Maggie Sawyer
41 years ago - Maggie Sawyer is born in Star City
23 years ago - 18-year-old Maggie Sawyer goes to college for criminal justice.
19 years ago - 22-year-old Maggie Sawyer graduates. She enters the police academy and joins the Star City PD, quickly promoted to sergeant.
18 years ago - 23-year-old Maggie Sawyer marries her fellow officer James Sawyer and has her daughter Jamie.
17 years ago - 24-year-old Maggie Sawyer is promoted to Detective Lieutenant.
15 years ago - 26-year-old Maggie Sawyer comes out as gay. Her husband demands a divorce and is granted full custody of their daughter. She transfers to the Metropolis PD, becoming their new Inspector.
13 years ago - 28-year-old Maggie Sawyer works with Dan Turpin for the first time. He is skeptical but quickly becomes her biggest supporter. She is soon promoted to Inspector Lieutenant
10 years ago - 31-year-old Maggie Sawyer, seeing that she is not going to be promoted to chief, assembles her own task force, the Special Crimes Unit, designed to respond to the advanced crimes of Metropolis. Dan Turpin is her first recruit, becoming her right-hand man.
4 years ago - 37-year-old Maggie Sawyer defends the population of Metropolis during the invasion by Apokolips. She mourns the death of Dan Turpin with his daughter, Maisie Turpin. She becomes the new captain of the Metropolis PD
2 years ago - 39-year-old Maggie Sawyer accepts the proposal of Maisie Turpin.
now - 41-year-old Maggie Sawyer is married to Maisie Turpin and walked down the aisle by her daughter Jamie.
We do manage to talk quite a bit about representation in our project, and about how often times across the history of comics, some creators made a real effort to try to do a better job at depicting characters of previously underrepresented groups of people. Often we'll look back at those attempts at representation from our modern-day perspective and cringe, but it's important to remember that even though they might have missed the mark by today's standards of representation, at least they were trying.
However, there is at least one example of early representation that doesn't require that sort of forgiveness-for-its-era perspective at all, and that is the first gay woman to appear in a mainstream DC comic series, Maggie Sawyer. While she had to deal with a lot of the limitations of the time, her actual character came right out of the gate fully formed in a way that seemed to defy everything about how queer people were often depicted. We think she's a real success story of representation, to say nothing of just being a badass that we want in our project.
However, there is at least one example of early representation that doesn't require that sort of forgiveness-for-its-era perspective at all, and that is the first gay woman to appear in a mainstream DC comic series, Maggie Sawyer. While she had to deal with a lot of the limitations of the time, her actual character came right out of the gate fully formed in a way that seemed to defy everything about how queer people were often depicted. We think she's a real success story of representation, to say nothing of just being a badass that we want in our project.
Maggie Sawyer's Comic HistoryMaggie Sawyer was an original character introduced to John Byrne's new Superman mythology as early as issue #4 of his new Superman series from 1987. Superman arrives at a crime scene (the murder spree of Bloodsport), where he meets the new head of Metropolis Major Crimes Unit, Maggie. They seem to already know each other and have an obvious rapport, setting up a working relationship. In a lot of ways, what is really happening here is just a clear effort to give Superman his own version of Commissioner Gordon; a contact with a lot of authority in his city's police force that he can liaise with. Maggie was an opportunity to create a new set of visual cues to differentiate her from her predecessor, and it was clearly Byrne himself who chose to create a very particular character from this opportunity.
Maggie's visuals were really interesting early on, in her severity and the tightrope she walked between a very cop-like practicality and a sort of high-eighties glam, but the results were very memorable. As her short hair, sunglasses, and thin cigarettes became her trademark, She often struck me personally as having a certain hard-boiled detective vibe. |
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I don't want to pretend that the character was completely devoid of stereotype, but whatever else was going on Maggie always seemed to be a human character first and foremost. We learned that she was divorced and that he ex-husband had custody of their daughter. We saw Lex Luthor threaten to blackmail her with mysterious photos of her personal life, and we saw just how much of a badass she is in her response.
While it was always obvious that Maggie was queer, it wasn't something that editorial of the era would allow anyone to actually say on-panel or to depict in her earliest appearances in the late 80s. Still, by 1994 Maggie starred in the four-issue miniseries Metropolis S.C.U., which not only finally fully and openly depicted Maggie's relationship with another woman, but was also DC's very first publication to star a gay character, earning recognition by GLAAD during their 1996 Media Awards. Greg Rucka's increased focus on the GCPD in his Batman run in the 2000s brought Maggie to Gotham, where she was watch captain for much of the Eisner Winning Gotham Central series. Her profile increased even further in the New 52 Batwoman series where she was Kate Kane's love interest. She was such an important part of that run that the series creators actually left the book when DC editorial told them they couldn't depict their wedding. |
Our Maggie Sawyer StoryThis might be a controversial opinion, because the 2011 Batwoman series by J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman really is great and I would even argue a benchmark in modern comics, I don't know that either Maggie or Kate Kane are best served by being in a relationship with each other. We all really love the relationship between Kate and a pre-Question Renee Montoya, who is the version of Renee we're using in our project; we just think the chaos of those two complement each other so much.
Perhaps more importantly, however... Maggie Sawyer is one of the best new introductions to the Superman mythology in the post-crisis era. She just landed in the world of Metropolis so perfectly, brought her own story and pathos, and gave the world something it clearly needed. While the Maggie we get in the pages of GCPD and Batwoman was probably a more complex, real-world person, the classic Maggie was a larger-than-life CHARACTER. She was someone who felt like she truly belonged in the multicolor world of Metropolis. So we are actually going to focus on exactly that version of the character. We've focused on delivering her story right from her earliest appearances in the John Byrne comics, and built up her partnership with another great character; Dan Turpin. We've leaned on their depictions in the Superman Animated Series, even up to Dan's death, and added a little bit at the end that we all think is exactly the right way to treat this incredibly important character in the history of comics. |
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