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Alternative Gay and Lesbian Comics

I recently wrote about the Underground Comix movement and the rise of queer comics, and happened to fall down a queer history rabbit hole. The Underground Comix movement reinvented comics, fueled by left-wing counterculture and a desire to platform and emphasize disenfranchised voices. This is to say, at the start, it was cishet men rebelling against the Comics Code Authority. The Underground Comix movement peaked between 1968 and 1975. The Stonewall riots broke out on June 28, 1969, and as an overall community, queer people got together and decided that we were tired of having the perpetual back seat. Queer comics emerged from a need to be seen. The rise of gay publishing led to a rising popularity for queer comics: Joe Johnson’s Miss Thing and Big Dick started in 1965 and only rose in popularity and syndication, and Gerard Donelan’s It’s a Gay Life picked up in 1977. Moving forward into the 80s, Bruce Kurt Erichsen's Murphy’s Manor picked up syndication, followed by Jerry Mills’ Poppers (1982), Howard Cruse’s Wendel (1983), and Tim Barela’s Leonard and Larry (1984), among others. As the gay movement got louder and became less… well, illegal, the comics scene only continued to rise. Gay men could find their lives, or something like it, in the pages of Gay Comix, Between the Sheets!, and various local gay newspapers. They existed almost in a parallel universe, being sold almost exclusively in these spots. This may sound like isolation, but really, gay comics just have their own personal history and mileage often invisible to the heterosexual world.

In a media landscape that often ignored, caricatured, or pathologized queer people, underground comics offered readers the rare opportunity to encounter themselves reflected on the page. For many gay and lesbian readers in the 1970s and 1980s, these comics provided not only entertainment, but evidence that lives like theirs existed at all. Yet representation has never been politically neutral, and visibility alone does not guarantee inclusion. Early queer comics frequently centered a narrow image of acceptable gay identity: white, male, middle-class, attractive, and socially assimilable. While these “gay ghetto” comics helped establish a visible queer culture, they also reproduced hierarchies that excluded queer people who existed outside of the dominant gay habitus. In response, alternative and underground queer cartoonists developed a more confrontational body of work that rejected both heterosexual norms and the conformity emerging within mainstream gay culture itself. Through satire, autobiographical storytelling, and intersectional critique, artists such as Robert Kirby, Roberta Gregory, and Jennifer Camper used comics to challenge restrictive ideas about sexuality, gender, race, and community. Queer comics functioned not simply as representation, but as counterpublic spaces where marginalized queer people could critique dominant culture, construct alternative identities, and reclaim visibility on their own terms.

While the gay community is often seen as unified, people often don’t take into account the individual tastes and personalities of gay people. For every gay man who adores Lady Gaga or Madonna, there’s a gay man who only listens to Nine Inch Nails or Sublime, or a lesbian who loves synth music. In Sina Shamsavari’s essay Gay Ghetto Comics and the Alternative Gay Comics of Robert Kirby, Shamsavari writes about the ‘dominant gay habitus’, or the dominant gay culture/stereotype that overlooks and obscures less respectable or ‘marketable’ gay people - people of color, the poor, the fat, and the working class. Media depicting queer culture, including comics, often depicts visibly gay culture as it’s seen both within and outside of the queer community. As a whole, the media depends on ‘show don’t tell’, and so wields gay signifiers and stereotypes to remain recognizable. This isn’t to say that this is necessarily a bad thing. There are plenty of gay people who can see themselves in the hairless gay Adonis type, the man who wears expensive cologne to the gym and gossips over fat-free lattes. But there are, as mentioned earlier, plenty of gay people who feel othered by this depiction. In his book Publics and Counterpublics, Michael Warner writes, “Counterpublics of sexuality and gender… are scenes of association and identity that transform the private life they mediate. Homosexuals can exist in isolation; but gay people or queers exist by virtue of the world they elaborate together, and a gay or queer identity is always fundamentally inflected by the nature of that world.” If there’s no place for you in the straight community, and no place for you in the gay community, where do you go?

“Gay ghetto” is a term Shamsavari has come up with to encapsulate the early “gay Adonis” type of comics that were being published. The subgenre “participates in the construction of the dominant gay habitus, representing the gay community as relatively stable, unified and… how certain types of gay male bodies are represented as desirable and acceptable.” In 1993, Mark Fenster wrote in his essay Queer Punk Fanzines: Identity, Community, and the Articulation of Homosexuality and Hardcore that the dominant positions in gay communities are often held by “middle class adult homosexuals who are more assimilated within dominant economic and social structures”. “The gay habitus constructed through marketing and in gau publications serves to make visible such gay and lesbian individuals - that is, those who are otherwise empowered.” Shamsavari adds. Gay ghetto comics are an archive of this gay habitus, showing how they were deployed in the community to display an otherwise invisible sexuality.

In the comic Chelsea Boys, Glen Hanson and Allen Neuwirth capture what later became known as the “clone look” - gay men who look and act the same, like the stereotype gay men are thought to be. This was done with affection, not malice, like the friendly teasing done from a close family member. Despite the otherness some characters might feel, like Nathan (the 42-year-old everyman of the strip), they’re still ultimately represented as ‘at home’ in their community. It’s a safe space you share with others, even if you happen to struggle with your looks or weight. This isn’t to say ‘short, dumpy’ characters like Nathan don’t feel inadequate compared to their handsomer, fitter companions. ‘Average’ characters are offered as an opposing character design to their more confident and fashionable friends, partners or roommates. Nathan feels inadequate compared to his blonde hunk roommate Sky, who embodies the qualities he both desires to have for himself and in a partner. You can see this phenomenon in Jerry Mills Poppers (1982) when character Yves tries to dye his hair blonde to be like his hunky friend Billy. He ultimately fails to ‘act blonde’, the punchline being Yves bemoaning that his friend Andre “forgot to dye my brain blond!” The lead character of the comic Troy is both fit and thin, but is often shown anxious that he isn’t fit or thin enough to attract a handsome sexual partner. The main character Troy’s friend Rigo gains weight further into the story, and promptly becomes undesirable to the many sexual partners he had before the weight gain. His lack of personal discipline is shown in his belly, which is a source of horror to both himself and other characters. Later in the strip, he works to lose all of his gained weight.

These fears are examples of what gay critic Michaelangelo Signorile calls the “body fascism” of the gay scene. “The circuit party scene privileges … a certain kind of aesthetic and body, at least with the ephemera that’s used to advertise and promote it, and that’s the buff gay man who’s in his 30s,” writes Russell Westhaver on the topic, whose early 2000s research focused on gay men and circuit parties. This marginalizes the less ideal - the people who don’t party, those without rock hard abs, and those with no interest in the common ‘gay scene’ - while building up what the ‘gay man’ should look like. Some comic strips, such as Joe Phillips’ Adventures of a Joe Boy, ended with advertisements for clothing, actively shaping the fashion sense and taste ideals of the readers. It’s important to note again that these comics are still important, both culturally and historically. Chelsea Boys, Poppers, and Adventures of a Joe Boy helped thousands of gay men find representation in places they never had before. But it would be a disservice to not mention the disenfranchised that felt all the more left out. It is under this umbrella that alternative gay comics began to rise in the late 80s and early 90s.

Robert Kirby is a large name in the underground queer comics not only for his own contributions (Private Club, Curbside), but for his work in the anthology scene. This work, specifically Boy Trouble (1994-2005), is described as helping to “galvanize a New Wave of gay male cartoonists… while also featuring more established creators,” by cartoonist Justin Hall. Kirby was inspired not only by the first four issues of Gay Comix (edited by Howard Cruse), but by the alternative punk scene - “by punks and upstarts and introverted alterna-people”. This is the very definition of the alternative underground comic scene, specifically the gay one. Even outside of his anthologies, Kirby’s work presents an alternative version of the gay community and habitus. In his work Private Club, he writes of the main character, “We were faggots, and proud of it, long before anybody invented queers.” Reading Private Club or any other early work by Kirby, one can see an alternative gay habitus being presented, one that exists even today as ‘alternative’ or ‘unpopular culture’. Kirby’s work and editorial influence did more than expand representation within gay comics; they helped cultivate a distinctly oppositional sensibility within queer underground culture. This sensibility would soon become more formally articulated through the emergence of “queercore,” a movement that similarly rejected both mainstream heterosexual norms and the increasingly assimilationist tendencies of gay culture itself.

The term “queercore” was first brought about by provocateurs G. B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce through their 1980s zine J.D.s. Frustrated with feeling alienated from the more “official” LGBT culture, and inspired by the alternative comics and zines of the early 80s, they sought to create their own. Alternative gay cartoons could be called ‘queercore’, with the way they rebelled against both heterosexual and homosexual culture. Artists weren’t as interested in the idea of affirming gay communities, or even the gay identity - many of them dedicated strips to critiquing conformist gay culture or sharing more personal stories. Their comics were satirical, pointed, and often included caricatures of the body fascist Adonis type. As Shamsavari describes them, the comics were “clearly motivate[d] by a desire to present a more substantive critique of gay culture than gay ghetto artists [did].” Alternative gay comics were marked with their hatred of body fascism, affirming the looks and bodies of various people outside of the more ‘typical’. While some only did partially, some completely rejected the music and style of the common gay habitus, embracing alternative fashion and subculture. Like gay ghetto comics, they were often set within queer spaces and communities, but from the view of someone who was an outsider even within those spaces. Chelsea Boys poked affectionate fun at the community from an insider perspective, while in an alternative comic, the teasing was much more pointed.

My favorite example of this is Little Homer Sexual and His Long Suffering Gay Parents, a comic strip that follows the adventure of Homer Sexual as he rebels against his gay parents. The two of them represent the ‘body fascist’ type, both looking similar to each other and consistently talking and acting like the common gay stereotype. Homer Sexual rebels against his parents, a symbol of conformity, as a visible defiance of the ‘positive gay identity’ and complete rejection of the gay habitus. In one comic, his parents get him a copy of the comic ‘Bob and Rod’ (based off notable figure Bob Paris and Rod Jackson, both of whom gained prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a same-sex couple) in an effort to “help him become a little more ‘well-adjusted’.” To their delight, Homer Sexual leaves the house - is it to go to the gym? Or shop for clothes, or perhaps the newest Petshop Boys CD? No. And then, to their absolute horror, little Homer Sexual takes a can of spray paint to write “BOB AND ROD ARE FAGS” on the fence. This is an example of a less good-natured ribbing from the alternative gay scene, both reclaiming the slur ‘faggot’ while using it derogatorily against the’“in’ crowd of homosexuals. In many ways, both comics and lesbian art are examples of ‘unpopular culture’, and even more so were some of the lesbian comics in the alternative gay comic scene.The best example of this phenomenon is Roberta Gregory’s Bitchy Butch: World’s Angriest Dyke!. In her essay about the topic, Yetta Howard writes that, for depictions of lesbians in the media, “the question of ‘legitimate’ representation has been less about necessarily gaining access to particular culture domains and more about the ways that it has been expressed in the domains to which it has gained access.” Roberta Gregory, much like other lesbians and feminists of the era, was growing disillusioned with the sanitized lesbian comics, the ones that worried about ‘good representation’ before anything else. Gregory wasn’t as interested in becoming a lesbian that others looked up to - she just wanted to make comics. Many lesbian spaces at the time were concerned about lesbian representation before anything else, denying the representation of lesbian identity politics in favor of simply showing lesbians existing. As with gay ghetto comics, it’s undeniable that this is important. But Gregory, as with Camper, did not think you should separate the politics entirely from the identity.

Bitchy Butch, the homosexual counterpart to her comic Bitchy Bitch, symbolized a social position that was difficult to identify with. It was a tongue in cheek critique of the community’s most rigid beliefs, a representation of a resentful version of the 1970s lesbian-feminism, displaced in a cultural landscape of queer fluidity. Butchy never really comes across as empowering or productive. She’s much more willing to “bitch” about things than try and change them. Bitchy Butch was also cathartic, a subtle nod to the exaggerated feelings of older lesbians who felt left behind by the movement, who felt they had no place in the new model of queer inclusiveness. She’s the characterization of queer hypocrisy, offensive and politically incorrect lesbianism. In some comics, Butchy calls the readers “jerks”, aligning her audience with the homophobia she observes in others. As Howard says, “Butch does not necessarily represent the notion that the world ought to be better than it is; instead she embodies the critique of a queer cultural moment that has already imagined itself as better. Even though Butch is often shown imagining things as worse as they are, ultimately what she signifies is the notion that inhabiting a sexually minor social position was better when LGBT identities were less accepted or unrecognized.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality can be used as another example of why queer comics from a non-white, non-cis, non-male perspective are important. In 1989, she described it as “an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic…, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex-based discrimination or race discrimination.” Imagine going to stand in an intersection that you told was for you, and it was empty of traffic or even cars. As you wait, a car comes along and hits you regardless - this is not a space for you, this is a space for the cars. How foolish you were to think you could stand there. But you entered the road to seek asylum from another intersection, and you were told you would be welcome there. Sometimes, you just have to split off and create your own road with traffic you control yourself. And that’s not to say it hasn’t been done, but instead of wondering where the pedestrians went, the cars get angered that they dare make a safe space for themselves — a space where the cars are excluded. And so repeats the phenomenon of Black women being hit at intersections, ad infinitum. We experience our identities through external interactions, and other people often harm us through these same interactions. Having your own space, or at the very least seeing your own representation, is the first step in metaphorically stopping cars from hitting people. Many queer artists actively responded to these exclusions through their work. Underground comics became one of the clearest examples of marginalized creators reclaiming the “intersection” for themselves, using humor, sexuality, and personal storytelling to depict identities that mainstream media ignored or misunderstood. Among these artists was Jennifer Camper.

Inspired by Wimmen’s Comix and Tits and Clits, Jennifer Camper started to draw what she felt. Like Roberta Gregory and Bitchy Butch, she mocked militant lesbian stereotypes while still managing to be clear about her own thoughts and beliefs. She joked about sex and kink, which helped normalize it in a time where queer sex was rarely discussed, and had a trademark sense of gallows humor. Some of her comics mocked societal expectations, and others told simple stories of queer people just living their life. In all of her comics, she was able to push her point through strong language and gallows humor. To continue the car analogy, Jennifer Camper is one of the lesbian artists who stepped forward to not only create her own road, but one where all pedestrians were safe and represented - in other words, she believed individuals could come together as a group to work to stop the traffic that would harm them. Camper identified as a “Lebanese-American Dyke”, and used this identity to help both inform her comics and represent a variety of other identities that she noticed were also poorly represented. “In all my comics, I'm exploring things like gender, race, class, and sexuality, and how they influence character and behavior.” she explained. “It's what those academic-types call ‘intersectionality.’ Stories about Arab American dykes, women factory workers, or older lesbian assassins are rare, so it gives me fresh territory. Most importantly, I'm trying to captivate both my readers and myself with juicy and compelling tales. “

Camper was one of the earliest contributors to both Gay Comix and the Lesbian Cartoonists’ Network, and she worked hard to build her community not just in real life, but in her comics, too. Her comics were a different type of reaction to the ghetto comics she would see at bookstores. Like other alternative comic artists of the time, she focused less on gay validation, and more on a topic of her own interest: how sexuality intersects with other artists and grassroot groups. Her comics New Affinity Groups, Pride, and White Anxiety were all about fostering exchange in difference and bringing diverse communities together in dialogue. Tired of not seeing her “own life and opinions portrayed in the arts and media”, she had to do it herself: “I was tired of seeing dykes shown as sad, downtrodden victims, who only have ever-so-gentle, white bread ‘lesbian tickle sex.’ I wanted to celebrate queer women having adventures, being sexy, dangerous, and victorious.” While the early gay and lesbian publications of the 70s and 80s often worked hand in hand, despite their differences, the late 80s and 90s began to see more of a schism, both in the world of publishing and sequential art. “Censorship existed with even these supposed radical editors,” she wrote in Rude Girls and Dangerous Women. “Feminists were afraid of being too lesbian; the dykes championed feminism but were leery of being too sexual or violent; the straight leftists celebrated sex and violence but where nervous about gays; and the gay boys weren’t interested in feminism. But by sneaking in between the party lines, I was able to get cartoons in print… My characters are mostly smart-assed, multi-racial, street smart, wild women. They ridicule their oppressors. They are proud and fearless. In my comics, dykes always get the last laugh.” Despite any censorship or difficulties she’s faced, she’s kept up the community building work since. Even now, years later, Camper does great things for the gay comics community. In 2015, she went on to found the two-day Queers & Comics Conference at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) in New York City: “I wanted to celebrate and document our history… If we don't write our own history, it won't be preserved truthfully.”

Ultimately, queer comics are a record of queer people negotiating visibility, identity, and belonging in real time. From the affirming but often exclusionary “gay ghetto” comics of the 1970s and 80s to the more confrontational work of queercore artists and intersectional cartoonists like Jennifer Camper and Roberta Gregory, these comics document not just what queer life looked like, but the arguments queer people were having with each other about what it should look like. The importance of queer comics lies not only in the stories they told, but in the communities they created. Queer comics allowed readers to see themselves in ways mainstream media refused to permit, whether through wishful identification, similarity identification, satire, anger, or even discomfort. For some, comics offered validation; for others, critique. For many marginalized queer people - queer people of color, working class queer people, lesbians, trans people, punks, outsiders within outsiders - alternative comics became a way to carve out space where none previously existed. In this way, queer comics functioned not only as entertainment, but as counterpublics: spaces where queer people could debate, resist, archive, and reinvent themselves on their own terms. The underground queer comic scene demonstrates that there has never been one singular queer experience, nor one singular way to represent it. Instead, queer comics endure because they embrace contradiction, multiplicity, and dissent. They remind us that representation is not merely about being seen, but about having the freedom to define oneself - loudly, imperfectly, and without permission.

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