No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: No Straight Lines showcases major names such as Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, and Ralf Koenig (one of Europe's most popular cartoonists), as well as high-profile, crossover creators who have dabbled in LGBT cartooning, like legendary NYC artist David Wojnarowicz and media darling and advice columnist Dan Savage.

No Straight Lines also spotlights many talented creators who never made it out of the queer comics ghetto, but produced amazing work that deserves wider attention. Queer cartooning encompasses some of the best and most interesting comics of the last four decades, with creators tackling complex issues of identity and a changing society with intelligence, humor, and imagination.

This book show more celebrates this vibrant artistic underground by gathering together a collection of excellent stories that can be enjoyed by all. Until recently, queer cartooning existed in a parallel universe to the rest of comics, appearing only in gay newspapers and gay bookstores and not in comic book stores, mainstream bookstores or newspapers. The insular nature of the world of queer cartooning, however, created a fascinating artistic scene. LGBT comics have been an uncensored, internal conversation within the queer community, and thus provide a unique window into the hopes, fears, and fantasies of queer people for the last four decades.

These comics have forged their aesthetics from the influences of underground comix, gay erotic art, punk zines, and the biting commentaries of drag queens, bull dykes, and other marginalized queers. They have analyzed their own communities, and their relationship with the broader society. They are smart, funny, and profound. No Straight Lines has been heralded by people interested in comics history, and people invested in LGBT culture will embrace it as a unique and invaluable collection.

My Review: I don't like comics, comix, graphic novels, or whatever the hell you call them. It's too much work for too little story to my text-adapted eyes. But, in a quest not to ossify into one of Those People, I continue to expose myself to stuff I hate to see if I hate it, or merely don't understand it.

Nope. Hate it.

At least there were no superheroes. Those just grate on my last nerve with a fine-toothed wood rasp.

So why three stars in the ratings, since I hate the damn stuff? Because this is My People talking! I would give an identical collection featuring straight people doing straight people stuff *pause for bad memories to pass* negative stars.

As an aside to the squeamishly homophobic (read: normal heterosexual male), the amount of gay-male sex in here will make you *intensely* uncomfortable, but there's a goodly dose of lesbian sex to make it better.

As this is a history of LGBTQ subjects treated graphically, it is very very interesting when considered in that light, and shows the increasing sophistication of the audience as material becomes available in greater quantity. The subject matter is, well, pretty much what you'd expect it to be, and pretty much what all fiction is about: Ourselves.

At $35, it's a big investment that I don't see making if you're not GLBTQ or very interested in the history of social-issue artistry.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

I don’t think there could possibly be a faster or more entertaining way to learn the rapidly-changing history of queer culture and politics (in America and Europe anyway) than to flip through this fantastic anthology. It’s funny, angry, smart, raunchy, tragic, and hopeful, sometimes all on the same page. Keep a pencil handy to mark down the names of all the fantastic contributors you’ll want to look up later.

With announcements coming from big companies like DC and Marvel that they will feature prominent gay stories featured in important books like the gay marriage in Astonishing X-Men 51 it feels like a ripe time to have a collection of comics with a queer focus that paved the way for this. That is what this collection does. While it is obviously not an exhaustive list of the possible queer comics you could pick up that helped make current queer comics possible it is a good starting point. "No Straight Lines" collects shorter works instead of trying to place longer ones like "Stuck Rubber Baby" by Howard Cruse in its pages. In this collection this feels like the right choice because you get exposed to a wider variety of creators as a direct show more result of Hall's choice.

There is a nice mixture of content here, as well. There are some stories that are heavily sexual in nature, while others are just about the ordinary life of a queer individual. It is nice to see this contrast because as a community we are very much like this. No one size fits all. We are a wide variety of individuals trying to live our best lives and this books showcases multiple facets of our queer identity. It will be easy to find yourself somewhere contained within the pages.

As an individual that does not usually want to read sex in my comics (no I am not a prude just have a preference of where I want my smut hehe) I was shocked by how refreshing I felt the sex was dealt with here Yes, there are some graphic scenes of nudity and sex, but it feels right because any member of the queer community can see the truth in what was projected by these various creators. The sexual aspect doesn't take away from the story or dumb them down. In many cases it makes them seem more intelligent about who their audience was at the time they were created. Also the sex keeps them current, since sex will never go out of style.

If you are looking for something outside of your reading comfort this would be an excellent choice, especially if you love comic books. This book shows you that history of a community and how it got to the place where it is now. It is important, in my opinion, to have collections like this so we can recognize that comics did not always allow for the queer community to play in the same sandbox and a result people took to publishing their own stories about themselves. It is in those stories that one finds themselves reflected back not in mainstream books that feel they have to be PG for the wider audience. PG is okay to have (sex does not have to always happen in a Queer book), but the PG must be the choice of the creator of the book and serve the greater purpose. Queer comics sure has come a long way from the days of underground books published in basements and we are still only now coming out into the light. I hope we stay there and make some great comics for the next 40 years that will show how we came together as a community to show our real lives. show less

Its important to read queer history but this definitely made me embarassed for gay assimilationists and TERFs. Also I definitely regret that I cant get back that 30 seconds of my life spent reading Dan Savages first time in drag.

*was grabbing everyones butt I DONT HAVE A PUSSY BOUNDARIES PEOPLE* - basically dan savage

Good anthology, organized chronologically, features artists I'd never heard of. Introduction offers some scene setting.

I was just completely won over by this collection.

Wederom een e-boek uit de LGTBQ-bundle van HumbleBundle met dit keer een selectie uit 40 jaar queer strips in Amerika. Dat laatste staat er natuurlijk niet bij maar ik wil het nog wel even noemen want de strips maken op mij een duidelijke Amerikaanse indruk. Waar dat precies in zit, kan ik niet zo een-twee-drie benoemen dus misschien is het wel mijn eigen vooroordeel wat Amerikaanse strips betreft tegenover Japanse en Europese strips.

Na een aantal tekstuele inleidingen komen ruim driehonderd bladzijden aan strips voorbij van allerlei pluimage. Cartoons, gagstrips, verhalende strips van meerdere bladzijden, noem maar op. Met grof tellen kom ik op een kleine honderd stripmakers die in dit boek aan bod komen. Zoveel makers over een show more tijdbestek van veertig jaar, levert een enorme variëteit op waardoor er altijd wel wat tussen zit wat de moeite waard is.

De onderwerpen van de strips veranderen in de loop van de tijd van eigen seksualiteit ontdekken, uit de kast komen, vrije seks, het huwelijk tussen mensen van hetzelfde geslacht en de pandemie. Bij het noemen van de pandemie was ik eerst helemaal in de war. Dit boek is uit 2013 dus hoe konden ze dan al zo uitgebreid vooruit kijken. Maar het ging natuurlijk over HIV en AIDS, een pandemie die in westerse landen vooral onder homo's heeft huisgehouden. En daarmee voelde ik gelijk weer, hoe ook de eigen tijdsgeest het lezen van boeken beïnvloed.

Dit boek heb ik in e-formaat gelezen op mijn, een kwartslag gedraaide, breedbeeld monitor zodat het een langbeeld werd. Toch blijf ik strips over het algemeen beter uitkomen als het gedrukt staat op papier. Op papier neem ik meer de tijd om de tekeningen met aandacht te bekijken terwijl op het beeldscherm ik snel naar het volgende plaatje overspring. En dat is toch zonde. show less