On April 5, 2014, at the annual MoCCA Arts Fest, I had the distinct pleasure of moderating a panel of queer comics artists, featuring Howard Cruse, Edie Fake, Justin Hall, and L. Nichols.
With each artist meditating on their own work and experience, the conversation ranged widely, from the past to the present day, from the fantastical to the mundane, from the visible to the obscured. The video from the panel is now available through the Society of Illustrators’ YouTube channel.
The panel description that appeared in the program is as follows:
“As long as there have been comics there have been queer cartoonists. Comics that authentically engaged queer experience in America emerged in the radical underground comix milieu of the 1960s and ’70s, fueled by the social liberation movements of the era. Comics’ status in American culture echoes queer experience: once marginalized, now accepted, but still contested—while some of the most acclaimed comics of the day speak to and from queer experience. Howard Cruse, Edie Fake, Justin Hall and L. Nichols will consider the historical and contemporary intersections of queer experience and comics with moderator Margaret Galvan (The Graduate Center, City University of New York).”