When Gay Comix debuted in 1980, it cracked open a door that had barely existed. Created by Howard Cruse and published by Kitchen Sink Press, the anthology gave queer artists a place to tell their own stories — funny, erotic, political, tender, absurd — at a time when LGBTQ lives were still largely invisible or caricatured in mainstream media.
Across its run through the 1980s and early ’90s, Gay Comix featured an all-star lineup of underground talent and became a vital record of queer life before respectability politics, before corporate Pride, before “representation” was a talking point. These were comics drawn from lived experience: sex, love, fear, activism, humor, daily life — all rendered with honesty and wit.
