 Strips |
 News |
 Contact |
 Letters |
 Roll Call |
 Merchandise |
 Novel |
 Biography |
 Links |
 Messages |
|
Strips |
News |
Contact |
Letters |
Roll Call |
Merchandise |
Novel |
Biography |
Links |
Messages |
Positions - 10.16.02
|
Fetal Positions
If you've visited my home planet recently, you may have heard how Marvel Comics will make history when they "break new ground in the comic book industry by introducing the first openly gay title character in a comic book." Maybe you read about it in the New York Post, or saw it on CNN, or maybe even in the Australian newspaper where I place my personal ads hoping to attract the attention of Nicole Kidman. Well, wherever the fuck you heard the story, it is complete and utter bullshit. You want the truth? You want the truth? As usual, you can find it every Wednesday at serializer.net. In the comic Pup. I mean, Fetus-X.
Why do I make comics about bad reporting about bad press releases about bad comics? Because taking down real-world bad guys is what I do. Put that in your Rick James commemorative crack pipe and smoke it, super-freak. While I was fact-checking the above comic I became a bit concerned about my reference to Howard Cruse's "Wendel." (Note to CNN and every other "journalistic" hack who ran verbatim with Marvel's propaganda: FACT CHECKING IS YOUR FUCKING JOB. TRY IT SOMETIME.) "Wendel" was first a comic strip in The Advocate, then collected in a book, then there was "Wendel Comix," and, oh fuck, if I screw this up I'm gonna look almost as stupid as the people from CNN and Marvel I'm making fun of in the comic, right? So e-mailed Howard Cruse himself, and asked him just how badly I've fucked up his resume. Now Cruse probably couldn't give one quarter of a shit about Marvel Comics. Cruse has done more great things in comics than Marvel has ever dreamed about doing -- more things than I can list here, but let me just mention three really cool things he's done:
1) "Stuck Rubber Baby" I e-mailed Howard my comic, gave him a link to the CNN story, and then sat back while he schooled me in gay comics history. He wrote: Hi, Eric. First of all, I'm highly complimented by being referred to in your feature, and it's alert of you to make the point you've chosen to make, particularly as summarized in your closing comment. You've also sent me down memory lane to weigh whatever arguments Marvel might make that their claim that Rawhide Kid will be the medium's first openly gay comic book title character. I wasn't following the whole Northstar thing, not being very connected to any mainstream series at that time, so I'll leave that part of your argument to you. If Northstar did indeed have his own title (as opposed to being a secondary character in a series not named for him), then that would certainly obliterate Marvel's claim about Rawhide Kid right there. Everything would seem to rest on that key term "title character for a comic book" and the definition of what a "comic book" is. In other words, gay/lesbian/bisexual characters began gaining a real presence in underground and alternative comic books and strips from the mid-'70s onward, but it's not that easy to come up with ones who appeared in comicbooks named after them. The first gay male comic book series was Gay Heartthrobs (launched in 1976), but that wasn't named for any single character. The same is true with the two one-shot ug comix by Mary Wings, Come Out Comix and Dyke Shorts (1976 & 1977, if memory serves). The title of Roberta Gregory's Dynamite Damsels (1976) refers to its protagonists, but only generically, not by name. My character Headrack came out of his closet in Barefootz Funnies #2 (1976), but the series was named for Barefootz, not him. The title character of Lee Marrs' Pudge, Girl Blimp ug series had already had gay sex at the beginning of the 1970s, I believe, but bisexual is the term that would apply, not gay, since it was all part of Pudge's flower-child pansexual adventures. Rand Holmes's Harold Hedd sucked off a guy to make a liberationist political point, but in all other circumstances he was wildly heterosexual. As you can see, all sorts of gay "firsts" began happening in the 1970s, but most are burdened with qualifiers when it comes to competing with the Rawhide Kid. People are so addicted to the word "first" when they want to champion an innovative work of art. For example, a lot of people want to refer to Gay Comix, the series I edited in its infancy, as "the first gay underground series," but it wasn't. I like to think we addressed the topic with more quality and seriousness than did Gay Heartthrobs, but GH was there in its campy splendor four years ahead of GC. Wendel was the title character of a comic STRIP in 1983, of a BOOK COLLECTION that came out in 1986, and of a ONE-SHOT comic book (Wendel Comix #1) that came out in 1990. Marvel might quibble about about whether a one-shot comic book is in the same category as an ongoing comic-book SERIES like Rawhide Kid, but since Wendel Comix did have 36 pages and wasn't squarebound, it can probably hold the better part of that argument by a hair, if not much more. If you want to nail down your accuracy, though, you'd probably have to refer to Wendel Comix (not Wendel) and use 12 years instead of 20, even though you are absolutely correct that Wendel as a character in a comics feature named after him has 20 years under his belt. If one counts trade paperbacks as "comic books," then you've got Leonard & Larry and even Matt Groening's Akbar and Jeff in the mix, but I suspect that whoever writes Marvel's press releases would not be so gracious as to allow that liberty. So I think your best argument, playing the game on Marvel's own very limited turf, lies with Northstar and (on a technicality) Wendel. The whole chronicle doesn't lend itself to either press-release competition or quick comic strip commentary, does it? But still, somehow, the reality of step-by-step gay emergence from comics invisibility has been exciting for all participants as it has been happening. The notion of Marvel patting itself on the back for letting a Howard Stern (gay?) writer potentially trivialize gay experience in 2002 by presenting it with campy inuendo the way it is typically portrayed in Stern's fratboy broadcasting world seems ludicrous on the face of it, and crowing about being a "first" is insulting to all who have gone before. It's not inappropriate of you to call them to account on grounds of hubris. Who can know for sure, ofcourse, that this writer isn't better than his background suggests? Maybe he can pull it off. I hope the foregoing background is helpful, even though I suspect that I have just muddied the waters for what you have composed as a clean twist of the knife. (That noise you heard was the sound of a grotesquely mixed metaphor rumbling by!) Thanks, Eric, for giving a damn about this subject. A lot of comics readers don't.
Best regards, Yeah, what he said. I ultimately decided to use the phrase "comic books like Wendel from almost 20 years ago" in the first panel, referring to the 1985 "Wendel" collection printed by Gay Presses of New York (Note: the book was published in December 1985, but wasn't in stores until '86, which is why Howard refers to it as appearing in 1986 above). I also pointed out to Howard that Marvel's Northstar did have his own 4-issue series in 1993 (after he outed himself in 1992). I'm sure Howard quickly filed this Northstar information in the "Who Cares?" folder. Anyway, I think this whole Marvel "title character" thing is ridiculous -- as if having a title like The Rawhide Kid is a bigger step for gay comics than a title like, say, Gay Comix. Or Dykes to Watch Out For. So to summarize, CNN and Marvel Comics = lies and bullshit, Howard Cruse (and others who truly helped bring gays into comics almost 30 years ago) = cool. Thanks again to Howard Cruse for all your help and for letting me reproduce your e-mail here. As always, anyone can send your letters to dudes@fetusx.com, or post your thoughts in the Fetus-X Forum. And Happy Holidays!
|
