Supergirl star Nicole Maines made her DC Comics debut in 2021 with a Dreamer story in that year’s DC Pride anthology and there’s more of the character to come. Not only will Dreamer make her DC Universe debut in the upcoming Superman: Son of Kal-El #13 which Maines wrote with Tom Taylor, but earlier this month it was confirmed that there is a Dreamer original graphic novel on the way as well. Written by Maines with art by Rye Hickman, the book doesn’t yet have a release date, but Maines told ComicBook.com a little bit about what they can expect from the story — and it takes things back the character’s story as begun on Supergirl.
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Maines explained that the Dreamer graphic novel will be all about a young, teenage Nia Nal as she begins to discover her powers and dip into the family dynamic — particularly Nia’s sister — that was such an important part of the character’s Supergirl story.
“I’m really excited about it because with Superman coming out first it really teed us up perfectly for this graphic novel where it’s sort of just like, setting it up,” Maines said. “The graphic novel is all about a young, 15-year-old Nia Nal, who has just discovered that she has these powers. Before she is saving Superman and Jay and every other superhero, before she is coming in and saving the day, she is confronted with these powers that were never supposed to be hers. And it is basically following her fight or flight response to realizing that she has essentially stolen her sister’s powers.”
For fans of The CW’s Supergirl, that will sound a little familiar. As fans of the series may recall, in Nia’s family the dream powers are passed matrilineally from mother to daughter and in the series, it was expected that Nia’s sister, Maeve, would inherit them. When it turned out that it was Nia who developed them, it was an affirmation of Nia’s identity as a woman, but it fractured her relationship with Maeve. According to Maines, the graphic novel will go a bit deeper into Nia’s relationship with her sister and how unhealthy it is, even at that young age.
“Her relationship with her sister was so complicated and it was so unhealthy,” Maines said. “And we’re really, really taking a look at that and that is the focus of this. It is really analyzing how unhealthy that relationship was for Nia and then as she’s going on this journey, she’s learning first of all what a sisterly relationship should feel like and how to live her life for herself. Not for us to live for other people. How to be the main character in your own damn story.”
Dreamer arrives in the DC Universe in Superman: Son of Kal-El #13, on sale July 12th. The Dreamer original graphic novel does not yet have a release date.
