Open events

Little-known communities of LGBTQ cartoonists in the U.S. and Canada innovated comics and built a thriving publishing landscape together in the 1980s-1990s. While these cartoonists crucially documented LGBTQ life and activism as they rallied for their civil liberties amidst the HIV/AIDS crisis, their comics have been largely forgotten since they were published in ephemeral forms affiliated with social movements: anthologies, newsletters, periodicals, zines, etc. In this talk, I will discuss how anthology series like Gay Comix (1980-1998) and OH… (1992-1998) have been foundational community-building efforts as they bring creators together from different grassroots publishing contexts and introduce them to each other in the pages of the comic. Further expanding the work of the anthologies, projects like the Lesbian Cartoonists’ Newtork (1990-1995) and Out in Comics (1999-2002) supported the growth of this community, serving as th e foundation for queer comics publishing booms, both in the 1990s and continuing to the present day where LGBTQ comics are published in greater number and by a wider variety of publishers. This paper connects these earlier community-building periodicals with the efforts of contemporary organizations that continue this work. By surveying not just the queer comics themselves, but also including community-oriented texts, this talk demonstrates how marginalized cartoonists created a thriving print culture, despite the discrimination they often faced in the larger world. In closing, I will talk about teaching these comics and histories, including where to find them and how to get students involved in researching them.