For the gay comic geeks on these lists - I can't be the only one around. First, there's a wonderful bit of news. Alison Bechdel's new graphic novel is out in May. For anyone who's read and loved her Dykes to Watch Out For series, and then read Fun Home, her truly remarkable graphic novel about her father, who was a closeted gay man, its great to hear that she's now coming out with a new book on her mother. This will, I guess, look at that question of how the wives of gay men deal with the knowledge of their husband's sexuality. The New Yorker has a profile of Bechdel (with previews of the new book!) but sadly its subscriber only. (All the more reason to get a New Yorker subscription! Its not that expensive, especially if you get it on your IPad, and the New Yorker IPad app is great). The news about Kevin, the gay character in the Archies comics has been around for a while, and so has the even better news that he wasn't just a one-off appearance, but a character who was given story arcs of his own, including running for School President, and also joining the army and getting married to his boyfriend (in the new spin-off series which looks at the Archies characters as adults). Now this article in Slate looks at how the inclusion of Kevin was part of a deliberate repositioning of the series in a progressive context. Its really quite remarkable, especially given that the basic home and family friendly nature of the series hasn't changed: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/archie_comics_introduces_gay_marriage_and_occupy_protest_movements_.html My only regret is that the Kevin comics don't seem to be showing up in India. I'm not sure why this is. When the Kevin character launched I had spoken to Om Arora, who distributes them in India, and who's one of the most important distributors for Archies in the world, and he seemed to think it was a good development. But maybe he feels these comics won't be appropriate in India, or maybe the cycle with the Indian comics is way behind the US one, or maybe the Kevin comics were special limited US editions. Don't know, need to check this out.
