Howard Cruse was an American alternative cartoonist known for the exploration of gay themes in his comics. First coming to attention in the 1970s, during the underground comix movement with Barefootz, he was the founding editor of Gay Comix in 1980, created the gay-themed strip Wendel during the 1980s, and reached a more mainstream audience in 1995 when an imprint of DC Comics published his graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby.
Jerry A. Mills was an openly gay cartoonist known for his comic strip Poppers, which is credited as one of the first comic strips to develop multi-dimensional gay characters. Scholars have stated that while earlier comics had relied on stereotypes such as the nelly queen or muscleman, Mills presented his characters with lives beyond the stereotypes. His work is also credited as having helped shape comics for the LGBTQ+ community and its members.
Roberta Gregory is an American comic book writer and artist best known for the character Bitchy Bitch from her Fantagraphics Books series Naughty Bits. She is a prolific contributor to many feminist and underground anthologies, such as Wimmen's Comix and Gay Comix.
A soft butch, or stem (stud-fem), is a lesbian who exhibits some stereotypical butch traits without fitting the masculine stereotype associated with butch lesbians. Soft butch is on the spectrum of butch, as are stone butch and masculine, whereas on the contrary, ultra fem, high femme, and lipstick lesbian are some labels on the spectrum of lesbians with a more prominent expression of femininity, also known as femmes. Soft butches have gender expressions of women, but primarily display masculine characteristics; soft butches predominantly express masculinity with a touch of femininity.
Robert Kirby is an American cartoonist, known for his long-running syndicated comic Curbside – which ran in the gay and alternative presses from 1991 to 2008 – and other works focusing on queer characters and community, including Strange Looking Exile, Boy Trouble, THREE, and QU33R.
Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal is a pornographic novel, first published in London in 1893. The authorship of the work is unknown. There is a consensus that it was an ensemble effort, but it has often been attributed to Oscar Wilde. Set in fin de siècle Paris, its concerns are the magnetic attraction and passionate though ultimately tragic affair between a young Frenchman named Camille Des Grieux and the Hungarian pianist René Teleny. The novel is one of the earliest pieces of English-language pornography that focuses explicitly and near-exclusively on homosexuality. Its lush and literate, though variable, prose style and the relative complexity and depth of character and plot development share as much with the aesthetic fiction of the period as with its typical pornography.
Prism Comics is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that promotes awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) creators, stories, characters, and readers in the comics industry. It does this through informational booths and programming at comic conventions, print and online guides to LGBT creators and comics, and the annual Queer Press Grant to assist publication of new LGBT-themed work.
Erotic comics are adult comics which focus substantially on nudity and sexual activity, either for their own sake or as a major story element. As such they are usually not permitted to be sold to legal minors. Like other genres of comics, they can consist of single panels, short comic strips, comic books, or graphic novels/albums. Although never a mainstream genre, they have existed as a niche alongside – but usually separate from – other genres of comics.
Mary Wings was an American cartoonist, writer, and artist. She was known for highlighting lesbian themes in her work. In 1973, she made history by releasing Come Out Comix, the first lesbian comic book. She also wrote a series of detective novels featuring lesbian heroine Emma Victor. Divine Victim, Wings' only Gothic novel, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Mystery in 1994.
Tim Barela is an American gay cartoonist who is best known for his creation of the comic strip Leonard & Larry. The Leonard & Larry strip first appeared in a 1984 issue of Gay Comix, then were later featured in The Advocate and Frontiers magazines. The comic series has been collected in four volumes published by Palliard Press, and a single volume by Rattling Good Yarns.
Robert Triptow is an American writer and artist. He is known primarily for creating gay- and bisexual-themed comics and for editing Gay Comix in the 1980s, and he was identified by underground comix pioneer Lee Marrs as "the last of the underground cartoonists."
Steve MacIsaac is a Canadian comics artist and creator living in Long Beach, California. He is known for his comics series Shirtlifter (2006-2019) and the graphic novel, Unpacking (2018). His comics focus on the lives and relationships of contemporary gay men, from marriage to casual encounters. His work has been collected in “Best American Comics”, and other anthologies.
Carl Vaughn Frick – often credited as Vaughn Frick or simply Vaughn – is an alternative cartoonist known for the exploration of gay, environmental, HIV/AIDS awareness, and radical political themes in his comics. His Watch Out! Comix #1 (1986) was an influential gay-themed comic, one of the first by an openly gay male cartoonist. His work was also included in issues of Gay Comix,Meatmen, Strip AIDS, No Straight Lines, and So Fey, a collection of Radical Faerie fiction.
Meatmen: An Anthology of Gay Male Comics is a series of paperback books collecting short comics featuring gay and bisexual male characters. The comics included a mixture of explicit erotica and humor. Between 1986 and 2004, 26 black-and-white volumes of the series were published by Leyland Publications, making it the longest-running anthology of gay male pornographic comics.
Kurt Erichsen is an openly gay cartoonist and civil engineer, creator of the syndicated LGBT-themed comic strip "Murphy's Manor," his most notable work, which ran for 1183 weekly strips from the 1980s until 2008 and through strip 1205 in 2019.
Northwest Press is an American publisher specializing in LGBT-themed comic books and graphic novels. It was founded in 2010 by Charles "Zan" Christensen. The company publishes in print, as well as through digital channels such as ComiXology and Apple's iBooks, and also retails some similarly-themed books published independently.
No Straight Lines is an anthology of queer comics covering a 40-year period from the late 1960s to the late 2000s. It was edited by Justin Hall and published by Fantagraphics Books on August 1, 2012.
Burton Clarke is a gay African-American alternative cartoonist. He is known for his contributions to the rise of LGBT comics and his focus on representing gay men of all races and classes in his art, using a mix of realism and fantasy to tackle complex issues such as internalized racism and homophobia.
Maia Kobabe is an American cartoonist and author who wrote the memoir Gender Queer.
Sina Shamsavari is a comic artist and author in the queer punk zine movement. Born in Manchester, Shamsavari grew up in an environment hostile towards queer identity. He has published queer zines and comics such as Art Fag, Boy Crazy Boy, Concerned Muthers, Dirty Mind, and Pretty Boys Ignore You. His work has been included in anthologies including No Straight Lines, Publish You and QU33R.
