A Personal History of a Queer Cartoonist and Self Publisher

(i.e. Me)

(Read Part 6 here)

I don’t recall exactly the single most compelling reason that led me to decide in late 1993 that the fifth issue of Strange-Looking Exile would be the last, but I remember I was ready to move on. I was finding it increasingly difficult to work on SLE with the production and self-syndication of my biweekly comic strip Curbside in full swing; I was also tired of dealing with unsolicited submissions that were completely inappropriate to the mission of SLE, and I was weary of encountering resistance from gay boys to reading comics by gay girls and vice versa (something that still completely annoys me, and don’t even get me started on dreary straight alt-comics fans and critics who won’t even look at gay-themed material on account of I dunno, a fear it might turn them gay or something). Mostly, even though Giant Ass had picked up the publishing reins and eased my workload somewhat, I think I was simply burned out on editing in general. So Stacy Sheehan and I decided that we’d go out with a bang, and this fifth and final issue would be the best yet. I solicited Alison Bechdel, who cheerfully agreed to draw us two pages, and my other gal pals including Diane DiMassa, Terry Sapp, Joan Hilty and Leanne Franson. 

Once again I handled the bulk of the “Boy” content. In addition to drawing a six-page installment of “Father ‘n Son” and another six pages of autobio musings called “So This is Life” (a title I stole from a panel of a Roz Chast cartoon), I also drew another piece by writer/zinester Jeffery Kennedy called “My Ten Commandments” (“Thou shalt not buy all of thine clothing at The Gap”) and illustrated the lead feature, a two-page anecdote called “Private Club” by a fellow named Orland Outland. I’d first encountered “Club” in Orland’s zine Adversary and immediately fell in love with it. It dealt with Orland’s days as a gay teen punk misfit in Reno, Nevada, where he and a small band of other non-clone friends would get together and visit a gay bathhouse to listen to the cool music tapes played there and hang out, finding the “real” men within far too intimidating to approach. 

Among other themes, the piece dealt powerfully with one I would write and draw about in my comics again and again over the years, that of young gay boys uneasily navigating the shoaling waters of the gay male sexual subculture. It also remarked upon the melancholy passage of time and the commodification of alternative cultures. Orland and I deemed the collaboration a total success and we were both gratified when it was reprinted in both The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America Since Stonewall (Scribner, 1995) and The Factsheet Five Zine Reader: The Best Writing from the Underground World of Zines (Three Rivers Press, 1997). Orland would later find success as a mainstream gay novelist with such titles as Every Man for Himself and Different People.

Looking at SLE #5 today is much easier for me than looking at the earlier issues. My drawings aren’t perfect (are they ever?) but they are far more focused and tight, and my long stories are smoother sailing all around. I was definitely improving, and my style had really coalesced (I think working on “Curbside” every two weeks was a major catalyst in that area), and the work from the other cartoonists is really great: the final “Born Queer” segment from Diane is excellent, probably the best of the three, and Alison’s take down of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, “My Own Private Michigan Hell,” is a classic —and very funny—rant. Other works from Leanne Franson and Nick Leonard were typically awesome (always loved Leanne’s character the Butchy Door Dyke and Nick’s “Plumber’s Butt Bar” is one of his funniest concepts). I also had a number of great little one-off comics from newcomers like Barbara Lasley, veterans like Rick Campbell (who had work in a number of issues of Gay Comix back in the day), Michelle Rau, Fish, and Joan Hilty, as well as a couple more pages from my friend Christian Schroeder and a neat little strip called “My 8 Deadly Sins” by a dude from NYC named Rhino, who would become a good pal of mine. So yeah, I thought we did real nice by SLE with this farewell and did indeed go out with a bang. We even got a very nice review in the Comics Journal, whose critics are notoriously difficult to please and sometimes just plain nasty. 

And that was that. SLE would slip into queer comics zine history and I was now free to further pursue creating “Curbside” and other ventures. But one fine spring day in 1994 I got a belated submission for SLE from a boy in Philly named Michael Fahy. The envelope contained a bunch of comics that were so beautifully and stylishly drawn, and executed with such sardonic wit and panache that I knew I just had to publish them. Thus inspired, my editing sabbatical was over already, and I hunkered down to work on what would be the first issue of Boy Trouble. 

Next: A Network of Boys! Boys! Boys!