Rachel Pollack, a writer notable for her work on comic books like Doom Patrol and New Gods, has passed away. Pollack’s death was confirmed by her wife Zoe Matoff in a Facebook post. She had previously been hospitalized, with a successful GoFundMe campaign raising money from fans and fellow writers to help pay for her care. She was 77.
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“I am sad to tell you that our beloved Rachel Pollack passed so peacefully and beautifully today at about 12:45 p.m. after a touching ceremony called Hand to Heart,” her wife wrote in a social media post. “I know that Rachel will continue to be a Light in this world and in the next. She will continue to inspire so many of our beloved Tarot community, the Science Fiction and Fantasy community, the Comics community, and the Transgender community for whom she shared so much respect and care. We have felt and cherished your love and prayers over the past months and years as Rachel experienced so many health challenges. We are One.”
Fellow comic scribe Neil Gaiman paid tribute to Pollack as well, writing in a tweet: “She was my friend for 38 years and I will miss her. Sending love to Rachel Pollack wherever her journeys take her.”
DC Comics also offered a tweet in tribute to Pollack, writing: “DC is deeply saddened by the passing of Rachel Pollack. Her trailblazing work on DOOM PATROL changed DC forever and inspired a generation of talent, setting a new bar for ambition and experimentation in superhero comics. She loved the medium, and it loved her back.”
Born on August 17, 1945 in Brooklyn, New York, Pollack was also a notable tarot expert and a prolific science fiction writer. In addition to her comic book work she also wrote several non-fiction books about tarot but also novels, including 1988’s Unquenchable Fire which win the Arthur C. Clarke Award. With regard to comics, Pollack is best known for her cult-classic run on DC and Vertigo’s Doom Patrol, which she took over as writer from Grant Morrison in 1993. Pollack made history within the Doom Patrol run for creating Kate Godwin / Coagula, the publisher’s first trans superhero.
“The introduction of Kate was an important moment because they were going to go to town and Cliff and Dorothy come up and say, how can you stand it?” Pollack said of Coagula in an interview with The Comics Journal earlier this year. “What do you mean? Going down the street and having people stare at you and look at you because you’re freaks, how can you stand doing that? They said, we feel like we have two choices. One is to stay home and hide. The other is to go out and have a good time. To us it’s pretty obvious what to do. That was to me a very important statement. If you’re different, so what? So what if people will look at you? Go and have a good time!”
In addition to Doom Patrol, Pollack’s comic work includes eleven issues of New Gods, the five-issue miniseries Time Breakers, and stories in Vertigo Visions and Dead Beats.
