Be Gay, Do Comics by Matt Bors

Be Gay, Do Comics Reviews

• 
  destiny ♡ howling libraries

  Despite the fact that it took me way too long to finish this, it was a really enjoyable, inclusive collection of comics. I appreciated how immensely inclusive it was, covering topics all over the queer spectrum as well as discussing how many individuals are marginalized beyond their queerness (race, body presentations, place of birth, and much more), and there's such a vastness of creators involved that each piece feels genuinely unique. I strongly recommend this for anyone who enjoys queer nonfiction and comics!
• 
  Maia

  I got this book in advance of it's August release date because I am one of the contributors :) It's a wonderful collection of short pieces, most previously published on The Nib, a few of which were commissioned new for this volume. I had read probably half of them or so in the past, but the ones that stood out on this pass included Hazel Newlevant's "Queer Uprisings Before Stonewall"; "Queerness has always been part of life in the middle east" by an anonymous author; "Decolonizing Queerness in the Philippines"by Trindad Escobar; "When You're Invisible in Pop Culture" by Bianca Xunise and Sage Coffey; "The Homophobic Hysteria of the Lavender Scare" by Kazimir Lee and Dorian Alexander; "Livejournal Made Me Gay" by JB Brager; "It's all for the Breast" by Alexis Sudgen; "Witch Camp" by Melanie Gillman; "The American Revolution's Greatest Leader was Openly Gay" by Josh Trujillo and Levi Hastings; and "The Wonderfully Queer World of Moomin" by Mady G, who also illustrated the beautiful cover.
• 
  Danika at The Lesbrary

  Be Gay, Do Comics is an anthology with more than 30 contributors, all discussing some aspect of queer life. This was a refreshingly diverse and thought-provoking collection. Most anthologies in this vein that I've read have played it pretty safe: they've usually been very white, and mostly focused on gay cis men, with the overarching message being one of acceptance. Be Gay, Do Comics covers a wide range of topics from a lot of different voices, including many artists of color and trans artists, and includes comics about queer liberation and resisting assimilation.
  
  It's hard to speak about an anthology like this in a cohesive way, because they are all so different: in art style, tone, topic, and identity. Overall, I really enjoyed it. Although as always there were some comics I liked more than others, there weren't any that I felt were weak. It's a great opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different artists as well. This is one I would happily recommend. It's not focused specifically on lesbians and bi women, but there is definitely sapphic representation. I'm happy to see that queer anthologies are expanding to be a little more challenging and diverse than they were just a handful of years ago. 
  
  Full review will go up at the Lesbrary September 1st.
• 
  Maia

  I got this book in advance of it's August release date because I am one of the contributors :) It's a wonderful collection of short pieces, most previously published on The Nib, a few of which were commissioned new for this volume. I had read probably half of them or so in the past, but the ones that stood out on this pass included Hazel Newlevant's "Queer Uprisings Before Stonewall"; "Queerness has always been part of life in the middle east" by an anonymous author; "Decolonizing Queerness in the Philippines"by Trindad Escobar; "When You're Invisible in Pop Culture" by Bianca Xunise and Sage Coffey; "The Homophobic Hysteria of the Lavender Scare" by Kazimir Lee and Dorian Alexander; "Livejournal Made Me Gay" by JB Brager; "It's all for the Breast" by Alexis Sudgen; "Witch Camp" by Melanie Gillman; "The American Revolution's Greatest Leader was Openly Gay" by Josh Trujillo and Levi Hastings; and "The Wonderfully Queer World of Moomin" by Mady G, who also illustrated the beautiful cover.
• 
  Jena

  Actually 2.5/5 BUT HEAR ME OUT
  
  Be Gay, Do Comics is a collection of stories about queer experiences from queer authors/artists, ranging from covering history to everyday situations. There's a nice balance in this in terms of both art styles and storytelling, so readers are bound to find at least one comic they enjoy. I didn't have any complaints with the content of this book, and I settled on a 3/5 because like all anthology collections there were some comics I enjoyed more than others.
  
  Now, I read the physical version of this and I have to say that visually, these were some of the hardest comics to actually physically read that I've ever encountered. I think the crux of the issue is that most of (if not all) of these comics appear to be designed with digital in mind. The problem is, there's often too many panels squashed into one page in this physical version. As a result, the text on a lot of these is INCREDIBLY small. There was actually a pretty sizeable number of comics I just simply couldn't read between the small font size and brightly-colored backgrounds. I felt like my rating needed to reflect this by knocking off half a star. As great as this collection is, I can't ignore the layout issues. I should mention that I do wear glasses, so if you have perfect vision and have no difficulty at all reading small text (or own a magnifier) you may not run into those issues.
• 
  Rod Brown

  Humorous, painful, fascinating. This anthology covers a lot of ground, coming around most frequently to gender identity, especially in the autobiographical pieces. But there are histories of the Lavender Scare, Pride flag, and queer uprisings; biographies of Gad Beck, Tove Jansson, and Baron von Steuben; and oodles more about haircuts, birth control, Log Cabin Republicans, and Jussie Smollett.
  
  Stories range from one to ten pages in length, with around 40 writers/artists contributing. Unlike a lot of anthologies of this size, the subject matter is consistently interesting and the stories are consistently well done.
• 
  Bogi Takács

  Short nonfictional comics about QUILTBAG+ topics: personal narratives, educational strips, etc. I read them with interest, even though I'd already been familiar with a bunch of these from back when they'd been posted online. I personally found the comics which focused on non-Western countries the most interesting, and would have loved an entire volume on that topic, not just a handful of pieces. Maybe a next one?
  
  It was a bit sad that with all the excellent personal narratives, there was only one intersex story and it was a purely educational one with interviews (generally if you pay attention to intersex activism - and you do, right?! right?! -, you probably heard all that from the original people who made those arguments). I felt this could have been commissioned better: reach out to those activists and pair them with artists to let them tell their own stories. That could also be a whole anthology :)
  
  One of my bigger issues was that the adaptation to print was quite thoughtless. Very small text in multiple comics, details lost, low-contrast text boxes from the RGB -> CMYK conversion; overall the end result was sometimes hard to read. This brings me to my second issue, namely that with all the emphasis on intersectionality, there was very little about disability. But if there was, maybe someone, SOMEone would have said, "look, this needs to be readable in print too".
  
  I also felt that even though there were a wide range of body shapes depicted, there was surprisingly little discussion of fatness and queer fat activism.
  
  Overall this was an interesting read, when I could actually read it... On occasion I was frustrated by the points some of the authors made, but I think that's highly realistic, I disagree with fellow queer people all the time and it can get frustrating too :D
  ____
  Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
• 
  Grapie Deltaco

  A positively delightful, insightful, educational, and beautifully illustrated collection of comics exploring/depicting queer history, personal memoirs, satires, etc.
  
  It has EVERYTHING and a million different ways for members of the community to express their love for our community and admiration for our elders’ strength and perseverance.
  
  It’s a lengthy collection that explores so much and in an in-depth way too.
  
  I’m in love
  
  CW: discussions of body dysmorphia, homophobia, transphobia, internalized bigotry, hate crimes, nazism + active systemic oppression/genocide, death, grief
• 
  Grace W

  (c/p from my review on TheStoryGraph) It's hard to rate an anthology. I loved most of these but a few didn't hit with me. I think it's great to see these works collected because this is the kind of thing I would have loved to have had when I was a child growing up queer and reading comics. For the most reason I really enjoyed reading this. It also made me cry a few times SO THERE IS THAT
  
  TW for this book include: homophobia, transphobia, racism
• 
  Faith Petti

  Really fun book to read. Not only is it funny, it’s really informative and digestible to readers. Integration of historical and modern stories really help bond the ideas. Great for any LGBTQ+ friends to read. You’ll feel represented and loved in this book.
• 
  Larakaa

  Do it. 'Nuff said.
• 
  Lucca Angel

  I loved this! Fun styles, amazing stories, and great representation, of course. My only complaints are some stories being too text-heavy, along with a lot of the stories having very small text, making it really hard to understand.
  I’d recommend to any queer person who loves graphic novels!
• 
  Alexia

  Ok i had to DNF this because it was sooo bad. Some of these comics are shockingly out of touch: someone who claims to be a feminist but sees her ivf embryos as people; a historical strip abt a gay american revolutionary leader; an asexual guy complaining about how ~overly sexual gay male culture is; the progenitor of the “people shove things in their vagina for pleasure?!” asexual comic; multiple strips claiming certain countries only became homophobic after colonization; plenty of misogyny, etc.
  The gag strips are mostly unfunny. Some of the historical comics and the ones abt other countries are decent but some of them are quite dry.
  Ive come to realize that the queer memoir format is simply not that interesting. It’s a vehicle for excessive navel-gazing, mostly about how other “queer” people make them feel “not queer enough” usually based on their appearance. What happened to not caring abt what other people think about you? Have we run out of actual life struggles so we can only write about how having an undercut or painted nails is what makes you queer?
  Also some of these comics are formatted TERRIBLY and are practically illegible.
  Anyway. Some of the strips are decent but theyre few + far between. If you’d like to read a much better LGBT comics anthology read No Straight Lines.
• 
  juliette

  like most anthologies, be gay, do comics was all over the place. there were a few stand out stories that really emotionally impacted me, but most were too short or too vague for me to connect to. there were jokes made that i've seen on twitter and tiktok many times. and there was a distinct problem with a lack of political cohesiveness. i appreciated the stories about decolonizing gender and queerness and the stories about queer liberation, anarchist/communist queer history, but then there were other stories glorifying neoliberalism and others encouraging patriotism, imperialism, and the genocide of indigenous americans. just because a revolutionary war general was a queer man doesn't mean we should glorify him when he had a huge hand in the genocide of native americans and owned Black slaves. this anthology would have been so much better if there had been a cohesiveness in ideology. some stories should not be told together and if they are, there should be nuance such as with the aforementioned queer revolutionary war general.
• 
  Nadin

  I expected some funny gay cartoons. I found a wide range of political, personal, historical, and smart comics that are diverse in every way: in style, portrayed identities and queer topics. I learned a lot - and had fun.
• 
   ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

  Possibly the worst assortment of words and images I have witnessed.
• 
  Raina

  Fun collection of short, mostly nonfiction comics about various aspects of queer identity. All previously published by
  The Nib.
  
  Wide variety of styles and approaches. Mostly full color.
  
  The one I put a stickie note in was
  Alison Wilgus' "I Came Out Late in Life and That's Okay."
  
  Part of me was wishing there was some kind of taxonomy of the comics. I couldn't suss any kind of organization scheme. But maybe that's my librarian talking. :)
  
  It also does the (common) thing where there are Contributor bios and images in the back. I'm guessing that's for either a practical publishing reason or a integrity of the work by itself reason, but I kinda wish books like this would put those author bios with the work. If I read the book front-to-back, by the time I read them, I've forgotten the comic, and flipping back and forth is a pain.
  
  Read with
  No Straight Lines and the
  Best American Comics series, of course
• 
  Rob McMonigal

  An awesome compendium of comics first published on The Nib. Featuring quite a few friends, so I'm a bit biased, admittedly, but the stories here are varied both in style and content, ranging from intricately detailed art to more abstract representations with appropriately colorful backgrounds. Just reviewing how the different artists approach their panel structure is enough to make this a great collection, but when you add stories of historical queer figures mixed with extremely personal life excerpts, it all comes together to be probably my favorite Nib anthology so far.
• 
  J K

  What happens when you mix mental illness with a desire to groom children? This book.
• 
  Rachel

  I liked this book for a lot of reasons. All the comics are in regular panels and are understandable; no avant-garde splotches of color where you can't tell what's going on. Each piece tells a story, and each story is nicely queer. It brings together a lot of queer and talented comic writers. There's plenty of content from/about trans and nonconforming people. All in all, it's pretty transgressive. It also has a lot of history, which I find worthwhile but sometimes boring (that's on me, not the comics). A nice, solid read, but for me, not all that exciting.
  
  
• 
  Spencer

  I really enjoyed this, but some of the comics suffered due to their size- they were very small and hard to read.
• 
  Lany

  Honestly, this was 50% a salt read, and 50% it looked pretty cool, and so I actually wanted to read it. They beat out Dates! (and a few others) for the Ignatz Award, and so I was mildly salty about it since I was a Dates! contributor 😒
  
  However, I can say that, after having read it, Be Gay, Do Comics definitely deserved their award! This was a fun anthology that brought together a bunch of amazing artists and writers to create an impactful statement about what it means to exist as a queer person within the world. There was a little something for everyone here—the comics covered a myriad of topics and featured creators that had stories to tell about their own cultures and experiences, as well as some queer history, and discussions about "current" events (some of the events are less than current now, but were very current when the comics were made).
  
  It took me a while to read since some of the comics were very in-depth, and I felt like I needed time to digest them while I was reading, so I'd read a few and then put it down for a day or two. It was definitely cool to see so many different perspectives on what it's like to be a queer person, and also to have them united in the general message that, no matter the struggles and hardships that might be faced along the way, it's actually still pretty great! Some of the comics were short and funny, and I think the mix of more serious pieces with the shorter, lighter ones also helped make the whole thing more readable.
  
  Not all of the comics worked for me—there were a couple that kind of left me scratching my head—but it's possible that they work for someone else, and that's cool too. I even really liked how the book was laid out, with creator names at the top, under the title, and the page numbers centered to the right of the page. I think it helped with the overall flow, and it made it easy for me to not only associated the creator names with the individual comics, but to be more aware when creators had done multiple comics. It's a small thing, but I did appreciate the layout.
  
  Even if you can't bring yourself to sit down and read the whole thing (though I think you should!), it's definitely worth a flip-through. I actually think it could make a pretty cool coffee table book as well.
• 
  Kim Lockhart

  This collection hit me in the feels. I learned a lot too, which was an unexpected bonus.
  
  This will resonate most if you're a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, but truly, I hope all these voices speak to anyone who ever felt excluded, or like they didn't belong.
  
  Having your people, the ones who really get you, is such a vital keystone to good mental health. And these artists and authors really do get us.
  
  I had a lot of reflections as I read all these different kinds of comic styles, but it really comes down to acceptance, to embracing a person based on what makes them comfortable and happy.
• 
  luna

  This book is immensely information and relatable— not only does it provide first-hand accounts of being apart of the LGBTQ+ community, but it also provides historical anecdotes. That being said, I think that this book needed to be a bit more concise— There were certain comics that threw me out of the flow. But!!! All of the artists are great and unique, and I loved all the stories and advice they had to share!!!
• 
  Sandy

  I love how queer this anthology is: lots of trans content, discussion of community and politics, history, memoir, body image-- really a great range of topics and creators. The colors are gorgeous throughout.
  
  My only complaint is that in some of the comics, the text is very small and difficult to read.
  
  Content notes: some images of needles. Discussion of anti-queer oppression.
• 
  Megan Sanks

  Really fun and insightful! Learned a lot, and am happy to learn that "Be gay, do crime" was created by queer prisoners.
• 
  Halli

  I really enjoyed this comics collection. It was a nice mix of fiction and nonfiction, and I learned a lot about queer journies and queer history. An entertaining and informative read!
• 
  Rachel

  This compilation of queer comic artists was an absolute delight to read. It was organized perfectly, the heavier comics were separated out so by the end of reading it I walked away inspired and hopeful and educated on some important history.
  
  *I received an eARC copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to IDW Publishing for the opportunity to read and review in advance of publication.
• 
  James

  Honestly, did not like the book.
  
  The representation was very narrow with a heavy focus on non-binary identities. For someone who is a transgender (or gay), this isn't a satisfying, uplifting, or positive read. A lot of the comics were negative against trans masculine people (and especially trans masc bodies). Trans women were erased/invisible for the most part. I don't understand how such bad representation ends up in print.
  
  A lot of the text was inaccessible for readers with lower visual acuity. In many places in the book, the text was unusually small, blurry, and low contrast. I have read enough graphic novels to know that they don't have to be like this. Readable text is possible!
  
  The text is also rife with spelling mistakes that appear to be unintentional? Editing might have helped.
  
  Overall, skip it. Mostly unenjoyable.
  
  Recommended instead: First Year Out: A Transition Story by Sabrina Symington.
  
• 
  Chris Arnone

  I really enjoyed this. 40 LGBTQIA writers and artists telling the whole rainbow of stories, their own and others. Many of them are straightforward testimonies, but not all. Great art and presentation. I was sad there was only one intersex story in the whole collection. #netgalley #begaydocomics