DC Pride 2025: Vita Ayala Talks Renee Montoya and Queer Representation In All of Its Forms

Vita Ayala (they/them) is an American-born writer known for their acclaimed work on Nubia and the Amazons, as well as New Mutants. This summer, Ayala is penning two stories in the upcoming DC Pride 2025 anthology, writing stories starring Renee Montoya and Jo Mullein’s Green Lantern. We spoke with Ayala about queer representation and what readers can expect in those stories.

When a 100-year-old queer speakeasy-turned-bar-turned-restaurant-and-community-space in Gotham announces that it will soon be closing its doors, generations of patrons come to pay their respects — including Alan Scott, the Green Lantern. After all, this is the place where he and his first love, Johnny Ladd, long ago carved their names into the basement wall before it all went to hell... and a love lost is never a love forgotten.

But they weren't the only ones to put their names in the wall over the years, and suddenly queer heroes, villains, and civilians alike from across the DCU — the Question, Midnighter and Apollo, Harley Quinn, Green Lantern Jo Mullein, Bunker, Connor Hawke, and Blue Snowman among them — find them-selves spirited away to a strange alternate dimension that seems to provide everything they could possibly want... but at what cost?

In this single, oversized story of interweaving narratives, the vanished will need to come together and look into the very depths of the Starheart itself if they hope to escape that which ensnares them in this triumphant and timely story of community amid chaos!

How did this opportunity come to be? Did you always know you wanted to tackle Montoya again, and what was it like revisiting Renee Montoya? You also featured her in a 2021 Pride story.

She's maybe my second favorite character of all time. I love Renee, and any excuse to be able to write Renee is always a pleasure. To have the opportunity, while Alex Segura was still writing a book with her, to play with her was fantastic. I love her so much.

What makes Renee Montoya such an interesting character and what’s your history with her?

She's been one of my favorites since Gotham Central. That's actually not true. I liked her before then. I liked her in the cartoon. I grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series. And it was really nice. This is when I was a child, and I still believed in the police at the time. And both Renee and I grew together to understand that that's not the way. But it was really cool to see a character who was, like, serious, but also funny, clearly intelligent and competent, and a good person. She was a Latina, and that was a very important part of her character, but it's not her only characteristic.

When she came over to the comics, and especially in Gotham Central, what I really loved was how beautifully complex they allowed her to be and how they really put this woman through the ringer, but in a way that felt incredibly respectful of her person. I feel like because she's a Latina, lesbian character who was actually taken seriously, it's so rare, especially at the time. The entire run was really something that showed the depth of what they could do with a character like her. And then going into 52, I really loved that they didn't just drop all of her character development and all of her struggle, right? Like, that was really important to me. Again, I've grown up with the character.

I think what makes Renee so special is that at her core, she wants to desperately help people. And she really did believe in doing it one way. And then she kind of was forced to reevaluate that. It’s nice to see her back in a prominent position again. That's really cool, right? Like, we get to see her in a role of, like, leadership. We also get to see this kind of dissatisfaction with helping in only one way, right? I think that she's a spirit of the law, not the letter of the law kind of person. I think she really does a great job of being complex while still feeling universal enough that many people can relate to her.

What was it like teaming up with Skylar Patridge again? You've obviously worked with them before.

Skylar's very, very, very good at what they do. I would work with Skylar for the rest of my life if I could, like, straight up. I would love to work with Skylar forever. But I also hope that they will get booked and busy, and won't need to work with someone on my level, and that they will skyrocket. But being able to work with them so soon after Finders/Keepers was such a good experience... I'm like, yay! We get to keep, like, hanging out.

But also, Skylar was my collaborator on the first Montoya story that I did for Pride. Andrea [Shea] was like, here's who we're thinking. And, like, immediately was, like, Skylar. No disrespect to anyone else on the planet, but I'm not sure I could do a Montoya story without Skylar. I feel like we're partners in that. They get the energy so well. Skylar is an incredible, technically skilled artist. Like, a phenomenal, like, draftsperson. Their pencils are better than many people's inks. And that is not meant to disparage other people. That's just saying how good Skylar is. So, like, they are a high-level artist. The way they can shift tone and understand every character as their own is always so awesome to see. No matter what, they're going to be able to knock it out of the park.

How important is it for publishers to continue to support these characters in books that aren't anthologies?

I think it's complicated because of two things:

Often, a creative team will be given some say over who they get to play with. And if you're desperate to see a character you love that isn't around, I've done this too, where I'm like, “can I have this character? Can I write this character?” I think that a lot of creative teams sometimes take it like, “let's show you how much people love this character and maybe you'll, like, if it does well enough, you'll launch a book with them in it, if not starring.” So I think that in terms of the creative motivation, that is, like, sometimes what happens.

But also, I think that it is vitally important to pick up the threads that are laid down in these anthologies, whether it be a character or creators that you like, and are trying to support. I think that some of the publisher’s motivation behind some of these anthologies — not really the Pride one so much — is sometimes like, “okay, let's get people's printed work right now, like, in our company, put them up front. Let's show that we have them on the books.” That’s cool. Keep that going now. Give people a chance, give them a mini. I like anthologies as a proving ground. However, I think that without forward momentum from that, it’s a real bummer, and it can feel tokenizing - that has nothing to do with the editor. The editors who compile these anthologies want nothing more than for these characters to appear in their own book and for these creative teams to get a chance.

Why is it important to show queer love - romantic, messy, chaotic - in all of its forms?

I think that’s really important. I think that there are stages in scaffolding to representation. It’s never enough. We can also start showing the messy stuff. It doesn't have to be either super positive or the most toxic, right? It can be just everything in between. Twenty years ago, that wasn't the case. The more we show how regular and ordinary we are as queer people, the more normalized it becomes and the less mysterious it is in general, which I think is a good thing. I think we're just regular ass people. We just happen to have a lot more fun. That's all.

What is your own experience with Sojourner “Jo” Mullein, and what was it like to pen the Green Lantern story in DC Pride 2025? Far Sector is a hell of a book.

N. K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell are amazing. And together they really did something that was beyond the sum of their parts. And that's saying a lot, cause that woman has won the highest of awards. And he also, I believe, has won many awards.

Sojourner is such an interesting and, to me, tragic character… and not in the way that you usually think of tragic when you think of black people. Yes, that's part of it, too. I really like the idea of this woman, who is so painfully alone and still brings everything she has to whatever she's doing. I think that's beautiful and really sad. And to be able to showcase in a microcosm was really fun. I did with Maya Houston, who comes from the DCTV stuff. She was immediately just a phenomenal comics person. She was a little nervous when we started. We did it all literally together via Zoom, and we would type into the document together or whatever. I was like, “You really don't need me.” Like, I'm really happy to work with her because she rules. She's so funny and so tender, and she has good dialogue, that’s a hundred percent her.

And then Vincent Cecil just, holy smokes. Vincent is an untapped superstar.