Comics Fighting: An Underground War for LGBTQ Visibility

Click here to enlarge image

Eric Orner, author of The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, was interviewed by The Watermark in 1998, soon after his comic was syndicated to non-LGBTQ+ exclusive comics.

Comic strips such as The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green sought to demonstrate the journey through life that author Eric Orner experienced.[2] The comic resonated with audiences because it was an accurate portrayal of the evolving gay culture that had been largely missing from more traditional media outlets. In the comic, Orner's title character, Ethan Green, a socially-awkward gay man, maneuvers through life with the aid of his friends, confronting issues of sex, politics, love, and family.[3] The strip became involved in the continuing discussion of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) when Orner had Ethan fall in love with Doug, an HIV-positive (HIV+) character.[4] The story arch addressed the prejudice against HIV+ people even within the LGBTQ+ community.[5] The strip reached even higher notoriety when in 1998, it was established as a permanent piece of The Long Island Village Voice, a non-LGBTQ+ weekly newspaper. This made The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green the first strictly LGBTQ+ comic strip to transition into traditional media.[6]

Click here to enlarge image

Dykes to Watch Out For, as published in The Watermark on September 14, 1994. Written by Alison Bechdel, the comic tackled serious political and social issues that dealt with the LGBTQ+ community. This particular comic strip, "Let Them Eat Cake," addressed the Catholic Church, child adoption by same-sex couples, LGBTQ+ members of the Republican Party, and the dangers of having too much sugar.

Click here to enlarge image

"Holy Homophobia!" was written by John F. Sullivan and published in Watercolors, an insert from The Watermark insert, on September 25, 2002, as an interview with DC Comics authors immediately preceding the release of an issue of The Green Lantern, which would deal with the homophobic assault of a gay character. This comic received mixed reviews and garnered a lot of attention from both sides of the issue. Although the character who was assaulted was not the first LGBTQ+ character in a mainstream comic, he was one of the first to be a victim of a hate crime.

Another comic strip that addressed issues that were directed at the LGBTQ+ community was the lesbian-centric Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. The comic focused on major, and often overlooked, political issues being discussed by a group of friends. Bechdel tackled issues such as prejudice, political competency, and society at large through the comic. A notable example would be in the strip "Lime Light," published in 1994, that addressed the lesbian community’s discrimination against male to female transgendered people.[7] The publication of this strip came almost immediately after the report by the San Francisco Human Rights Commissio, Investigation into Discrimination of Transgendered People, released in September 1994.[8] Bechdel has also addressed the lack of commitment to the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement in the White House, the lack of confident LGBTQ+ leadership, and the downfalls of having a Congress not in line with the president.[9]

Comic books also made incredible impacts on the development and visibility of the LGBTQ+ movement. Few main stream comic titles attacked the concepts of homophobia head on; however, in 2002, The Green Lantern did just that.[10] In 2000, The Green Lantern writer Judd Winick added Terry Berg, a gay teen, to the cast of regular characters in the comic book. After the character’s involvement for two years, representing the positive sides of coming out and the LGBTQ+ community, the DC Comics writers decided to foreground the social issue of hate crimes in America.[11] The issue addresses that, while characters such as the Green Lantern have huge amounts of cosmic power, those powers have little effect on homophobia.[12] While the hero of the story may not be able to end the conditioning that creates homophobia, the publication of the world's most popular superheroes addressing the issue has contributed to the fight.

Fom 1983 onward, comic books and strips have provided alternative methods of visibility for the LGBTQ+ Movement by diversifying the perception of the people in the community, emphasizing political issues that affected the community, and integrating prevalent social issues into main stream media outlets. This use of comic evolved with the movement that was commonly marginalized in the media into designated tropes. The unique storytelling of comics was able to connect with the LGBTQ+ movement in a way similar to its connection to the American community following World War II. As comics continue to develop, they will continue to attract newer and more diverse communities with their array of characters and stories that represent the people who need to be represented the most.