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Posts authored by Dylan Edwards

I run the show.

Saving queer history from the memory hole

Saving queer history from the memory hole published on
LGBTQ editorial cartoons

From 2004-2005, I did a weekly editorial cartoon on queer topics of the day for the Texas Triangle (later rebranded as TXT Newsmagazine). In 2017 I put together a collected edition of these cartoons, mostly for archival purposes. I didn’t think a book of comics about topical issues from many years ago was going to sell gangbusters, and I was right. It’s by far my worst-selling book. But I still felt like it was important to keep this material available, especially as queer newspapers around the country went into decline and ceased publication altogether.

When I reread these comics as I assembled the collection, I was struck by how much Trumpism was merely a natural progression from Bushism. And so the value of archiving this material increased: a two-year timeline of proto-Trump Republicanism that was never going to be preserved in any fashion if I didn’t preserve it myself.

One thing the right-wing Christians who funded Project 2025 want to do is to label all mention of queer and trans people as pornography so it can be banned as Bad For The Children. These comics are decidedly not pornographic in any way, shape, or form, but it would still be fodder for the wave of censorship that’s coming.

There’s a push now to start archiving queer media as much as possible. This book is currently available both as a digital download and a print book. If you would like to do your own archiving, you can get it here: http://www.studiondr.com/comics/editorial-cartoons/

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – August 2024

OUT FRONT Magazine – August 2024 published on

My comic for the August issue takes a look at the follow-on from Gay Pride (June) and Gay Wrath (July) to explore the joys of Gay Sloth.

I went ahead and posted the whole comic here this time, as it was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to excerpt it. But you can also look at it in the online version if you so desire, where you will find me on page 6: https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/august-2024-all-about-aurora/

This is going to be my last comic for OFM for the foreseeable. I’ve had a good three year run with them, but the time has come for other pursuits! And so I shall pursue. Stay tuned!

Cheers

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – July 2024 – Pride Review (Aromanticism)

OUT FRONT Magazine – July 2024 – Pride Review (Aromanticism) published on

My comic for this issue gives an overview of a few of the different forms aromanticism can take. Often conflated with asexuality, aro is its own separate thing. The fact that the two often present together doesn’t mean that aromantic people are automatically asexual, though. And it’s also not true that aromantic people are incapable of feeling love, even romantic love (demi aro and gray aro, for example, fall under the general aromantic umbrella).

You can read the full comic on the OFM website, where you will find me on page 6: https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/july-2024-rainbow-reflections/

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – June 2024 – Pride

OUT FRONT Magazine – June 2024 – Pride published on

My comic for the June issue of OFM is a little autobio thing about a trans punk show I went to a couple of months ago, where I was one of the oldest members of a very queer, very trans crowd. I ponder what has changed about trans culture since I came out 24 years ago (well before many members of the audience were born).

You can read the whole comic in the digital edition here, where you will find me on page 6: https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/june-2024-queer-christmas/

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – May 2024 issue – Queering Mental Health

OUT FRONT Magazine – May 2024 issue – Queering Mental Health published on

This issue focuses on mental health, so I decided to do an explainer comic about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), which (as the comic says) is characterized by intense emotional pain due to failure or feeling rejected.

This isn’t exclusive to queer and trans people by any means, but can be exacerbated by circumstances where the sufferer can expect a disproportionate level of rejection. For example, a trans person might be rejected by their family, tossed out on the street, and be unable to find housing because the landlords don’t want to rent to a trans person. The fact that the fear of rejection is atypically extreme doesn’t always mean it doesn’t have a basis in reality!

But other brain stuff can cause or worsen RSD, like Major Depressive Disorder or ADHD, where a mood regulation imbalance makes negative experiences far more intense.

You can read the full comic on page 6 of the digital edition here: https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/may-2024-queering-mental-health/

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – April 2024 – Puff Puff

OUT FRONT Magazine – April 2024 – Puff Puff published on

The April issue of OUT FRONT Magazine has a 420 theme, so here I am remembering to post on 4-20. My comic for this issue is a drag burlesque with, shockingly, a plethora of puns. You’ll find the whole comic on page 6:
https://www.outfrontmagazine.com/april-2024-puff-puff-yaaasss/

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – March 2024 – Homo Sweet Homo

OUT FRONT Magazine – March 2024 – Homo Sweet Homo published on

New issue of OUT FRONT Magazine, new comic from me! This one is a queer take on housing, so peep the digital edition of the mag on the OUT FRONT Magazine site and choose your domicile! You’ll find the full comic on page 6.

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – February 2024 issue – Bad At Flirting [Excerpt]

OUT FRONT Magazine – February 2024 issue – Bad At Flirting [Excerpt] published on

So yeah, I made a comic about trying to parse flirting when you’re autistic! I’ve excerpted two panels here. You can find the whole comic in the February 2024 issue of OUT FRONT Magazine (I’m on page 6).

This is a complex topic that was difficult to distill into a half-page comic, for sure. An unintentional meta-joke is that this comic kinda sorta metastasized into an infographic with flow charts, but really, that’s what my brain is doing when I’m trying to figure out: Flirt or Not Flirt?

It’s not that I can’t see that a specific behavior COULD be interpreted as flirting, it’s that I can come up with five other equally plausible explanations for that behavior that are all Not Flirt. Autistic people are already punished regularly for unintentional social misfires. Flirting makes things even more complicated, because even allistic people mask their behavior when it comes to flirting, so the autist is given even less concrete information to work with. Assuming someone was flirting when they weren’t is a great way to get yourself ostracized, so in general, most autistic folks I know err on the side of assuming Not Flirt in most situations.

I will add that, for queer and trans autistic folks there’s an added layer of uncertainty to the proceedings. For better or worse, cishet people have a script that says Woman Coyly Flirts, Man Approaches. There are a lot of things awry with that model, but it DOES offer a framework that doesn’t really exist for queer people, so that’s even more guesswork to wade through.

None of this is to say that no autistic people anywhere grok flirting, or are incapable of flirting themselves. YMMV! I merely speak to my own experience, and that which I have heard expressed by autistic friends.

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – January 2024 issue – Healthcare

OUT FRONT Magazine – January 2024 issue – Healthcare published on

MY comic for this month’s issue of OFM takes a look at how easy and fun it is to access healthcare when you’re trans. A total snap! No problems involved ever! They’re just GIVING trans healthcare away! HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Anyway, yes, these are all 100% true stories of roadblocks I’ve encountered over the years, with some dramatization for comics. (What the therapist from panel 1 actually said was, “Can you maybe turn the volume down?” when I said, “I think I’m trans, and it’s like this noise that’s buzzing in my head all the time.” But he did sit like that, curled up in a ball as he told me to maybe just try not being trans. The doctor from panel 2, meanwhile, said more or less those very words verbatim, at least as far as I can remember many years later.)

You can read the whole comic in the digital edition of OFM, where you will find me on page 6.

Cheers,

Dylan

Overthinking

Overthinking published on

This was my last artistic endeavor for 2023. I’d scribbled the idea on a sticky note MONTHS ago, but , irony of ironies, couldn’t settle on how to actually execute it.

On New Year’s Eve, I decided to hell with it, I am NOT dragging that damn sticky note into 2024. So I went with a rough pencil sketch, trying to erase as little as possible. And then I threw the sticky note away. Cheers!

Dylan

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