NYCC 2018: Authentic Voices In The Entertainment Is LGBTQ Panel Presented By Boom! Studios And Glaad

In the Entertainment is LGBTQ panel at New York Comic Con on Thursday afternoon, presented by Boom! Studios and Glaad, the panelists included Vita Ayala, Phil Jimenez, Marguerite Bennett, Lilah Sturges, Megan Townsend, and Andy Mientus.
Asked if representation in comics and entertainment has changed over time, Jimenez said that panels for LGBTQ topics are now at every convention just about, which is a huge shift. Visibility has increased for queer creators, now out and acting as positive role models, he added. They generate work “that people consume quite readily”. Together these are three changes he’s noticed in recent decades.
Sturges said that years ago she pitched a series about a transgender woman, and it was critiqued by an editor as being a “90’s” thing, and no longer of interest. Now, she has editors calling her and asking for her “genuine authentic voice” in work. There isn’t a lot of representation for trans women in any media, and it’s great to be able to change that in comics, she added.
Ayala said that in comic shops, you have more people coming in looking for books with representation, and now there are also more than one or two to give them. Now they can ask, ‘What do you like to read’ and actually look for sub-genres with representation.

Bennett replied that she had become used to a “barrier” being there for representation, to the point where she was still “self-editing” and leaving it out, but began to gradually work things in when she realized there was more possibility. In DC Bombshells, the majority of the cast is now queer, for instance. She’s had some fans critiquing her for having bad things happen to lesbian characters, but when you need authentic conflict in stories, and so much of the cast are queer, that’s going to have to happen, too. That’s a progress point to Bennett.
Townsend agreed that when you have more characters, you can have a wide variety of stories, but when you only have one queer character, and the bad things always happen to them, then that’s a problem.
Mientus feels that representation in film, tv, and theater have been focused on trauma narrative, or fighting for the “truth of their identity” but what’s next are broader stories that move away from these limitations. It’s understandable, since this first stage is about establishing empathy with the audience, but there’s a long way to go after that.
Jimenez said that he’s at “an age” where he wants to see what the world could be and not just what it is in stories, and he hopes that’s the future.

Ayala commented that comics have always been “aspirational” and that means creating the worlds you want to exist.
Asked about portraying established characters versus creator-owned and new characters, and what challenges those different approaches pose, Ayala laughed that they get to put a lot more “boobs” in their own comics. Their approach is “queer and brown” and has been encouraged by that. They were even able to introduce a non-binary character in a recent story for Supergirl.
Sturges spoke about working on a creator-owned book where she could represent a young trans person, and described it as a situation where she could “pour” herself into it because it was her character and she didn’t have to consider other character/continuity needs as much.
Jimenez said that everything he works on is queer, because he created it. Everything that’s not explicitly sexual is still queer, because it’s his lens and vision. Pushback from editorial over the year has been more about the way the editor saw the world versus the way he saw the world, not about having queer characters in stories. It’s been “you can’t have a character behave like this, that’s too far” rather than “you can’t have gay characters”, in his experience. Those boundaries are real.
Bennett said that this “boundary” is one of the main things standing between doing licensed stories and creator-owned. In creator-owned she can be angry and doesn’t have to apologize for it, she said.
Asked to comment on using a “queer lens” in their work versus having queer characters in their work, Sturges said that if the central conflict of a story is trans, she prefers a trans person to write it, because of that very lens. There’s “richness” as well as “fear and heartache” in that experience, and that’s going to give the story more depth if there’s a trans writer involved. Straight creators can still tell stories, of course, but let’s have these other stories too, Sturges encouraged.
Jimenez’ design decisions that he makes are influenced by his queerness and gayness, and that awareness is going to lead to different choices. The “sensibilities inform what ends up on the page”, he confirmed.
Townsend said that she continues to see more from the Big Two that is “inclusive” but then they “stop”, so it’s a back and forth in terms of progress and there’s still work to do.
Asked if there was anything “foundational” that affected them as a young person, Jimenez said it’s about “sensibility” rather than “explicitness”. Wonder Woman and Buck Rogers “cemented my career goals and my man goals”, Jimenez laughed. They are products of their time, like 80’s soap-operas, which he feels are “so gay”.
Mientus said that RENT played a huge role for him, and he’s been looking at it again as an adult. He was seeing “communities on stage” that he’d never seen before as a 12-year-old, for instance.
Bennett said she “saw gay shit everywhere”, and even if it wasn’t there, she made it there, in childhood, to laughter. She feels she’s created “false memories” in superhero stories where characters are gay and couples etc. She knew there was a message that was “getting lost”, like a language being spoken behind the words.
Regarding what the panelists would like to see more of in the new year, they said more non-binary people, more brown queer people, and addressing the problem of demand for queer content to get more content out there in the world.