We're in a bit of an interesting moment for queer comics in print. Though webcomics have been making significant strides in representation and diversity, thanks mostly to the availability of the platform for burgeoning cartoonists, print comics, as a more expensive medium and as a more competitive field, have lagged behind somewhat. An anthology publication like Juicy Mother provides an excellent venue, and the inclusion of such queer cartooning luminaries as Alison Bechdel and Howard Cruse in the book provides the kind of star power that, hopefully, would push this collection into the public eye. Last year's Love is Love did a similar thing, but it's nice to see a queer anthology that doesn't appear to be in response to a tragedy of some sort. As my favourite super-teams will often say, it's nice when we can come together for happy occasions, rather than just for the sad ones.
I think, though, that Juicy Mother was a bit ahead of its time. It's more queer underground, for print comics, than it might be now in a time when queerness is beginning to have a real effect on mainstream culture. Or that's the world I live in, I suppose. It's not the same everywhere.
Picking up on the idea of happy occasions, though, note that this, the inaugural issue (there were 2 more), is titled "Celebration." And though the stories inside aren't all happy ones, and indeed some deal with very profound issues, the impetus of the comic was, as editor Jennifer Camper notes, "to read comix relating to our own experiences of the world." And experiences, good ones and bad, need to be celebrated. They're how we continue to grow as humans.
Though I'm a queer man, and I like to think of myself as...worldly, I suppose?...I definitely find as I explore the variation that exists within queer culture just how much work I still have to do on my own perceptions. The first story in the collection opens with a bunch of punks at a bar, having arguments and conversations, and it was only about 3 pages in that I realized that they were all butch lesbians. On the one hand this illustrates the cool ability of iconically-abstracted comics representations to allow the reader to inhabit a particular character. On the other hand it illustrates a culturally-programmed response to media to assume that the male is the focal viewpoint. I was a bit embarrassed when I realized the error I'd made. The comic is, after all, for "Discerning Homosexuals, Uppity Ladies, Fierce People of Color and all their friends."
Honestly. With cover copy like that, how can you say no?
For those in the Calgary area, I've seen a few copies of this kicking about in the stores I frequent, so it might be accessible somehow.
Onward!
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