No Straight Lines:
Four Decades of Queer Comics edited by Justin Hall
Fantagraphics
Books, 2012
No Straight Lines is no guys-in-tights escapade, but realism
writ large. Editor Justin Hall pulls from dozens of sources, both artists and writers,
portraying queer life, and the whole spectrum therein. Here readers will find
portrayals of everything from gay single men bar-hopping to people enduring
the height of the HIV/AIDs crisis of the 1980s to lesbian folk festival-goers experiencing burn-out to
transsexuals trying to make the next step. No
Straight Lines left me breathless. My only qualm was that Hall could only
sample a little of everything. The result is an eclectic buffet of form and
style and voice from the past 40 years of queer portrayal in comic books. Sometimes it is not enough of one thing.
Nonetheless, Hall proves there is an overwhelming breadth of visions out there
that have and continue to portray realism, instead of only escapism, in comics.
Please don’t misunderstand me—there’s nothing wrong with escapism and super
heroics. However, as the man said, the man being Scott McCloud, comic artist
and writer (author of Understanding
Comics and Reinventing Comics), reading super hero comics is like eating chocolate
cake. And you don’t want to eat only chocolate cake your whole life, do you?
Better to have a smorgasbord of flavours and foods. And, as it turns out,
editor Justin Hall is just the chef to introduce new foods to you.
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