Michael A. Johnson

Department of French & Italian 

University of Texas at Austin

Estados Unidos

Comics as a cultural form we associate largely with adolescent heterosexual male fantasy. Although not explicitly sexual, the major comic book genres, (fantasy, sci-fi, super hero, western) all operate within a highly erotic signifying economy –– one in which narrative content and visual content are often in tension with one another. One need only think of the shame associated, at least in the US, with reading comic books, consumed usually in the privacy of one’s bedroom. 

Comic book shame would seem to derive from the fact that comics allow displaced expression of sexual desire at an age when it is not yet socially acceptable to be “sexual” in the usual ways. In other words, it is a fundamentally sublimatory expression. In this sense, comics have always been queer. 

This study looks at more “evolved” forms of lesbian and gay comics –– graphic novels, autobiocomics, the “silent” graphic narrative, produced in France and in the US during the past fifteen years –– in relationship to “comic book shame.” I argue that we should not ignore the production and consumption of the mass-market comic book (or in the French context, “l’album”) as we read and enjoy the more evolved “adult” version. In effect, adult queer comics reflect quite self-consciously on the mass-market form’s adolescent masturbatory economy. Comic book shame is perhaps what unifies an otherwise disparate field of cultural production. 

Some works considered will include: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home Maurice Vellekoop, A Heterosexual’s Guide to Gay Cruising Kris Dresden, Every Part of You is Familiar to Me Nicholas Presl, Priape Fabrice Neaud, Journal Emmanuel Lepage, Muchacho Hélène George, Les rêveries d’Hélène George

About Michael A. Johnson