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.
Trina Robbins was an American cartoonist. She was an early participant in the underground comix movement, and one of the first women in the movement. She co-produced the 1970 underground comic It Ain't Me, Babe, which was the first comic book entirely created by women. She co-founded the Wimmen's Comix collective, wrote for Wonder Woman, and produced adaptations of Dope and The Silver Metal Lover. She was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2013 and received Eisner Awards in 2017 and 2021.
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.
In comics, LGBT themes are a relatively new concept, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) themes and characters were historically omitted from the content of comic books and their comic strip predecessors due to anti-gay censorship. LGBT existence was included only via innuendo, subtext and inference. However the practice of hiding LGBT characters in the early part of the twentieth century evolved into open inclusion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and comics explored the challenges of coming-out, societal discrimination, and personal and romantic relationships between gay characters.
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.
Gay Comix is an underground comics series published from 1980 to 1998 featuring cartoons by and for gay men and lesbians. The comic books had the tagline "Lesbians and Gay Men Put It On Paper!"
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."
Gerard P. Donelan, known mononymously as Donelan, is an openly gay cartoonist. Part of the first wave of LGBT cartoonists, he drew "It's a Gay Life", a regular single-panel cartoon feature in The Advocate, for 15 years.
Canadian comics refers to comics and cartooning by citizens of Canada or permanent residents of Canada regardless of residence. Canada has two official languages, and distinct comics cultures have developed in English and French Canada. The English tends to follow American trends, and the French, Franco-Belgian ones, with little crossover between the two cultures. Canadian comics run the gamut of comics forms, including editorial cartooning, comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and webcomics, and are published in newspapers, magazines, books, and online. They have received attention in international comics communities and have received support from the federal and provincial governments, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. There are comics publishers throughout the country, as well as large small press, self-publishing, and minicomics communities.
Michael J. Goldberg was an alternative cartoonist known for the exploration of gay themes in his comics. His work was included in Gay Comix.
Rupert Kinnard also credited as Prof. I.B. Gittendowne, is an American cartoonist who created the first ongoing gay/lesbian-identified African-American comic-strip characters: the Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé. Kinnard is gay and African American.
Heroes Against Hunger is a 1986 all-star benefit comic book for African famine relief and recovery. Published by DC Comics in the form of a "comic jam" or exquisite corpse, the book starred Superman and Batman. Spearheaded by Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson, all proceeds from the comic went to hunger relief in Africa.
Bruce Billings is an openly gay cartoonist, creator of the LGBT-themed comic strip Castro, which ran in the 1970s and 1980s in San Francisco gay newspapers such as The Voice. Castro nominally starred a dog who lived in the Castro Street neighborhood of San Francisco with his owner, and the strip affectionately lampooned the gay male culture of the city. The strips were reprinted in Gay Comix, Meatmen, and Strip AIDS USA. In 1989, Billings and cartoonist Kurt Erichsen co-produced a flip book – a single bound volume with both covers formatted as the "front" – as Between the Sheets! and Under the Covers (Erichsen's). Billings retired to southern Oregon.
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.
David Shenton is a British cartoonist who specializes in queer comics. Shenton is known for his work “Controlled Hysteria,” Stanley and The Mask of Mystery, and Phobia Phobia. His comic strips have been featured in the collections Strips Aids, No Straight Lines, and AARGH.
Leslie Ewing is an American cartoonist, activist, and breast cancer survivor. Her comics highlight feminist and lesbian themes and her cartoons have been featured in prominent queer comics, including Gay Comix, Strip AIDS, and Wimmen's Comix. Ewing was the executive director for the Pacific Center for Human Growth from 2008 to 2019.
Angela Bocage is a bisexual comics creator who published mainly in the 1980s and 1990s. Bocage was active in the queer comics community during these decades, publishing in collections like Gay Comix,Strip AIDS USA, and Wimmen's Comix. Bocage also created, edited, and contributed comics to Real Girl, a comics anthology published by Fantagraphics.
Jackie Urbanovic is an American New York Times best-selling author and illustrator. The majority of her work consists of children's picture books, including her self-authored Max the Duck series. She regularly speaks at libraries and at other educational events for children. She is a member of the Children's Book Guild. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she has a studio for her work.
Don Melia was a gay British cartoonist, editor, activist, and philanthropist. Born in Liverpool, he was known largely for his involvement in Matt Black: Charcoal, Strip AIDS, Heartbreak Hotel, and Buddies, comic series that helped uplift the gay community, bring attention to and educate the public about the AIDS crisis, and helped create a gay community in the comics industry.
