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I'm going to use yesterday's post about Joe Phillips to springboard into a couple of weeks of queer creators in comics, just so I feel like I've done my bit for Pride, as we definitely won't be having our parade and celebration, not in the same way, this September. I've spent the last couple of weeks pouring through the collection, so once I'm done this little hiatus into the gay world, I've decided to get back to featuring POC creators in comics from as broad a spectrum as I can. We're at a turning point, I think, if we can just be brave enough to actually make the turn. My job, as I see it, is to show other people why that turn is worth making.
Today's featured creator is Ivan Velez, Jr., a gay Latinx man who has spent a large amount of his time in comics pushing for diversity. According to his wiki entry, his first comics were about queer kids in the Bronx, back in the 80s, and his devotion to demonstrating both gendered and heritage-based diversity in comics hasn't disappeared. I wondered, as I opened this comic that I have absolutely no context for, aside from Mr. Velez's identification, whether there would be coded queer language, and how that would present itself. I needn't have worried. The language isn't coded - it's clear. Not even 10 pages in, Sleek, one of the main characters, is in conversation with Po, about how cool Po (who is male-identified) can be under pressure, to which Sleek (also a male-identifying character) adds, through thought bubble, "That's why I love you so much." As I say, I have no in-universe context for this comic or the characters, so this might simply be a familial or brotherly bond, but given the context of Mr. Velez, I'm going straight (see what I did there?) to the gay.
I really enjoy talking about queerness in mainstream comics. It's something that I am pretty sure went right over my head as a kid, but there really is a lot of representation, and a lot of subversive representation, in the mainstream. I like to think it's because the heterosexual censors at the top simply had no idea of the kind of language that queer people used to communicate with one another, a lesson that the original Danny the Street from Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol makes plain. Coded language has always been used by oppressed minorities. I probably shouldn't, but I find such joy in noticing it, and then noticing that it must have flown right past the hawkish, straight eyes of the Comics Code.
That is all to say that the queer characters in this comic are not hidden. At least, not from us. They may be hiding things from themselves, but that's a fundamental part of the queer story. Mr. Velez Jr. will definitely be showing up again in coming days. I'll have to keep an eye out for rainbows in his work.
More to follow.
Further Reading and Related Posts
I just linked to this the other day, but here's my writing on queerness in comics. It's probably a part of the blog, and project, of which I'm most proud.
And since The Abominations hails from stories of the Hulk, here's the Hulk stuff I've written on the blog.
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