The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Pride Weekly Graphic Novel Number 68 - Juicy Mother: Celebration, 2005

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!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1193: Gay Comics #24, Spring 1997

When I first bought this comic, it was purely because of the Maxx on the cover. The Maxx is, I think, one of the great superhero works to come out of the early 90s, and the real surprise about it is that it came from Image Comics at a time when the vast majority of what they were producing was extremely sub-par. But the Maxx is also a perfect character (or setting, at least) to cross over into the subculture of queer comics. Anyone who's read the series will understand how very queer it really is (in the older sense of the word, perhaps), and also that it's about people on the fringes and how they deal with the pitfalls and perils of mainstream society.

The story within the comic, not featuring the Maxx, but one of his supporting cast, Sara, tells a tale that is, sadly, something of a cliche in queer comics - the conversation with the ghost of a queer person who has killed themselves. The worst part of this cliche is that it hasn't become such because it's a particularly popular or current kind of story, but because it happens all the time. Which is exactly why a publication like Gay Comics exists, to highlight facts like this.

But not only facts like this. I don't want you to think that this comic is all doom and gloom, because it's not. The vast majority of the stories are about queer people of all sorts trying to figure out relationships, trying to understand how to navigate in a queer way through a straight world - not really so different from how things are 20 years later, though the avenues of navigation we have are becoming more and more wide.

I was absolutely overjoyed to see some early work from Paige Braddock in today's issue. I reviewed one of the collections of Jane's World a while back, and I've been meaning to track down more of Ms. Braddock's work. One of the nice things about this project, and not knowing, really, what's concealed within this collection, is discovering gems like this tucked away that I would not have recognized when I first bought the comic. It's like putting together a really, really, really big jigsaw puzzle.

There's also a few cool serialized tales in this issue, which is great because I really liked them and I love when I find a story that I really want to follow. The bad part is that the next issue, #25 (which I'll be reading later on this month) is the last issue, so I don't know if any of these serials had a chance to conclude. That, though, is life as a comics fan.

More to come...