Queer Comics: Candy and Oysters
A cute all-ages sports rom-com about a teenage tug-of-war team. An adult supernatural noir about a glamorous narcissistic thief.
My two big projects in 2022, Love and War and Sins of the Black Flamingo, could not have been more different in tone, genre, audience. Love and War is warm and sweet. Sins is arch and sinister.
They do have something in common besides my writing (and besides superstar letterer Aditya Bidikar's letters on Sins and the first issue of L&W)! Can you guess what that is? You probably can.
When I first tried to get my foot in the door of comics some years ago, the response from every publisher I spoke to was that there was no real place for queer stories. No audience for it. Too controversial. Too niche.
The pitch that eventually broke through was my first without a queer relationship at its heart. (The protagonist of Another Castle, Princess Misty, is written as aromantic. I just didn't tell anyone about it.) My next book, the superhero series Freelance, was queer from jump, but we had to fight to get a kiss on the page.
This year, I had two unapologetically queer stories, and though the books took very different journeys to print they were announced in the space of a single week--along with my Marvel debut, a five-page dream-come-true Herc and Noh-Varr bear/twunk sci-fi love story with artist Brittney Williams!
With Love and War I wanted to write a YA romance with a fat queer lead character where neither his size nor his sexuality were the points of conflict. Our hero, Domo Novak, was gifted in his chosen sport and an object of desire for two guys, and none of that was presented as surprising. Nessa, another fat queer character, pushed herself to the fore as the secondary protagonist with her own relationship troubles. In neither character's case was being queer or being fat part of their problems or an obstacle to overcome.
The story is set in a world where tug of war is a very serious stadium-level sport!, and that allowed me to create teams of athletes of various sizes, backgrounds, and genders. Tug of war is also a great vehicle for a story about the tensions that pull us in different directions!
I'm grateful that I get to work with incredibly talented queer artists on most of my projects. The wonderful Killian Ng created the world of Love and War on the page and the sensational Guillermo Saavedra picked up the baton and added his own sensibilities to the tale. Love and War is a book where all the characters "happen to be queer", but I hate that framing; it's a book by queer people that puts our queer lens on universal experiences of desire, ambition, and conflict.
Sins of the Black Flamingo is, I suppose, a more culturally queer book. It's adult, it's sexual, it takes us to a circuit party, it features a Tom of Finland tribute. It would wear its gayness on its sleeve if it was wearing any sleeves.
The lead, Sebastian Harlow, is confrontationally queer and problematically self-involved. His identity defines his interactions, his resentments, and his sense of his place in the world (and the cosmos). Queerness is at the heart of this book's discussions of privilege, faith, compassion.
Travis Moore, Tamra Bonvillain, and Aditya Bidikar were always the best possible art team for Sins. They do glamour beautifully, but they also have a sharp sense of specificity. This is not a book about surface, even though the surface is immaculate; this is a book about the breaks we cover up.
Given how hostile the mainstream comic industry used to be to queer content, I'm still a bit in shock that we got to make Sins of the Black Flamingo. Representations of queer people in mainstream culture used to be so sanitized. Desexualized, uncomplicated, decentered, unchallenging, euphemistic, grounded. Sebastian Harlow is none of those things. Sebastian is a flawed, vain, slutty, nihilistic, egomaniacal criminal neck-deep in the occult. He's dirty, though he cleans up nice.
Somehow, Sebastian's story and Domo's story were the two tales I got to tell in 2022. One, fizzingly sweet and rainbow-lovely. The other, a sexy mouthful of briny writhing filth. Candy and oysters.
I feel like comics is ready for me now, and I'm very happy to be here!
Love and War is already available in book and comic stores from Dark Horse Comics. Sins of the Black Flamingo will be published in February from Image Comics. New project announcements coming soon!