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15 - Queer Graphic Novels

A Paradigm of Paradox

from Part II - Graphic Novels and the Quest for an American Diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2024

By
Alison Halsall
Edited by
Jan Baetens ,
Hugo Frey  and
Fabrice Leroy
Jan Baetens
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Belgium
Hugo Frey
Affiliation:
University of Chichester
Fabrice Leroy
Affiliation:
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
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Summary

This chapter studies the expression of queerness, gender and sexual identity, and diversity in comics and graphic novels. It identifies several stages in the history of the medium, from earlier coded or implicit representations of queer identities designed to circumvent the Comics Code Authority to increasingly and openly acknowledged visualizations of non-heteronormative subject matters in contemporary works. The chapter offers close readings of various coming-out narratives that use the graphic memoir form as a space for self-excavation and self-disclosure, drawing connections with a wider social of familial context (Howard Cruse, David Wojnarowicz, and especially Alison Bechdel, whose Fun Home catapulted queer graphic novels into the mainstream). It also contrasts the “normalization” approach of mainstream publishers, who focus on diversity and support equality by featuring queer characters in ensemble casts, albeit at the risk of presenting a superficial image of queerness, and the more exclusive focus of alternative publishers and individually produced comics-zines, more centered on personal experiences.

Keywords

LGBTQgendersexualityidentityautobiographycoming outheteronormativehomophobiatransphobiaAlison Bechdel
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel , pp. 256 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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