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!
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).
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).
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
Without writing a whole book about it, 2023 was an extremely difficult year for me. Started the year with one type of debilitating pain, traded it for another, and landed myself in physical therapy for four months due to an injury to my drawing arm. So, while I don’t always put together a Year in Review post, I wanted to do one this year to prove to myself that I did manage to accomplish some things despite the onslaught of physical problems:
• 12 comics for 12 issues of OUT FRONT Magazine • approx 180 postcards sent to Patreon supporters • 5 new sticker designs • several art shows at Spectra Art Space including Spooky Art, TDOR popup, and Tiny Art (in addition to the merch of mine that they carry year round, mostly stickers, pins, and buttons) • a new Feeping Creatures micro zine, and a zine of my adventures at a metal show in Japan (which I have not yet added to my online store, it’s currently sitting on my desk waiting for me to get to it) • participated in a panel discussion for an Estonian queer film festival for their showing of the queer comics documentary No Straight Lines • speaking of No Straight Lines, when I was originally interviewed back in 2017(?) I had NO CLUE it would be shown on PBS, but in fact it streamed there for several months • made a soft return to comic shows; while I’m still not inclined to travel much, Denver Zine Fest, DeCAF, Queer Author Expo, and First Friday at Danny the Comic Shop all saw my (masked) face [and you can now get my comics and zines at Danny the Comic Shop, so swing by and support ‘em!]
In the end, that’s not too shabby for a year in which I was physically out of commission for a good 6 months and could barely work. I’m in a better place pain-wise, if not fully back to where I was before. Hopefully 2024 will see continued improvements, and a lot more art!
Also, in the event that you’re wondering where most of my social media activity is happening these days, I’ve taken to shitposting in my Instagram stories for whatever reason. Who knows how long that will continue to amuse me, but for now, I’m most active on IG.
My comic for this month’s issue is all about the various iterations my fashion sense has gone through over the years. You can read the whole thing in the digital edition of the magazine, where you shall find me ensconced on page 6!
