Letters, Queer and Women’s Comix, and Making Community

Abstract

This article charts the role of underground women’s and queer comics in the formation of local communities and liberation movements. It moves beyond an analysis of the comics themselves, considering the role that correspondence—between fans and editors, between artists and editors, between editors and publishers, between fans and artists—plays in crafting community through critical discourse, practical discussion, and commerce. It explores the tension between radical, sometimes anticapitalist organizing and the need of artists, publishers, and bookstore owners to make a living while supporting and being supported by their communities. Finally, it locates a tradition in the comics community of mutual support and encouragement, an “ethics of care,” that not only provided space for different and marginalized voices but saw in the production of comics a means by which to link individual and local struggles to emergent national liberation movements.