It’s the Second Anniversary of Queer Eye On Comics! Thank you, thank you. We launched our weekly online column on February 22, 2004 and have not missed a week save one (during the hectic 2004 San Diego Comic-Con). Because of the great dedication and exemplary work being done by our writers, I wanted to celebrate this anniversary by taking a fond look back.

Ah, it seemed like just…two years ago that Rich Thigpen asked me to edit the column. Though Prism Comics is dedicated to promoting LGBT comics and creators, the column was not to focus on LGBT comics (we have our other column Color Commentary for that). Instead, the queerness would come from the sensibility used in reviewing the comics. Thus, we needed writers with this “queer sensibility” (how do you catch that?) and luckily Rich had identified a stable writers, most of whom have stayed with the column through to today. These include Scott Anderson, Edward Beekman-Myers, Peter Di Maso, Tim Fish, Terrance Griep, Kyle Minor, Ed Natcher, Rich Thigpen and Yours Truly; plus we’ve had contributions from Paige & Kevin Alexis (PKA), Gregory Sanchez, and Paul Freitag. Please give them all a hand, or slap your fins together. Each is brilliant with their own unique take on comics (and the world)—some are sarcastic and snarky, others analytical and sometimes even heartfelt. What binds them all is their true love of comics—not always the comics they’re reviewing, but for the medium overall.

Through more than 100 reviews, our writers have covered every character from Superman to Casper to the Metal Men to “Omaha” The Cat Dancer to George Bush (yes, the Exalted One). Their week-to-week take on these characters has left me in stitches or at least a busted gut or two. I’ve tried to speculate on why our writers pick the comics they do. Sometimes it’s because the work is irresistibly camp, sometimes it sparks off a larger idea about the times and the world, sometimes it’s just fun to make fun of bad comics. Here are some of the categories I’ve come to identify:

TRANSGENDER AFTERSCHOOL SUPER-SPECIAL: In “Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister”, the hilarity ensues not only because of this early sex-change fantasy from Superboy’s closet (Superboy #78) but because of Ed Natcher’s take on it. The whole incident begins when Superboy encounters a female alien who becomes startled upon seeing a flying teen and so nearly crashes her spaceship. “Supesie” finds out that Shar-La comes from a world run by women, causing the “Chauvinist of Steel” respond, “If you women run your world the way you run spaceships…well, I’m glad I don’t live there!” Shar-La gets her revenge by turning His “Super-Hardness” into the “Curvaceous Crimebuster”. Ed writes, “As he proceeds through the air, Superboy looks down to admire his studly reflection in the waters of a pond. Shocked to discover that the image in the water has shoulder length hair, breasts, and ‘child-bearing’ hips (and realizing that it’s not drag night at the Smallville Tearoom), the Transgendered Titan thinks woefully: ‘Omigosh! I’ve been changed into a…a girl!’ (The editor left out the panel in which Kallete peeks into her trunks and exclaims: ‘Ulp! Where’s Li’l Kal?!!!’)”.

IMPOSSIBLY CONVOLUTED PLOTS AND/OR A LOOK UP MARY MARVEL’S SKIRT: In his review of Superman vs. Shazam Treasury edition from 1978, Rich Thigpen attempts to wrangle and untangle an incredibly numbskull plot involving the villain Karmang, who wants to restore his long-dead peoples to life by “colliding the parallel worlds of Earth-1 (home of Superman) and Earth-S (home of Captain Marvel) and collecting the energy unleashed by the explosion.” Rich wonders, “Why he (Karmang) picked these particular two Earths instead of, say, Earths 13 and 14 (which are probably home to no super-heroes of note), he doesn’t say. However, he does realize that by picking these particular worlds, he’ll need to distract their most powerful champions, lest they discover and thwart his scheme.” Which Karmang does, causing Superman and Captain Marvel to mindlessly fight one another (oh, all that lusty testosterone!), causing Supergirl and Mary Marvel to save the day, though all of this seems a ploy to allow Rich Buckler to obsessively draw rear-ends and panty shots of not only the girls but the boys as well. Not that Supergirl’s granny bottoms did anything for me, but I can’t speak for our diverse and sexually varied audience.

POOR WRITING & SCRIPT, I.E. THE CURSE OF LIEFELD: Kyle Minor digs up an excellent example of this with a review of Rob Liefeld’s Awaken the Thunder (Avengers Vol. 2 #1). In the style of “Harper’s Index”, Kyle chronicles the, to be kind, inconsistencies in Rob’s writing and drawing. Not that Rob Liefeld has a problem keeping costumes and other things consistent from page to page—no—though Kyle documents how the number of swords Hawkeye is carrying on his back does seem to shift on every page from 0 to 2 to 1 to 0 to 1 to 0 to 2 to 4 to 1 to 1, noting that in the end, Hawkeye never does use a sword at all. Nor does Rob Liefeld have a problem with anatomy and proportion—definitely not—though Kyle does note that in a glitzy two-page spread of Thor, that Thor’s legs take up 60 percent of the page and that on another page, the Enchantress’s legs take up 67 percent of the page. I guess it’s better than Michael Turner’s Supergirl whose torso takes up 67 percent of each panel she appears in.

ACCESSORIES: Sometimes it’s all about the accessories. As detailed by Peter Di Maso in his review of “The Bat Woman” from a 1956 issue of Detective Comics, Bat Woman “carries her crime-fighting tools in a red shoulder bag (one remarkably like a Birken Bag). In her earliest foray into the Gotham underworld, she thwarts some gangsters with an oversized powder-puff. Once she has disabled her victims, she converts her charm bracelets into handcuffs. The next night, she distracts a would-be diamond thief by blinding him with her compact mirror. She finally defeats him with her perfume flask full of tear gas no. 51.” Peter then wonders, “Has Kathy Kane transformed these objects woman typically use to attract men into dangerous tools to subjugate them? Is she terribly clever or just a bubblehead? Have the tools of surface beauty and seduction been transformed into dangerous weapons by Hamilton, Kathy Kane or post-feminist hindsight? For me, it's all about the accessories. The Bat Woman helps me channel my inner drag queen. More importantly, for this shallow fanboy, is that she is a beacon of light and uncomplicated altruism in the otherwise dark, mean, depressing and madness-tinged world of Gotham's crime fighting scene. Don't give me mind-wiping (i.e. mind-sapping) realism. Give me color and magic.”

End of Part I: Next week, we’ll continue this trip down Lois…er Lucy…er, Memory Lane, exploring more reasons why our writers pick the comics they do (gay subtext, gay subtext and more gay subtext, ‘natch). See you next week, Kiddies.

David Stanley, Publications Editor of Prism Comics, spent most of his formative years in Japan before settling in Southern California (though he’s recently relocated to the Big Apple). After graduating from UCLA film school, David turned to theatre, writing "Delos," "The Outing Game" and "AIDS! The Musical," and is currently preparing the novel "Summer in Mykonos."

Reviews Copyright © 2004, 2005 & 2006 Scott Anderson, Edward Beekman-Myers, Peter Di Maso, Tim Fish, Terrance Griep, Kyle Minor, Ed Natcher, David Stanley, and Rich Thigpen. Images and characters copyright © 1973 DC Comics & Marvel Comics.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).