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...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 22 - Jane's World v.1, 2005

The more I delve into webcomics and their IRL reprint volumes, the more I realize that there's this fantastic current of queer comics that have managed to find an outlet through the ostensibly free domain of the Internet. I did a bit of reading up on Jane's World and it turns out to have started online in 1998! Honestly, I don't think I even had Internet back then. Jane and her friends were also, apparently, one of the first queer comic strips to be picked up by a national syndicate, making this comic not only entertaining and cute, but also very important in the history of queer comics.

I grabbed two volumes of the series when I saw them at a thrift shop. I've only read this one so far, and it was...good, but not great. It really seems like there's large gaps in the story that are filled in by small text pieces, and, honestly, the bits that are missing sound really great. I'm not sure what the impetus might have been to not reprint those bits (if, indeed, those bits exist), though perhaps it's to shine the spotlight more on Jane and her life than on the fantastic things that might happen in her head.

Though there is that bit where she and Chelle end up on an island inhabited by Amazons.

What's really nice about this comic is that it's not completely populated by queer characters. Jane exists in a social group of diverse genders and looks, much as we all do, and through this kind of setting, Ms. Braddock reminds us that not only do queer people exist within, not outside of, mainstream culture, but that our lives are every bit the same as anyone else's. Who hasn't fallen overboard while boating, hit their head, and hallucinated an island full of buxom and flirty Amazons? I call that Friday night.

Here's a link to the online presence of the comic. Jane is totally worth a look and a read.