Queer Read: No Straight Lines edited by Justin Hall

No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics

edited by Justin Hall

5 Faerie Points

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 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.

Bracken Library Book: Geography Club by Brent Hartinger

Geography Club

by Brent Hartinger

5 faerie points

Growing up in a small community as a gay male there were often times I had wished that there was literature that would have helped me to see that I wasn't alone. Now as I get a bit older I see that they are actually publishing such novels that showcase that there are gay people in high school. This makes my heart very happy since there is a growing epidemic of LGBT suicides in our country due to bullying. These books can help these children to feel that they are not along in their journey. It can give them great power within themselves, even when they are unable to tell anyone else. 

This book is about a group of kids at a high school that form a "geography club" which is actually an undercover gay-straight alliance. They think because it is a geography club that no one will want to join up. I mean come on if you remember high school geography was sooooooo not cool. Well that is what they are banking on. The book is believable in the fact that characters run the gamut of popularity and incidences within. Hartinger appears to have been trying to give an accurate portrayal of the high school experience and in my opinion he does a rather good job. He has characters that act out of character with a bit of popularity (what kid with even a hint of unpopularity didn't act weird when someone popular suddenly talked to them or they were put in a situation where they were not treated like crap by them?) Hartinger pays proper respect to those boundaries of the high school experience where you are who you sit with. 

If you are uncomfortable reading most LGBT fiction because most of it contains graphic sex then this would be the book for you. There is a few mentions of kissing, but for the most part this is just a nice book about friends, the high school experience, and love. It shows what is possible when someone in the LGBT community thinks outside of the stereotypical book of what this community will purchase. There is a power in providing something to a wider audience because it shows that there are multiple types in this one community, but so much of the literature for LGBT has to have some guy standing in his boxer briefs on the cover. You will have a couple of scenes of boxer briefs, but it is only in the appropriate places in this book which is contained with the pages and in the locker room where it should be expected. I recommend taking the time to read this book and sharing it with others that want to understand that not everyone in the LGBT Community fits into a box or a stereotype.