No, I hadn’t forgotten about this; I’d just been sidetracked. (Plus CORA has gone bi-weekly.) This is one I’ve been looking forward to doing, since there are a small number of LGBT comics creators that rank among my favorites. In a previous CORA post I talked about Ellen Forney. I’ll add that in addition to the sublime Monkey Food, she has other collections of her strip work: I Love Led Zeppelin, which covers a variety of counterculture-type subjects, and Lust, in which she illustrates personals ads. Worducopia and Color Online readers might have seen her work in the prose book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I haven’t read that yet, but it’s supposed to be pretty good.

I don’t remember where I first read about Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse. It must have been sometime during the early period during the 90s when I was just getting back into comics. Anyway, whenever people ask me which graphic novel is my all-time favorite, this is the one I hold up. Set during the civil rights movement of the 60s in a fictitous Southern town, it’s a coming-of-age tale about a young white teen beginning to come to terms with his sexuality, in a town racked with racial strife. When the Proposition 8 decision came down in California last fall, and it was revealed that a large number of blacks voted in its favor, many opponents of the bill were shocked that these blacks couldn’t see the parallels between their struggle for equality and that of homosexuals. Baby holds blacks and gays up to the same light and does an excellent job of depicting the perspectives of both groups (though obviously the gay angle is the stronger of the two). There’s a wide and diverse variety of characters on display here, and they’re all believable and three-dimensional. Cruse has a pleasant cartoonish art style which makes use of a meticulous stippling technique which, I admit, he sometimes goes overboard on, but I’ve learned to appreciate it. Baby is filled with warmth, humor, genuine tension and rich drama. You’ll think it’s based on a true story – but it’s not!

Tim Fish does some great gay romance comics. Arguably his best known is Cavalcade of Boys. It’s very much in the spirit of old-fashioned (heterosexual) romance comics from the 50s and 60s, with a large cast of (mostly) young gay men hopping in and out of each other’s beds, drawn in a broad, exaggerated style suggestive of legendary Golden and Silver Age artist Jack Kirby in places. Among his other works include Young Bottoms in Love and Meet Me in St. Louis… Many literature aficionados have heard of Alison Bechdel by now, thanks to her graphic novel memoir Fun Home hitting it big a couple of years ago. If you liked that, I suggest also seeking out the collection of her long-running strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. Similar kind of droll humor, with a bigger cast… Abby Denson’s work leans more towards the realm of Japanese manga, with androgynous boys and hyper-emotional situations. Her breakout book Tough Love is very much in that vein. (I remember when this was a mini-comic! I should have a copy or two back home in New York.)

All these comics are great places to start for gay comics. For more, check out the website Prism Comics.