We might even consider queerness part of the DNA of comics. That a syndicated strip published in a mainstream Hearst paper-Hearst adored the strip’s artistic merit and gave Herriman a lifetime contract-had such a conspicuously “genderqueer” star at its center indicates that queer comics, even if not hailed as such, have been lurking in plain sight for over a hundred years, at least. In an exchange from a 1915 Krazy Kat daily strip, Krazy complains, “I don’t know if I should take a husband or a wife,” to which the indifferent Ignatz responds, “Take care,” and hurls a brick. Krazy is androgynous, a “kat” with a fluid gender that seems to shift and is never actually meant to be conclusively verified (sometimes the narration refers to Krazy as a “he” largely, however, Krazy has been interpreted as female, including by superfan E. Offissa Pupp, a dog, adores Krazy and hates Ignatz as a result. Krazy, however, passionately loves Ignatz even though the mouse throws bricks at Krazy’s head, they are received affectionately. Krazy Kat (1913–1944) which debuted in William Randolph Hearst’s New Yor k Journal, featured a famous love triangle: The mouse, Ignatz, hates the cat, Krazy. It has roots that go back at least to the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s-and even earlier, too, if one considers classic comic-strip characters like George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, one of the most celebrated characters in the history of comics. The history of gay comics, however, doesn’t start with Bechdel. Sydney and Mo in Bechdel’s story “Sense and Sensuality,” part of Dykes to Watch Out For and collected in Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For (Ithaca: Firebrand), 1997. Among the artists creating this work, Bechdel has shown most powerfully how comics can be a space for sophisticated storytelling about the complexities and joy of queer life. And in the world of print, we see an outpouring of distinct genres of comics that explore and address queerness. Diverse comics about all sorts of aspects of queer experience flourish online, in the direct and censorship-free zone of webcomics. New York City’s Flame Con describes itself as “a two-day comics, arts, and entertainment expo showcasing creators and celebrities from all corners of LGBTQ geek fandom,” and specifies “geeks of all types are invited to attend and celebrate the diversity and creativity of queer geekdom and LGBTQ contributions to pop culture.” Most significantly, however, the range and volume of queer comics appearing right now demonstrates how forcefully the realities and details of gay life can get expressed and visualized in comics. And 2015 marked the creation of the first annual comics convention to focus on queer culture: Flame Con. Two cult classic graphic novels from the nineties, the artist and activist David Wojnarowicz’s Seven Miles a Second and literary critic and writer Samuel Delany’s Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (both collaborations with illustrators), were reissued in deluxe editions in 2013 for new readerships. Justin Hall’s compendium No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, an edited collection, sold out its first print run in 2012. The excitement around queer comics, from readers and creators both, is rising steadily.
#GAY SEX COMIC BOOKS CODE#
Comics used to be read paranoically as gay code in contemporary comics queer identity is openly announced. But today gay comics are an ever-expanding feature of the field, marking a new era of self-expression. Fredric Wertham wrote in his influential book on comics that the former represent “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together,” and for the latter, “the homosexual connotation of the Wonder Woman type of story is psychologically unmistakable … For girls she is a morbid ideal.” The infamous 1954 Comics Code, inspired by Wertham’s study, banned “sex perversion or any inference to same”-a clear reference to homosexuality. Gayness used to be a public accusation leveled at comics to discredit the medium: in the 1950s, Batman and Robin, and Wonder Woman, were suspected to be gay, and therefore a negative influence. Queer comics are one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary comics, fueled in large part by the runaway success of Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic-the story of a gay girl and her closeted, ultimately suicidal gay father that was adapted to be a Broadway musical of the same title, and went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. The fastest-growing area in comics right now may be, broadly speaking, queer comics-comics that feature in some way the lives, whether real or imagined, of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer) characters. Howard Cruse, cover by Rand Holmes, 1980.