This article was originally published July 2nd, 2010 on Examiner.com. You can read the announcement of the 2009 joint Queer Press Grant recipients right here on PrismComics.org. Pam Harrison, last year’s recipient of the Grant for her House of the Muses series, talks to this year’s recipients, Ed Luce and Eric Orner, about their work the QPG, and more: What drew you to creating comics? Ed Luce: I've been a lifelong comics reader but never really took to drawing them beyond high school. Although I majored in art during college and grad school, my studies drove me more toward fine arts and graphic design. I also spent a lengthy stint as an art professor where enforcing the curriculum meant crushing the spirits of many aspiring cartoonists. So it was safe to say I was kind of at odds with the medium for the better part of my creative life...’ til I kind of reached the end of my rope with painting and decided to try expressing my ideas through  [Continue reading...]

What a media frenzy! Even the ancient environs of the slowly dying print media were all agog over the recent revamp of Wonder Woman. Well, if you think that was hot news, wait ‘til you hear what other changes the infallible controllers of the DC Universe have in store! I’ve looked into my queer-ystal ball and am now ready to share with you what the future holds! My vision of The Shape of Re-Doings to Come reveals these major characters to be some of the many that will be undergoing Super-Sized makeovers: BATMAN As writer J. Michael Straczynski will put it in a soon to be unleashed press release: “When Dan and Jim asked me to undertake this project, I immediately said ‘Yes!’, but on one condition: That I be allowed to jettison everything that is superfluous to the fundamentals of The Bat. They, of course, agreed. So, in my new, back to basics take on Bruce Wayne, he never had any parents. Instead, he began as a clay statue which the Greek god Ares brought to  [Continue reading...]

In this American republic, the most obvious form of expression is the vote. The vote, in fact, externalizes the voter's internal self: her motives, her methods, her mentality. Where national elections are concerned, it's no exaggeration to say that voting is exerting, in some small measure, the ballot-caster's identity onto the whole country. So important is the vote that its dearth has borne an aphorism: "If you don't vote, you can't complain." And August 26th marks the 90th anniversary of, uh, Female Americans getting their first crack at ballot-casting via the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. And while ballot-casting is the most obvious, it isn't the most vital means of American voting. In a super-doer comic, the most obvious form of expression is the costume. As with the ballot-caster's vote, the super-doer costume externalizes the champion's internal self: her motives, her methods, her mentality. So, changing a super-doer's  [Continue reading...]

Jon Macy’s adaptation of the early gay pornographic work Teleny into the graphic tome (seriously, I could kill a cat with its heft) Teleny and Camille seethes. It churns. It tugs. It traps all things beautifully gay and all things terribly gay then challenges the reader to not look away. I’m sure many will see this novel only for the love story, but what Jon has given us is a vision of how much and how little we gay folk have changed in the 100-plus years since Oscar Wilde (allegedly) and his band of lavender men wrote the original novel in round-robin. It's a FAR superior execution of the idea behind Francis Ford Copolla's Dracula: Victorian context, modern subtext. (I have to thank my brother for this succinct metaphor.) The story is a simple one: boy (Camille) meets boy (Teleny), and they begin a secret yet intense love affair that knocks Camille out of his perennially heterosexual life and into the clandestine London homosexual world. But there’s so much  [Continue reading...]

A couple of weeks ago I was in a car wreck. I had the green light, but the other driver decided to make a left turn right in front of me. I tried to swerve, but smashing into the other vehicle was unavoidable. Trying to clear my frazzled brain, I got out of the car, amazed I was able to even get out at all. At first I thought I was pretty much okay. All I could see was blood trickling from the top of my hand, which had been cut from who-knows-what. But as I walked around the crash site, there came the most excruciating pain I ever felt in my left knee. The EMTs at the scene offered me a ride to the hospital in the ambulance, but I told them I would just wait for someone to come get me. Trouble was, I had a hell of a time getting hold of my mom and my four siblings. I finally got through to my brother, who was able to get through to my mom, who was on the other side of town having lunch with her sister at Olive Garden. Since the crash happened close to where I live (I was on my way  [Continue reading...]

The Secret Six are a ragtag bunch of villains, formed in opposition to a bigger group of villains, during a prelude to one of the DCU's universe threatening catastrophes: Infinite Crisis. They are a peculiar bunch, comprising of a contortionist, a God from a hellworld, the daughter of an immortal, an assassin for hire and a Catman. None of them really have superpowers, (well except for the God, but even then she is just who she is), they are just pretty good at what they do. That may be shooting, fighting or creating mind altering drugs. But they are all human. This trade collects the 6 issues of the mini series that helped launch their now ongoing title of the same name. The book opens with the team carrying out a hit contract which takes them to the concentration camps of North Korea and exposes us to the dirty side of humanity (a fairly unexpected way to start your super villain book I must say). Then the story settles into a more traditional tale of attempted assassinations,  [Continue reading...]

Perhaps the best way to reiterate any change or progression in life is to take a look back at how things used to be, when things weren't as open, when things may not have been as convenient or free. Comics, a medium that often provides parallels to what's going on in the real world, is no different. Unfortunately that change sometimes comes with unnecessary restriction and denial of basic rights. When we happened across a Silver Age Batman story called "The Rainbow Creature" we were all too happy to take a look at it, as we hoped to be able to draw some stunning comparison between the Rainbow Creature's misunderstood and often violent actions with the GLBT community's ever constant fight for rights and equality. Or at the very least be able to find tons of suggestive double entendres that would surely make for a good laugh. Needless to say we found neither. The Rainbow Creature story that appeared in 1960's issue of Batman #134 is probably one of the most un-gay stories (not to be  [Continue reading...]

Like many avid comic fans, our comic collection extends beyond the standard monthly publications. We also happen to have a small army of action figures, trading cards, and even books about comic books. One of these coffee table dominating books that we've acquired is called The DC Vault. The first page of the aforementioned is an intricate splash-page-sized picture of the Batcave, courtesy of Dick Sprang (Silver Age continuity, of course). It's actually a lot of fun to sit there and look at every spec of the picture to see all the crazy crap that Batman has in his hideout - sort of like a superhero version of "Where's Waldo?". On top of the cliché stuff like that giant penny and the big robotic dinosaur, the reader is treated to an array of bat-gadgets, nearly a dozen vehicles, and some creepy life-sized statues of Batman's greatest villains. Unfortunately there is one thing that we are disappointed not to see in this image - Batman's rainbow costume. Yes, you did read that  [Continue reading...]