Author: Joe Corallo

Joe Corallo: Diversity — People, and Content

Marvel MysteryIn addition to being really into comics, I’m also really into history. I like to know where things came from and how they were made. This fact about myself has resulted in my reading of quite a few comics from the Golden and Silver Ages. Nearly all were reprints, but comics of those ages none the less. Although some of the comics then may not offer us the kinds of lessons in diversity and inclusion I’m normally advocating for, they actually do give us a valuable lesson in diversity that is lacking in mainstream comics today.

The norm for decades in comics was an anthology format. Marvel Mystery, Adventure, Action, Detective, Showcase, Journey Into Mystery, Police, Crime Does Not Pay, Eerie, Creepy, My Greatest Adventure, all of these and more would offer us up multiple stories featuring different characters in each. The first issue of Marvel Comics featured the Human Torch, the Angel (not that Angel), Sub-Mariner (yes, that Sub-Mariner), Masked Raider, a short story titled “Burning Rubber” and Ka-Zar. Yes, it wasn’t the standard 20-22 pages we see in most comics, it was 64 pages. The point being that you could have a single issue with many characters and stories. One title being the feature, with the highest page count, and the other stories being back ups.

Action ComicsAs the years went by, anthology style comics at the big two were either getting canned, or morphing into books about one hero or team. My Greatest Adventure turned into Doom Patrol, Action into another Superman comic, Detective another Batman comic, Journey Into Mystery a Thor comic, and so forth. DC in particular tried to carry on with that tradition longer, having books like Legion of Superheroes have a feature story with a large portion of the team followed by a shorter back up with only one or two members to help us all get to know them better. Eventually, these efforts more or less faded away. Occasionally, like in Action Comics, Detective Comics or Justice League they’d have some sort of back up, but it was just furthering the feature story and not really it’s own thing.

Police ComicsDC did try bringing back more anthologies with Adventures of Superman, Legends of the Dark Knight, Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman, but all of those only featured the character in the title. Though those weren’t a bad idea, I do think it misses a key point of the older anthologies; to help introduce new characters to a market that might otherwise not pick up a book featuring one of those characters.

Both Marvel and DC have hundreds of characters at their disposal. The market only allows a certain amount of comics hitting the shelves at once while still being able to sell X amount of them all. Maybe instead of testing out different solo titles, they could try more anthology style comics.

Wouldn’t it be great is characters like Batman got more people reading Batwing and Batwoman because they were in the same book? What if you alternated who had the feature story, so maybe Batwoman would be the feature for a few months, but that Batman story in there helped keep enough readers on the title who otherwise wouldn’t be and kept the title afloat? What if we used a format like that to expose readers who otherwise wouldn’t go out of their way to read a comic with racial or religious minority characters, or LGBTQ characters in it?

DC editors recently decided they needed to stop “batgirling” and get back to “meat and potatoes.” That kind of talk usually ends up meaning going back to a less diverse time in comics. I get worried when I see Marvel or DC seemingly spread themselves too thin in certain areas. For example, as I mentioned last week, DC now has Harley Quinn, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy, three white bisexual women as leads in their own solo titles. That won’t last forever. Maybe when that starts to change, a Gotham City Sirens book featuring all of them would be easier to maintain.

I think if comics are going to be serious about diversity, they have to do more than just cater to the readers of the different communities. Preaching to the choir is one thing, and it is important, but it’s not everything. We need to get more people outside of those communities to be exposed to them, and understand them better. It’s an important and necessary component in making comics a more diverse place and assuring that it won’t just end up being a fad.

Besides, this feeds into nostalgia, and what comic book reader in their right mind doesn’t love that?

Joe Corallo: Comics and Bi-erasure

Angela_Queen_of_HelAs promised in my last column, this week is about bi-erasure in comics. It’s come up too often as of late and deserves its own column rather than being crammed into an already dense essay on critiques of Iceman’s coming out. It’s a problem that extends beyond the comics themselves, and has reached the TV adaptations as well.

Before diving in, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page. Bi-erasure is varying levels of denying bisexuality truly exists, whether intentional or not. In comics, this manifests itself in rewriting bisexual characters as being straight or gay, having characters tell other characters they’re definitely just gay and not bisexual despite many decades being written as straight and refusing to even entertain the idea that maybe that character would be bi, using shapeshifters to skirt around the issue of bisexuality, and that’s just a few general examples.

Marvel has recently given us two examples: Hercules and Angela. Hercules, a historically bisexual demigod, will definitively be straight according to editor-in-chief Axel Alonso. He did address that Hercules was in a relationship with James Howlett in X-Treme X-Men at one point, but that was outside the main universe and doesn’t count.

With Angela, despite her being intimate with Sera in the first issue of Angela: Queen of Hel, Axel makes it a point that he doesn’t want to put any labels on these characters to let the readers decide. Angela’s actions with Sera make it clear to the reader that she is bisexual, pansexual, or possibly a lesbian. Sera herself is even considered a trans character at Marvel, as she was assigned male at birth. Her being an Angel of the tenth realm and not someone of earth makes me a little hesitant to consider her Marvel’s first trans superhero. Axel saying that Hercules is definitively straight, then saying with Angela he doesn’t want to put labels on these things within a couple of months of each other will make just about anyone scratch their head in wonder.

On a positive note, the director of the Deadpool movie has said that Deadpool will be depicted as openly pansexual. I’m cautiously optimistic about this. It could be great, or it could be using Deadpool’s pansexuality to make lazy homophobic jokes where the entire joke is it’s funny because he’s hitting on a guy! We’ll have to wait and see.

Over at DC, they’ve made some very positive strives towards bisexual representation. They’ll have four ongoing series with a bisexual lead: Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, and Constantine: Hellblazer. Granted, all but Constantine are very recent revelations, but this is a great step forward. All the characters are fairly well known to general audiences, have had some suggestions in the past of their bisexuality, and now it’s just been confirmed. And with Constantine, since the latest reboot, his bisexuality has been more prevalent than ever.

On a negative note, one of the larger missteps in bi representation lately was NBC’s decision to make Constantine straight for their TV adaptation. From NBC’s perspective, Constantine’s bisexuality was rarely delved into in the comic, that it wasn’t important for the adaptation. This is probably one of the best/worst examples of bi-erasure as of late. Unlike Axel Alonso, the excuse of “That’s a different version of the character!” isn’t even viable here. It was NBC flat out stating they were perfectly aware of the character’s bisexuality, but it wasn’t important enough so it got nixed. That might not have been a factor in the show getting cancelled, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t something in all that happening that wasn’t at least kind of satisfying to see.

It’s easy to see how bi-erasure comes about. We live in a society where the end goal for most people is to find a partner to maintain a monogamous relationship with. When someone is coupled off in a monogamous relationship, others view you as being actively straight or gay. If you aren’t perceived as being actively with both men and women, it’s easier for people to assume you’re just one or the other, regardless of what you tell them.

Part of that also comes from the antiquated idea that gays and lesbians used the label of bisexual as a transitioning term, being unsure or afraid to commit to the labels of gay or lesbian. When I was a teenager I didn’t come out as gay at first, I came out to a few people as bi before identifying as gay. And to be entirely honest with you, bisexual, pansexual, or queer are probably more accurate labels for myself, despite being far on one end of that spectrum. Perhaps I’ve been unintentionally adding to bi-erasure. It’s something for me to think about. In the meantime, I’ve decided to update my bio here to queer rather than gay.

With more openly bi leads in comic books at the big two, we are starting to combat bi-erasure. However, it’s still rampant throughout comics because of the mentalities of some of the people working on them, even though it’s usually unintentional. If we’re going to push for an end of bi-erasure, we need to support books with openly bi leads, let them know about other bi characters we’d like to see more of, that we want more representation, and make our voices heard every single time the comic industry gets it wrong.

Joe Corallo: Breaking the Iceman

uncanny x-men 600 iceman

I’ve only been writing this column for a month now, and if you’ve been reading you might have guessed that the next opportunity I’d have I’d write about Iceman coming out in Uncanny X-Men #600. Well, congratulations! You were right. I’ll try to be less predictable in the future, but I make no promises.

As you may have heard, last week the present day Iceman came out to his past self, thus confirming that Iceman is gay in both past and present. This move has gotten a great deal of praise, with many highlighting that this now makes him the highest profile gay superhero in comics. Though I’m a big fan of the X-Men in addition to being gay, I honestly did not care much for how Iceman coming out was handled.

Now, before anyone reading this starts either rolling their eyes thinking I’m gearing up for a rant on how Brian Bendis and Axel Alonso must be homophobes or don’t understand diversity for not handling this how I would have liked, or are gearing up to rally with me on that point, I’m going to stop you there. Bendis himself is Jewish, and two of his three daughters are adopted, one African-American and the other Ethiopian. He co-created Miles Morales, the half African-American, half Hispanic Spider-Man that has since become a major hit at Marvel. Axel Alonso himself was editor on Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Force/X-Statix run that introduced three queer X characters. The issue I have here is not personal and I acknowledge that they have made great decisions regarding diversity in the past. It’s about the handling of Iceman’s coming out and how that affects LGBTQ representation at Marvel. Now let’s get into it.

First off, Jean Grey is here for seemingly little reason as past Iceman has his talk with present Iceman. She was my and many other people’s point of contention when this was first brought up in All New X-Men #40, when she outed him. Some people don’t feel that she outed him, but having read it, that’s the conclusion I came to myself. Telling someone what their sexuality is when they’re questioning it can be damaging. I know when I was a teenager and had people in my life telling me I wasn’t gay, that it did hurt me and took time to get over. When Jean did this, it took away from Iceman’s agency. Rather than a coming out story, we got a “Jean told us we’re gay, so we are now,” story, and that’s significantly less compelling. I wish I had the time to go into how troubling the bi-erasure was in this story as well, but I’ll talk about bi-erasure in mainstream comics next week.

Second, starting with the “You’re going to be a mutant and gay. Wow,” line that present Iceman says to past Iceman, and going into how he put all of his effort into the X-Men over his own happiness, I was just completely taken aback. This made no sense at all.

How can present Iceman talk about putting all his effort into the team when he has never led the X-Men, and he left the team to go to college for a bit, and he had a fairly long relationship with Opal Tanaka that he put his all into, going as far as heading to Japan with Jean Grey (funny, right?) to save her from Cyber Samurai, and he tried to ruin Polaris’ wedding to Havok because he was still into her, and has seen several other X-Men over the years come out around him even as mutant numbers dwindled… and that’s just to name a few things. Not to mention how Cyclops, Storm, Professor X, even Magneto all made time for their own happiness and had a much more important role in the world than Iceman ever did. It would be one thing if this was because present Iceman was being selfish, but he’s making it out like he stayed in the closet because he’s selfless, and that doesn’t quite hold up here.

Building on that point, Iceman being a blonde hair, blue eyed, young, white, attractive, able-bodied, cisgender man with a six-pack complaining about how hard it is to come out was disappointing. Look, everyone has problems and hardships, even young attractive white guys, and I understand and acknowledge that. However, this is a fictional world where Iceman has been on life and death missions, gone through space, time, fought aliens, vampires, deities… and coming out was harder than all of that?

If this was the 80s, I’d totally get that. Even the 90s. It’s 2015, and that coupled with living in such a fantastical world makes this too hard for me to swallow. Not to mention how many of his teammates and fellow mutants are not nearly as privileged as he is. I’d dare even say that Nightcrawler and Beast might have a harder time being straight than Iceman would have being gay.

Finally, on the last page of this scene young Iceman asks present Iceman if he thinks Angel is hot and they agree and have a good time about it. If you’re going to make the next LGBTQ X-Men character a young, attractive, blonde hair, blue eyed, able-bodied, cisgender white man with a six pack, can we at very least have him talk about being attracted to someone who isn’t also all of those things? It just feeds into so many of the negatives in the LGBTQ community that are trying to be addressed. It was a way to wrap up the scene that was clearly intended to be sweet that left me feeling sour.

I’m not trying to be ungrateful about having more representation in mainstream comics. However, we should be holding ourselves to a higher standard and demand more, better, and thoroughly thought out LGBTQ representation.

I do want to end on a positive note. Bendis has updated Iceman in a way that will give future writers something new to explore with the character and I’m thankful to him for that, and despite how I may have come across, I am eager to see what other writers will do with him. Hopefully an LGBTQ creator or an ally like Peter David or Kieron Gillen who handle queer characters respectfully will get to tackle him, and maybe I’ll soon be reading the greatest Iceman story ever told.

Joe Corallo: Batgirl and that Wedding

Batgirl 45

As many of you may know, last week was the release of Batgirl #45, the issue in which Barbara’s former roommate/good friend Alysia Yeoh gets married to her lover, Jo. The resulting wedding was the first time in mainstream comics that a transgender woman got married. Googling this will lead you to a slew of articles and blog posts covering the groundbreaking nature of this issue. How important is this event though, and will this have any impact on mainstream comics? I picked up a copy so I could try to figure that out.

Like many a comic book wedding before it, it’s a filler issue. It’s about Batgirl at this wedding. This is an important point. It’s about Batgirl. It’s not primarily about Alysia and Jo. They’re the B plot of the issue. With the way the wedding has been hyped this past week, the cover for this issue, and thinking back not too long ago to Northstar’s wedding in Astonishing X-Men #51, it’d be easy to see how one might think that Alysia and Jo would be in the A plot. So if you haven’t read it yet and that’s what you were anticipating, I hope I helped you to avoid going into it with that mindset.

The fact that they weren’t the A plot shouldn’t be a bad thing. Yes, it would be great for diversity in comics if they were. However, the book is still about Batgirl, and not Alysia. Batgirl #45 is a twenty-page story. Six of those pages feature Alysia, and she has six word balloons throughout the comic. Her partner, Jo, is featured on three of those pages and has one line of dialogue, which is “And I love you.” Batgirl has ten times the dialogue that Alysia has, and the story is mostly about Batgirl and her relationships with Luke Fox and Grayson with the wedding as a backdrop.

None of that takes away from the fact that Alysia Yeoh is a long overdue representation in comics, and that she had an important moment in her life that Barbara got to be a part of. Current trans representation in mainstream comics is nearly nonexistent outside of Alysia. We do need trans representation outside of the heroes themselves as part of having a world more reflective of our own, and Alysia has been a step towards that. It’s not ideal, but this is where we are.

I encourage everyone who wants to see more and better representation to pick up this book if they haven’t yet at their LCS. If it’s sold out, ask them about ordering more. If we can show that trans representation can help sell comics, we will get more of it. That’s just how it works.

At the end of the day, both DC and Marvel, and nearly every other comics publisher for that matter, is a business first and foremost. They may be willing to occasionally take a risk, but when all is said and done they need books that sell. We could have a discussion about how we don’t necessarily know some of the sales potential more trans representation could have over time, and how maybe expanding that quicker could lead to great things for the publishers and the readers, but if we don’t buy and support the offerings they’re already trying to give us, than they’ll just stop where they are and potentially take years to try again.

This does not mean you can’t also demand more and demand better. Social media alone isn’t going to necessarily bring about the kind of characters and story lines you want, but it does have power. Earlier in this Batgirl run, as I mentioned last week, the same team that worked on the first trans wedding in comics wrote an issue with a story and dialogue that was considered transphobic. It was public outcry through social media that got us an apology and changes in the reprints of that issue.

People and companies can learn and adapt to changing demands from their customers. By both buying comics with queer characters like Batgirl and Midnighter, and speaking up through social media and other outlets available about these issues and what can be improved upon, we can assure a bright future for mainstream queer comics.

Joe Corallo: Coagula, DC’s First And Only Transgender Superhero

CoagulaLast week I met with my friend Kelsey to get a tarot reading. I brought along my copy of Rachel Pollack‘s Arthur C. Clarke award winning novel, Unquenchable Fire, to lend to her. Beyond being a novelist, Rachel Pollack is a well-published authority on tarot, a transgender woman who tackles the subject in her different works, as well as having written comics.

She wrote Doom Patrol for two years following up on Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s popular run on the series over twenty years, when it moved from DC’s main line to the Vertigo imprint. Her run built on the bizarre nature of Grant’s image while creating new characters.

The most important of which was Kate Godwin, a.k.a. Coagula, DC’s first – and to date only – transgender superhero, with the power to coagulate liquids and dissolve solids at will. Prior to joining the Doom Patrol, she tried out for the Justice League, and it’s implied that she was rejected in part for being an out transgender lesbian activist, brandishing a pin on her jacket stating, “Put a Transsexual Lesbian on the Supreme Court.”

Rachel Pollack was able to use the character of Coagula to discuss trans issues and to inform readers who were unaware of these issues as to what it means to be trans. She even crafts a brilliant moment in storytelling where a transcendent being requires the strongest example of a man and a woman, and Robotman and Coagula are the man and woman the best personify those genders, driving home the fact that a trans woman is a woman. Period.

So decades before the biggest and most active push for more diversity and representation in comics on the page and behind the scenes, DC had a trans superhero written by a trans woman. You would think that’d be a bigger deal, wouldn’t you? It would seem to fit right into what people have been clamoring for, doesn’t it?

That’s not to say that DC hasn’t created trans characters before; they just haven’t been superheroes. Wanda from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman run was trans, and has been both embraced by fans keeping it in the context of the time it came out and criticized in hindsight. Shvaughn Erin, the Legion of Super-Heroes Science Police Liaison, was trans but that has since been retconned and she’s back to being cisgender. Gail Simone put in the effort and created Alysia Yeoh, Batgirl’s transgender roommate for her New 52 run on the book, and often incorrectly sited by blogs and news sites as the first true transgender character at Marvel or DC. Unfortunately, after Gail Simone left the book, Alysia Yeoh has mostly faded into obscurity and the team that took over Batgirl afterward was quick to fumble on trans issues. They have since apologized and the issue in question has been modified to remove the transphobic dialogue in subsequent reprints.

I am not counting any characters that are magically trans, or have powers that allow them to change their genders, because that’s not a trans character and you shouldn’t count those either. Marvel has even less trans representation.

If you haven’t heard of Rachel Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol, it’s probably because it’s never been reprinted. And if you haven’t heard of Coagula, it’s for the same reason. Her stories have never been reprinted. After Rachel Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol ended, no one seemed to know what to do with the character, and she would appear just a little more before being unceremoniously killed off.

In order for me to read those stories, I used a combination of eBay and multiple comic shops to find all the issues. You should be able to find all the issues reasonably priced if you feel so inclined. It’s a fantastic run, and a worthy follow up to Morrison’s Doom Patrol. Rachel Pollack, in my opinion, is the last writer that truly understood the Doom Patrol.

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles written lately about the efforts DC has been putting in to making more diverse comics. If they’re really invested in that, why not bring back their only trans superhero and reintroduce Coagula to a new generation of readers? Or at very least just reprint Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol run? Reprinting those issues in a couple of trades or so would be a great start for DC to show that they have an interest in trans representation.

And while they’re at it, they could hire a few trans writers and artists, too. We have more openly trans writers and artists working on comics now than at any other point in the history of the medium. They’re here, they’re queer, many of them could use the opportunity to craft stories at DC or Marvel, and we could all benefit from the opportunity to read them.

Joe Corallo: Diversity Inaction – or Diversity In Action?

VirgilLike many of the contributors on ComicMix, I spent the other week at New York Comic Con. In a continuing trend, attendance keeps going up with a greater representation of the general population, and with that, more programming centered around diversity.

Diversity in comics has been an important topic to me for years. Important to the point where those panels I prioritize over all other kinds. The Internet can tell me all the Batman announcements later. This year, I made it to at least one diversity focused panel (usually two) every day of the con. And because I’m so passionate about these things, I wanted to share with you all why these panels are important to me.

First off, and probably most importantly, they are safe spaces at the con. Knowing you’ll be in an environment with people who are either like you or at least empathetic can be and often is important to an attendee. Being othered sucks. It really sucks. Just being in a place where you can listen to people talk about their struggles being an outsider, and how they’ve made it work for them anyway can really be inspiring.

Second, they’re also great places to hear from creators of different backgrounds and become knowledgeable of their work. Truthfully, the goal of nearly all panels is to get you to buy the publisher or creator’s books and merchandise. As cynical as this may sound, the reality is the only way we’re going to get more diversity in comics is to actually buy comics with diverse characters in them. Crazy, right?

I had already been picking up DC’s Midnighter, the company’s only solo superhero comic with a gay male lead, written by Steve Orlando. I wasn’t aware of his Image Comics graphic novel, Virgil. After hearing him on a panel talk about Virgil as being a blood soaked revenge story and as “queersploitation” (a reference to blaxploitation films of the 70’s) I knew I’d love it. I went down to his booth in Artists’ Alley after the panel, picked it up, and already read it. I did in fact love it, but I might not have known to get it if I didn’t go to these panels.

FInally, they are helping to change the discussion in comics. Yes, social media is doing the day to day work, but diversity panels at these cons provide an opportunity for the publishers and creators to roll out their new books that will better reflect the changing demographics of comic readers, and gauge reactions. Sunday’s Culturally Queer panel moderated by Geeks OUT‘s Joey Stern opened up a conversation about queer representation in comics between the panelists where they differed greatly on what makes for good representation. This is an important conversation to be having. There is not necessarily a uniform right way to have representation. There are certainly some uniform wrong ways, however.

The biggest example of a change in the discussion that I saw was Thursday’s BOOM! Studios panel moderated by their President of Publishing and Marketing, Filip Sablik. The panel discusses the Push Comics Forward movement, which is actively setting out to make the comic industry more diverse over the next 10 years. However, the panel was made up of all white (or white presenting) panelists, with eight men and two women. Though there was some queer representation, Filip Sablik actually addressed this at the beginning of the panel, stating that they do have more diversity in their talent pool, and it just so happened that the people able to make it to the con and who were able to attend this panel for the books they wanted to highlight were mostly white male creators. I thought this was incredible. I give BOOM! Studios credit for addressing this. I don’t think we would have seen something like this happen even last year, and that’s a testament to the publishers and creators putting themselves out there on the issues of diversity in part because of these panels and that some of them are listening to us.

If you were at New York Comic Con last week and didn’t get to any of the diversity focused panels, definitely try to at the next con you go to. Even if you’re a straight cis white guy, there are so many new and exciting stories coming from women, nonwhite, and queer creators that you might end up loving just as much as I do.

Review: Fires Above Hyperion

Fires Above HyperionI love autobio graphic novels. I love them to the point that I hope to do one of my own. Fun Home, Blankets, Persepolis, Marbles, Epileptic, Clumsy, there are far too many excellent examples to name. Keeping all this in mind, ComicMix’s own Martha Thomases suggested I read Patrick Atangan’s Fires Above Hyperion to get my thoughts on it. I did in fact read it, and I did in fact have thoughts.

Prior to holding a copy of Fires Above Hyperion I was unfamiliar with Patrick Atangan. He’s an openly gay, multiracial author who has written and drawn many graphic novels before this, including Silk Tapestry and The Yellow Jar, and you can find out more about his work at www.nbmpub.com. This particular story documents his often antagonist relationship with dating and gay culture spanning two decades.

The story is told chronologically, starting with his Junior Prom, and goes into about eight different anecdotes over the course of twenty years of men he’s been involved with. There was very little reference to what the actual years are that these stories take place, if at all. I’m not sure I realized how much of a pet peeve that is for me until I read this book. When dealing with actual events that happened in real life, I like to have an idea of when they occurred, as it is made clear that gaps do exist between stories. Though, since it is in chronological order, it does make it easy to follow, and this might just be me being nit picky.

Fires Above Hyperion comes in at ninety-six pages. With about eight anecdotes to cover, it gives very little time to delve into the one time encounters, flings, and deeper relationships that make up the story. This ends up getting frustrating for me as the reader, when one of the early anecdotes is about a six-year relationship and how that has as much precious story real estate as an anecdote about a guy Patrick goes on a date with once.

Ultimately, this makes me feel like too much of an outsider. What makes books like Blankets and Clumsy so powerful is that they shared all sorts of little details. It felt like you were going through all the emotions with the author. It’s not as personal and intimate an experience here, and not only does it take away from the story overall, it prevents the humor from landing just right. The dark humor is present, but because I feel detached from the story as I’m reading it, it doesn’t seem to work. Instead of feeling a situation is funny, I end up just feeling kind of bad for Patrick or the person he was with, depending on the particular anecdote.

There is something in this story that is important for the medium, and that’s Patrick’s perspective as a gay man that’s part Latino and part Asian. The vast majority of graphic memoirs dealing with an author who is part of the LGBT community tend to be from a white author. Although this does not take up a lot of Fires Above Hyperion, it is brought up closer to the end of the story, and for me was the most interesting part to read.

Patrick Atangan is certainly talented and was able to lay out this book in a way that was easy to read, and that’s tougher than it sounds. The art itself simple, and in this instance I would argue that it is a bit too simple. Being done digitally, I noticed throughout the book a lot of copying and pasting different illustrations into later panels, and some of the men from earlier in the books are palette swapped and reused later. That did cause confusion at a couple of points, where I was wondering why this character from earlier in the book was back, until I figured out that this was actually a new character. While I don’t think that art being done that way is inherently bad, at ninety-six pages and a price point of $14.99, I think it’s a bit much.

I can’t say I’d give this an overall recommendation.  I think it’s a flawed piece that does genuinely try to hit the mark and falls short. However, if you love graphic memoirs, and in particular if you love graphic memoirs from LGBT creators, I encourage you to give Fires Above Hyperion a read. Patrick Atangan has a unique voice and perspective in this field, and this book’s success can help usher in more graphic memoirs by more people whose voices we so desperately need to hear.

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