A good chunk of the days, weeks, or sometimes even years when a person wonders if they might be gay are often spent in bookstores and libraries. Since queer people don’t learn about their culture from their birth families, the written word looms large. Comics about queer culture offer a valuable entry point to teens searching for their identity—and also make great reading for allies looking to learn more.
GAY
The Complete Wendel by Howard Cruse. One of the easiest ways to learn about gay history is by catching up with vintage comic strips—though those of us over 40 might blanch to hear the 1980s described as “vintage.” But so much has happened in the 30-odd years since Howard Cruse’s Wendel first appeared in the Advocate that the strip’s comings-out, political work, AIDS activism, and general goings-on seem positively olde-timey. Cruse is the king of crosshatching, and his characters—especially sweet, sexy Wendel—are beautifully drawn. (I know at least one lesbian who has shown the strip to her barber and asked for a haircut like Wendel’s.) Cruse’s semi-autobiographical graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, about growing up gay in the segregated South of the 1960s, is also amazing.
Domesticity Isn’t Pretty by Tim Barela. Like Wendel, Barela’s long-running series Leonard & Larry, partially collected in this volume, was a continuing saga about the everyday lives of gay Americans. Less overtly political than Wendel, the strip, about a leather-store owner and a photographer, chronicles the challenges of coupledom, fatherhood, exes, friends, and aging.
The Killer Condom by Ralf König. König’s wonderfully sexual gay cartoons often show up in alternative comics collections, but The Killer Condom, a faux noir set in a nightmare version of New York City, is his best-known work. It first appeared in his native Germany in 1988 and was made into a movie in 1996.
LESBIAN
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. Bechdel has won countless awards for her graphic novels Fun Home (recently transformed into musical theater) and Are You My Mother?, but before she entered the mainstream, she created a timeless comic strip—“half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel”—about a group of everylesbians in an unnamed city in the Midwest. If you read only one book—comic or otherwise—about dykes in America, make it this one.
Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki. A very 21st-century story about a 16-year-old girl in love with a female teacher. Here, love is just one more painful, confusing part of the painful, confusing process of growing up.
Blue Is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh. In some ways, this is a European version of the Canadian Skim—though falling in love with a slightly older girl is a lot less complicated that swooning for a teacher. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though, and the book is much gloomier than the movie it inspired. Still, the graphic novel, which Maroh began when she was just 19, does a wonderful job of conveying the excitement, terror, and obsession of young love.
On Loving Women by Diane Obomsawin. This French-Canadian artist’s characters often look more like animals than people, but the real-life coming-out stories they tell are deeply human and humane.
BI
Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond “Gay and Straight,” ed. Charles “Zan” Christensen. This 2013 release from Northwest Press, which specializes in LGBTQ comics, is a compilation of strips about the space between and beyond “heterosexual” and “homosexual.” The book’s big takeaway: Don’t fence anyone in!
TRANS
Transposes by Dylan Edwards. These gorgeous comics were inspired by interviews with seven trans guys who are also gay or bi. The men are all very different, but they share a sense of discovery, excitement, and joy.
