Graphic narratives—stories told through sequential images with words—come in many forms: comic strips, superhero comics, graphic novels, manga, and more. Whereas the format of a picture story goes back centuries, our notion of comics is primarily a twentieth-century development.
U.S. comics have an antecedent that is distinct from European comics: the earliest comic strips were found on the sports pages in daily newspapers, between reports on baseball, boxing, and horse racing. Indeed, the first comic strip, Mutt and Jeff(two men with a close relationship) debuted in 1907 as a strip that focused solely on Mutt, a racetrack gambler. This sports orientation set the tone for many later comics as a heterosexual male-dominated genre, both in the characters and situations depicted and in the industry behind the comics.
In the 1930s, however, comics could be quite playful about gender and sexual orientation. For example, the two main characters in George Herriman’s comic Krazy Kat, which ran from 1913 to 1944, are Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse. Krazy loves Ignatz, and what makes this relationship special is that other characters in the strip refer to Krazy by both male and female pronouns. Krazy at times wonders whether they should marry a man or a woman.
Comics could also be quite explicit, as seen in the Tijuana bibles, which were typically very cheap, eight-page brochure-type publications that satirized Hollywood stars and other popular figures, such as Archie from the comics, with situations that include hetero- and homosexual couples and threesomes and sometimes animals. The eight-pagers were extremely popular during the 1930s and paralleled the overt sexuality then common in films (e.g., the not-so-subtle innuendo of Mae West), which in turn led to the imposition of the Hays Code (1934–1968), an effort to censor movies.
Fans and scholars alike recognize the Golden Age of comics as comprising the years 1930 to 1956, a period that saw the introduction of popular superheroes. World War II, in particular, inspired the rise of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and many other superheroes. Also appearing in the 1940s and early 1950s were two other popular genres: crime comics, such as True Crime Stories, first published in 1947, and horror comics, such as Tales from the Crypt, which began in 1950. These two genres were rife with extreme violence and sexuality—a development that did not sit well with the conservative social backlash of the 1950s.
Censorship of American Comics
Into this cultural atmosphere came Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who had expressed disapproval of comics for years, including in a 1948 interview, “Horror in the Nursery,” and a symposium speech, “The Psychopathy of Comic Books.” In 1954, Wertham published his infamous book, Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth, which argued that comics, by depicting morally questionable acts and images, were a significant cause of juvenile delinquency. Wertham expressed concern regarding graphic violence, drug use, sexual imagery, and other topics. One of his major concerns, however, was what he considered to be implied homosexual content. He argued, among many other points on the subject, that Wonder Woman, an independent and physically and emotionally forceful woman, was implied to be lesbian; and that Batman and Robin, two bachelor males living together and emotionally close to each other, were implied to be gay.[57]
Wertham’s book led to hearings before the newly formed U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954. By the summer after the Senate hearings, fifteen comics publishers had gone out of business, and multiple city councils had passed ordinances banning crime and horror comics. The surviving publishers, in desperation, formed an organization known as the Comics Code Authority to police their own publications.
The Comics Code Authority wrote and enforced the Comics Code, which was based on the earlier Hays Code but had many far stricter regulations that prohibited anything considered remotely morally objectionable. The Comics Code covered graphic violence and sexual content but also had extensive mandates regarding acceptable story lines:
It required, for instance, that “in every instance good shall triumph over evil.”
It effectively banned entire genres.
It disallowed “references to physical afflictions and deformities” (disabilities).
It forbade the portrayal of racial prejudice, which was used to disallow the inclusion of any nonwhite central characters in what had previously been an unusually racially diverse medium.[58]
A primary focus of the Comics Code was sexual activity. Though the Hays Code had made generic statements about “sex perversion,” the Comics Code was more specific and verbose. It prohibited “sexual abnormalities,” “sadism,” “illicit sex relations,” and on and on. It required that any romantic stories emphasize the “sanctity of marriage”—a phrasing that may sound familiar today. And among the most forceful prohibitions was a mirror of the Hays Code: “Sex perversion or any inference [sic] to same is strictly forbidden.”[59]
Superhero comics were nearly the only genre able to adapt to the dozens of comprehensive rules, and other genres fell to the wayside. A large portion of publishers had already gone out of business and many more were unable to sustain readership while following the Comics Code. This left most comics, especially superhero comics, to only two publishers—National Comics, now known as DC Comics, and Atlas Comics, now known as Marvel Comics. The Comics Code led to and cemented the lasting image of superheroes as morally unassailable and superhero narratives as morally simplistic. And it removed nearly all diversity.
Underground Comix
The Comics Code devastated the comics industry—but not entirely. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the rise of underground comics, many of which started in college newspapers and reflected the collegial culture of rebellion. One early example of underground comix, as they were called, is Zap, a series that Robert Crumb and other authors and artists introduced in 1968. The comics scholar Hillary Chute has identified this underground industry as very much a “boys’ club” that produced raunchy narratives with a strong white, male heteronormative focus on taboo subjects and gender and racial stereotypes.[60]Zap, for example, had the bisexual characters Captain Pissgums and his Pervert Pirates, who were kinky drug addicts.
Following are some highlights of underground comix that include LGBTQ+ characters:
Matt Groening’s series Life in Hell, which began in the late 1970s and ran until 2012, featured Akbar and Jeff, who are gay anthropomorphized rabbits.
In 1976, Garry Trudeau introduced the gay character Andy Lippincott to Doonesbury, which started in 1970 and is still running today; Andy died of AIDS in 1990.
In response to the male-dominated comics of this period, a group of women organized to publish Wimmen’s Comix, a comics anthology that ran from 1972 to 1992. The first issue included a story with a lesbian main character, “Sandy Comes Out.”
Howard Cruse was the editor of a similar comics anthology, Gay Comix, which ran from 1980 to 1998. Cruse also authored Wendelin 1986, which is the first queer comic strip with a gay author. His graphic memoir, Stuck Rubber Baby, relates his coming of age as a gay boy growing up in the South and his participation in the civil rights movement.[61]
The comic book series Strangers in Paradise, by Terry Moore, ran successfully from 1993 to 2007. At the heart of this series, which often took a turn toward mystery and intrigue, was a romantic triangle between two women, one of whom identifies as lesbian, and the man who meets them.
The comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel ran from 1983 to 2008 (figure 11.14). The strip follows a group of lesbians in real time through personal and political struggles, starting with the Ronald Reagan years and young love and continuing through graduate school, parenting, falling in and out of love, and finally the election of Donald Trump.
My personal favorite, Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist, was initially self-published in 1991 by Diane DiMassa (figure 11.15). Hothead rages against a sexist society by castrating men. The comic series ran until 1998.
Roberta Gregory’s comic book series Naughty Bitsran from 1991 to 2004, and her comics starred Midge McCracken, or Bitchy Bitch, and Bitchy Butch, the “angriest dyke in the world.”
Figure 11.14. Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel ran from 1983 to 2008. (Deborah Amory.)Figure 11.15. Various Hothead Paisan issues by Diane DiMassa. (Deborah Amory.)
One important landmark publication almost single-handedly changed the comics industry. Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which was published serially in Raw magazine from 1980 to 1991, demonstrated that the genre could maintain a high artistic quality and deal with substantive issues.
The alternative and independent comics that emerged from the underground comix in the 1990s and early 2000s built on this newly found status, and notable publications that depicted lesbian characters are Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home (2006) and Shannon Watters’s comic book series Lumberjanes. The latter series started in 2014 and relates the adventures of five girls at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types, an all-girls’ camp with activities that encourage transgressive gender roles.
Reintroducing LGBTQ+ Characters in Mainstream Comics
Over decades, authors, artists, and publishers had gradually chipped away at the code, but LGBTQ+ characters were among the last major frontiers. Asexual characters can be counted on one hand; transgender characters on two. Most LGBTQ+ characters have been introduced using various tactics to soften their impact, to make them less shocking and more palatable. Acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and issues in society, as a whole, has been a major factor enabling progress. Inclusion has filtered in toward the center from the outside—into first creator-owned comics, then smaller publishers, then the adult-oriented publications of large publishers, and finally the center of the mainstream.
Here is a short time line of the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters in superhero comics, showing those shifts.
1988: The first gay character, Extraño, appeared in Millennium no. 2; he was not technically out but was an intensely queer-coded caricature.
1991: The reformed villain Pied Piper came out as gay in The Flash no. 53.
1992: The first explicitly gay hero, Northstar, came out in Alpha Flight no. 106. The creator, John Byrne, had supposedly intended for him to be gay since his debut in 1979 but had been repeatedly overridden by editors.
1992: One of the first multisexual heroes, Element Lad, entered a similar-gender relationship in Legion of Superheroes no. 31, a soap opera–esque comic. This character was later retroactively written out as having never happened.
1993: A bisexual transgender woman, Coagula, briefly appeared starting in Doom Patrol no. 70 under an adult-oriented DC Comics imprint. She was created by Rachel Pollack, a transgender writer.
1994: A transgender man, Masquerade, was outed in Blood Syndicate no. 10 under another adult-oriented DC Comics imprint. He was a shapeshifter who used his ability to present as male but had dialogue that made clear his identity as a transitioned man.
1999: Apollo and Midnighter, written as parallels to Superman and Batman, became a couple in The Authority no. 8, under yet another adult-oriented DC Comics imprint.
2002: Apollo and Midnighter became the first married gay couple in superhero comics in The Authority no. 29.
2005: Billy Kaplan and Teddy Altman, a gay teenage couple, were introduced as main characters in Young Avengers no. 1, though this was not initially explicit, and they would not explicitly kiss until 2012.
2006: The first major lesbian hero, Batwoman, debuted in New 52, volume 1, no. 7.
2011: DC Comics and Archie Comics officially abandoned the Comics Code, the last major publishers to do so.
2012: A nonbinary character, Sir Ystin, came out in Demon Knights no. 14 after a year of their gender ambiguity being used as a running gag.
2012: Shortly after New York legalized same-sex marriage, Northstar had the first same-sex wedding in mainstream comics in Astonishing X-Men no. 51.
2014: Loki said he identifies as both a man and a woman in Loki: Agent of Asgard no. 2. This makes him arguably the highest-profile transgender character not only in comics but also in all of U.S. popular culture, but very few people are aware that he is transgender.
2016: Apollo and Midnighter became the first gay couple to headline a comic with the six-issue miniseries Apollo and Midnighter.
2016: Jughead, a character in Archie Comics, came out as asexual in Jughead no. 4.
2016: Wonder Woman was stated to be bisexual by a writer, although the references to this in the comics themselves are subtle and easily missed or denied.
2017: Loki used the word genderfluidto describe himself for the first time in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl no. 27.
Tropes and Themes
LGBTQ+ characters in comics show many of the same tropes as in other media—some negative, some neutral, some maybe even positive. However, some tropes appear with particular frequency in comics, as opposed to other media. These are often employed to make the characters less visibly gay, thus less likely to be forbidden by the Comics Code Authority (in earlier years) and easier on the slow-changing, image-concerned industry both earlier and later. A very abbreviated list of a few of them follows.
Explicit Naming: Several characters are stated to be LGBTQ+ by writers or editors, but the actual text contains only ambiguous hints toward their identity. This allows the characters to technically be LGBTQ+ without the average reader being aware of it. This is particularly common with high-profile characters such as Deadpool and Wonder Woman.
Nonbinary Shapeshifters: Nearly all transgender characters in fiction are inhuman, and comics are no exception. Comics, though, are unusually fond of the nonbinary shapeshifter, who shifts between genders and simultaneously physically between sexes. Thus at any given point, the reader is able to think of the character as cisgender and doesn’t have to deal with a character’s identity not “matching” their body. (And neither do the people in charge.) Examples include Loki, Mystique, and Xavin.
It’s Not Gay If It’s an Alternate Universe: This trope, nearly unique to comics, depends on comics’ use of the multiverse. Characters are often portrayed as LGBTQ+ in alternate universes, allowing both companies and audiences to deny that any queerness exists in the primary versions of those characters. The trope is ridiculously common, applying to dozens of characters. DC Bombshells is particularly notable. Bombshells is an alternate universe with its own yearslong series in which nearly the entire cast (composed of alternate versions of preexisting characters) is lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or some combination. A variant of the trope makes a character a different gender so that a pair can be together without being LGBTQ+ at all. Dark Reign: Fantastic Four no. 2 shows an alternate universe in which Captain America and Iron Man are married—and Iron Man is a woman. In other narratives, characters in alternate universes with the same roles and titles but different names are LGBTQ+.
But Not Too Gay: This occurs across media, but because the Comics Code emphasizes visuals, it is particularly significant in comics. LGBTQ+ characters are desexualized compared with their straight counterparts. Queer couples are often together for years without so much as an on-page kiss, whereas straight couples in the same series are shown in blatantly explicit situations. Queer couples may even be restricted from having any physical contact at all.
Explore
Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF) is Alison Bechdel’s famous comic strip that ran from 1983 to 2008. The online archive (dykestowatchoutfor.com/strip-archive-by-number/) includes select comic strips, posted by Bechdel, and responses and commentary by readers and fans. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For includes over twenty-five years of DTWOF strips in one book (Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 2008).
DTWOF was famous for depicting lesbians responding to and engaging in current political events. The characters in the strip aged in real time, and their relationships evolved as well. What political and social issues does Bechdel explore in her comic strip? Are these still relevant to our lives today?
How does Bechdel represent lesbian identity, culture, and community? Does her comic strip challenge some of the tropes discussed earlier for LGBTQ+ comics?
Describe how DTWOF violates elements of the Comics Code, particularly in relation to racial prejudice and sexual activity.
Check Your Knowledge
Contributed by Has Arakelyan, Rio Hondo College
Multiple-Choice Questions
1. What was a primary effect of the Comics Code Authority on LGBTQ+ representation in mainstream comics?
A) It encouraged explicit LGBTQ+ storylines.
B) It banned “sex perversion or any inference to same,” effectively erasing queer characters.
C) It promoted racial diversity in superhero comics.
D) It required all comics to be peer-reviewed.
2. Which comic strip is notable for its real-time depiction of lesbian community and engagement with political events from 1983 to 2008?
A) Dykes to Watch Out For
B) Hothead Paisan
C) Life in Hell
D) Naughty Bits
3. The trope “It’s Not Gay If It’s an Alternate Universe” in comics refers to:
A) Focusing exclusively on cisgender characters
B) Only using LGBTQ+ characters in superhero comics
C) Portraying characters as LGBTQ+ in alternate universes, allowing denial of queerness in the main continuity
D) Making all villains LGBTQ+
4. What is a common feature of the “nonbinary shapeshifter” trope in comics?
A) characters who can change gender and sex, making their identity ambiguous
B) only human characters are represented
C) shapeshifters are always villains
D) it is unique to superhero movies
5. Which underground comic anthology was notable for including a lesbian main character in its first issue?
A) Gay Comix
B) Wimmen’s Comix
C) Maus
D) Lumberjanes
How did the Comics Code Authority shape the landscape of LGBTQ+ representation in comics, and what were some unintended consequences of its censorship?
In what ways did underground comix and independent publishers challenge mainstream norms and expand queer representation in graphic narratives?
Discuss the significance of tropes like “explicit naming” and “but not too gay” in the portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in comics. How do these tropes affect visibility and authenticity?
How does Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For both reflect and challenge the social and political realities of its time?
What are the implications of using alternate universes or shapeshifting as devices for including LGBTQ+ characters in comics? Do these strategies help or hinder authentic representation?
Multiple-Choice Questions - Answers
1. B) It banned “sex perversion or any inference to same,” effectively erasing queer characters
2. A) Dykes to Watch Out For
3. C) Portraying characters as LGBTQ+ in alternate universes, allowing denial of queerness in the main continuity
4. A) characters who can change gender and sex, making their identity ambiguous
5. B) Wimmen’s Comix
