of, if not the, most important one-shots we’ve released.”
“That’s all thanks to writer Magdalene Visaggio, who had the idea to have Danni Malloy tell her own story about her transition. We just needed to figure out the best way to make it fit, and a callback to her character’s classic origins mixed with the new horror surroundings she’s been re-introduced in just made the most sense,” Rotante gushed.
Retrofitting Molloy to erase her womanhood in favor of transgenderism is far from the first woke story Archie has indulged.
Back in 2010, America’s favorite teenagers introduced a gay character in a story entitled, “Isn’t It Bromantic,” because, in the company’s reckoning at the time, “Riverdale has to reflect the diversity of the world today.”
The next year, the comic series held a same-sex wedding ceremony in which the character “Kevin” married his boyfriend.
“We all want to be part of family and community — that’s what marriage is about,” Kevin said in the comic. “Gay people share the same dreams.”
The gay characters went on in other issues, even being shown kissing later on.
Then, by 2014, a book featuring an adult Archie portrayed the character being shot and killed while trying to “protect a gay friend” from haters. In this series, the older Archie actually dies, though the death did not alter any of the series that still featured Archie as a teenager.
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