We are delighted to present the twelfth issue of CLOSURE Kiel Journal for Comics Research, focusing on the theme of »Queer Comics«.

The visual language of comics offers unique possibilities for representing gender and sexuality visually. Colors, shapes, and styles can be employed to depict genderfluid or non-binary characters and their experiences. Medium-specific gaps resist fixed and normative determination. At the formal level alone, comics artists can experimentally rearrange the sequencing of panels, signs, and storylines to create non-linear narrative structures that reflect diverse identities in queer narratives. While we close the gaps between panels as we read comics, these gaps remain decisively visible and present—a refusal of continuity that queer comics have taken up in order to suggest »queer temporalities« (Halberstam) outside normative conceptions of time.

Comics demand that readers actively participate in interpretation, as they must not only follow the plot but also interpret the visual information. This interactivity enables queer stories to be more subversive by using visual allusions or symbolic representations that can only be grasped through active engagement with the comic. »Phenomenology is, after all, full of queer moments, moments of disorientation« (Ahmed). Starting from this insight, the question arises: How does the media phenomenology of comics disrupt and transform our perception and interpretation of identities and relationships?

Whereas it was initially the gay community that was represented from the 1950s onward in publications by independent or self-publishers, the scene expanded through events including the Stonewall riots of 1969 (Hall 2012). Queer themes found expression in underground comix. A community of alternative lifestyles created a space in which gender roles and sexuality were questioned. Artists such as Howard Cruse (1944–2019), editor of the anthology Gay Comix, brought explicitly queer stories into focus and created space for LGBTQ+ narratives that were still taboo in mainstream comics.

Since the 2000s, webcomics and independent publishers have contributed significantly to bringing an even broader diversity of queer identities, gender roles, and stories into the world of comics. These stories are not just about showing queer characters but about establishing them as fully realized characters who take center stage and whose identity is not merely a side note. Narratives about the queer experience appeared early in the field of graphic medicine, both in activist and utoabiographical form and for targeted health education (such as Marbles by Ellen Forney 2012, Taking Turns by MK Czerwiec 2014, or Pregnant Butch by A.K. Summers 2014). In the mainstream, queer characters became increasingly visible from the late twentieth century onward, though often only as supporting characters or in metaphorical contexts. But this too is changing. One example is The Young Avengers, whose characters Wiccan, Hulkling, and America Chavez have been among Marvel‘s first prominent LGBTQ+ characters since their introduction to the universe in 2005. These comics challenge both social norms and comics conventions by making queerness visible on the page. Understanding their impact requires examining the works and the communities that surround them.

CLOSURE #12 gathers contributions that explore queer representation across different comics cultures, investigating intersections with queer characters, forms, and narratives.

Anindita Das opens the issue with a contribution on the ambivalence of strongly gendered conventions in shōjo manga. Through an intersectional, queer-feminist close reading of Nanami Mao‘s Half and Half (2008–09) and Takase Umi’s Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku (2018–21), drawing on the work of Judith Butler and others, the article traces how the two texts operate fundamentally within a system of patriarchal norms. Indeed, shōjo manga, genres typically aimed at young women or girls, have repeatedly been accused of essentializing femininity and its associated ideals of beauty and behavior, for example, by elevating romantic, heterosexual marriage to the ultimate ideal. However, especially the diachronic view of the ten years between the two publications reveals how these genre conventions can be subverted and challenged through innovative, queer character constellations, as the protagonists must assert themselves and playfully shape their identities not only within a patriarchal, often discriminatory society, but also within conventional narrative tropes. »Destabilization and Stabilization: Interrogating Shōjo Manga« understands this mediaand genre-specific potential as a ›shōjo gaze‹ and develops a proposal for its critical understanding.

Keith Friedlander then looks at a number of Marvel comics released between 1993 and 1997 starring the anti-hero Venom. He demonstrates how the varying depictions from rotating creative teams open the character up to a diversity of interpretations that disrupt his traditional associations with a heteronormative masculinity, including readings through feminist, queer, and deconstructionist lenses. The diverse depictions of Venom’s hypermasculine body indeed tap into a number of artistic styles, from the highly idealized to the severely grotesque. Drawing upon critical explorations of superhero bodies and sexuality, the article thus reframes Venom’s recent adoption by queer fandom – the 2018 Venom movie resulted in a large queer fanbase, as well as a flood of fan art and fan fiction celebrating ›Symbrock‹, the romantic shipping of Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote – as part of a longer history of the character’s potential for disrupting heteronormative performances of masculinity.

In their contribution, Devon Harvey analyzes the comic series ALTERS by Paul Jenkins and Leila Leiz, which centers on a trans* superheroine named Chalice. By connecting Rosemary Jackson’s fantasy theory with Scott McCloud’s reflections on the formal structure of comics, Harvey demonstrates how mirrors—both as a narrative element and as panel structure—function as liminal spaces. In these threshold spaces, the protagonist can explore her trans* identity and her superhero identity and navigate between multiple realities. This »love affair with mirrors« opens up new perspectives on trans* narratives and illustrates how the medium of comics, through its formal properties, is particularly suited to representing the complexity of trans* experiences.

In her article, Cassia Hayward-Fitch examines Howard Cruse’s comic strip Wendel, published in the gay magazine The Advocate between 1983 and 1989, as an example of serialized domestic fiction in the comics medium. Hayward-Fitch argues that Wendel utilized its serial structure to depict a queer quotidian, ›Gaily Life,‹ that countered the sensationalization of gay relationships by emphasizing queerness as a communal identity. The article demonstrates how two forms of seriality can be employed to this effect: internal seriality creates a ›Queer Space‹ through panel repetitions-with-adifference, while external seriality enacts ›Queer Time‹ in Halberstam’s sense by refusing narrative closure and celebrating a persistent present moment. Hayward-Fitch further contextualizes Wendel as a response to the AIDS crisis, drawing on archived correspondence between Cruse and his editor to show how the series celebrated non-normative family structures and depicted queer community as a form of everyday activism.

Patrizia Huber examines the autographic comic Homo Line (2020) by Finland-Swedish artist Edith Hammar, in which a queer protagonist commutes by ferry between Helsinki and Stockholm. Huber reads the ferry as a multilayered motif: an allegory of uprooted queer existence, a principle organizing the narrative, and an intervention into the material book form. Drawing on Karen Barad’s concept of trans*materiality, they develop the notion of trans*material narration to describe how content, formal devices, and mediality interlock in Homo Line, destabilizing linear conceptions of identity, time, and place. Metaleptic doublings, the interweaving of photography and drawing, and the haptic design of the book produce a poetics of permanent transit that productively redirects the protagonist’s chronic homesickness instead of resolving it.

In his essay, David Liebenthal primarily examines the autobiographical works of transmasculine and nonbinary artist N.D. Stevenson, including The Fire Never Goes Out and I‘m Fine I‘m Fine Just Understand. Liebenthal explores how the theme of queer corporeality is addressed in these works. In detail, the article focuses on the motifs of transformation, multiplication, and injury, highlighting the comparability of the autobiographical depiction of bodies in the comic to representations in trans* vlogs on YouTube. However, the comics deliberately avoid a chronological presentation of the surgical procedures Stevenson undergoes, instead emphasizing fluid gender positioning itself through visual metaphors.

Guilherme »Smee« Sfredo Miorando analyzes the character of Connor Hawke, also known as Green Arrow, from the DC Comics universe from an intersectional perspective. Miorando reflects on the character as an archer shaped by Zen religion, as a mixed-race superhero, and as an asexual character. He argues that the character‘s identity is both stereotypical and ambiguous, which is explored through three different issues spanning three decades (the 1990s, 2000s, and 2020s). The analysis focuses on the initially paradoxical ›breaks‹ in the character‘s adherence to stereotypes, which, however, correspond to the concept of ›queer‹ as a destabilizing term, as well as on the metaphors used in the comics to represent Connor‘s identity.

Marina Rauchenbacher analyzes Tina Brenneisen‘s comic Oblomowa (2024), which adapts Ivan Goncharov‘s novel Oblomov and depicts the protagonist as a woman named Ilona in a contemporary city. The comic is characterized by its largely abandoning conventional panel structures and instead staging space and time theatrically, with the bed functioning as the central object and site of action. Rauchenbacher argues that comics can be understood as formally queer, since through their medium-specific properties—such as the connection of sequentiality and simultaneity, repetition and ellipsis—they undermine linear and binary concepts. This formal queerness makes it possible to deconstruct chrononormative conceptions of time that are determined by heteronormative and capitalist logics, and instead develop alternative, anarchic designs of time and space. Brenneisen‘s work with the »moving stage« thus exemplarily demonstrates how the medium of comics can offer counter-designs to hierarchical, patriarchal, and capitalist concepts through its formal strategies.

In his article, Janek Scholz traces the development of queer and transgender comics in Brazil and argues that the works of Lino Arruda and Kael Vitorelo represent a turning point in the Brazilian comics landscape. Beginning with a historical overview of early gay and lesbian publications such as Lampião da Esquina (1978–1981) and Adão Iturrusgarai‘s Rocky & Hudson (1987), Scholz critically reflects on the fact that queer characters were long predominantly depicted by creators outside the communities they portrayed. The growing presence of transgender comics creators since the 2010s, facilitated by digital publishing platforms, fundamentally changed this dynamic. Scholz demonstrates that Arruda and Vitorelo give voice to marginalized perspectives within queer communities, move beyond the purely autobiographical toward an autotheoretical practice in the vein of Paul Preciado, and develop a visual language that deliberately subverts established representational conventions.

In this interview with artist, illustrator, and architect Bishakh Som, yashka Chavan, Felipe Espinoza Garrido, and Rita Maricocchi explore how Som‘s graphic narratives expand and transform the grammar and vocabulary of the comics narrative form. The unique expressive possibilities of comics in combination with language are, for Som, an intimate and powerful way to communicate and illustrate complex inner worlds. Som‘s depictions also reflect themes of queer South Asian experiences, memory culture, and lived South Asian diasporic realities, drawing on her own biography. This conversation expands the consideration of comics as a queer form beyond the Anglo-American canon to include queer South Asian experiences and confidently reflects on the archives and cultural references that Som draws on in her artistic practice.

In this artistic research, Celestine Kronberger investigates how comics can be used as a visual medium to explore and make visible trans*subjectivity and embodiment. Kronberger brings together Queer Theory and Psychoanalysis in a dialectical approach to understand how subjectivity and bodily perception are shaped by unconscious processes and social norms within hetero-patriarchal structures. The fragmentation inherent to the medium of comics through panels, gutters, and the tension between text and image serves not only as a visual tool for explaining theoretical concepts, but itself becomes an analytical instrument.

Noëlle Kröger was born in Hamburg 1997 and completed his Illustration BA and MA at the University of Applied Sciences (HAW) Hamburg. His stories usually revolve around gender, false dichotomies and cultural norms. Often animals play a role. Noëlle is a member of the Comic Geheimclub (secret comic club) and part of the Comicfestival Hamburg team. Krögers latest publication Meute (2024) explores through the depiction of werewolves themes of diversity, genderfluidity and –complexity while breaking with the dichotomy of being werewolf or human. The cover of this issue of CLOSURE is also inspired by the complexity of this theme. We would like to thank Noëlle Kröger for visualizing our main topic.

We would like to thank all authors, reviewers, and our cover artist who made this issue possible, as well as our readers who support CLOSURE.

Kiel, February 2026
CLOSURE-Team

 

Bibliography

• Ahmed, Sara: Queer Phenomenology. Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
• Cruse, Howard (ed.): Gay Comix. No. 1–4. Princeton, WI: Kitchen Sink Press, 1980–1983.
• Czerwiec, MK: Taking Turns. Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021 [2017].
• Forney, Ellen: Marbles. Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me. A Graphic Memoir. New York: Gotham Books, 2012.
• Gillen, Kieron (W), Jamie McKelvie (P), Mike Norton (P) and Matthew Wilson (C): Young Avengers. The Complete Collection. New York: Marvel, 2020.
• Halberstam, Jack: In a Queer Time and Place. Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York/London: New York University Press, 2005.
• Hall, Justin: No Straight Lines: Introduction. In: No Straight Lines. Four Decades of Queer Comics. Ed. Justin Hall. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2012, n. pag.
• Heinberg, Allan (W) and Jim Cheung (P): Young Avengers. Vol. 1. New York: Marvel, 2005–2006.
• Summers, A. K.: Pregnant Butch. Nine Long Months Spent in Drag. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2014.

List of Figures

• Figure 1: Noëlle Kröger, Cover CLOSURE #12.