The 11 July 1984 installment of Bloom County had the strip's main characters staying at Bob & Ernie's Castro Street Hotel, run by a gay S&M couple. Slackmeyer, a liberal, continues to feature in the strip, with focus on his relationship with his politically conservative partner, Chase, including their marriage in 1999 and separation in 2007. Two years later, the long-standing character Mark Slackmeyer was revealed to be gay, continuing a reputation for controversial content. This storyline led to a Pulitzer Prize nomination for Trudeau, but three newspapers of the 900 carrying the strip refused to publish it as being in bad taste. The strip introduced the character Andy Lippincott in 1976, and his diagnosis with HIV in 1989 and AIDS related death in 1990 was the first representation of this issue in comic strips. The first widely distributed comic strip to tackle LGBT themes and include a gay character was Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury. The 1938–1939 edition of Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates features a primary villain, Sanjak, who has been interpreted by some as a lesbian with designs on the hero's girlfriend. This comic strip caused death threats to be sent to Lynn Johnston, the creator.Įarly comic strips also avoided overt treatment of gay issues, though examples of homosexual subtext have been identified. Panel showing the coming out of a character in 1993 in the comic strip For Better or For Worse. Prism Comics, an organization formed in 2003 for promoting LGBTQ themes in comic books, has provided the "Queer Press Grant" for comic book creators since 2005. The Lambda Literary Foundation, recognizing notable literature for LGBT themes with their "Lammys" awards since 1988, created a new category in 2014 for graphic works. Portrayal of LGBT themes in comics is recognized by several notable awards, including the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards and GLAAD Media Awards for outstanding comic book and comic strip. Pornographic manga also often includes sexualised depictions of lesbians and intersex people. Since the Japanese "gay boom" of the 1990s, a body of manga by queer creators aimed at LGBT customers has been established, including both bara manga for gay men and yuri aimed at lesbians, which often have more realistic and autobiographical themes. These works are often extremely romantic and idealized, and include archetypal characters that often do not identify as gay or lesbian. Japanese manga tradition has included genres of girls' comics that feature homosexual relationships since the 1970s, in the form of yaoi and yuri. Notable comics creators have produced work from France, Belgium, Spain, Germany and Britain. A lack of censorship and greater acceptance of comics as a medium for adult entertainment in Europe has led European comics to be more inclusive from an earlier date, leading to less controversy about the representation of LGBT characters in their pages. The popularity of comic books in Europe and Japan have seen distinct approaches to LGBT themes. Today comic strips educating readers about LGBT-related issues are syndicated in LGBT-targeted print media and online in web comics. Since the 1990s, equal and open LGBT themes have become more common in mainstream US comics, including in a number of titles in which a gay character is the star. The first openly gay characters in American comic strips appeared in prominent strips in the late 1970s and gained popularity through the 1980s.
Starting in the early 1970s, however, LGBT themes were tackled in underground comix, independently published one-off comic books and series produced by gay creators that featured autobiographical storylines tackling political issues of interest to LGBT readers.
With any mention of homosexuality in mainstream United States comics forbidden by the Comics Code Authority (CCA) between 19, mainstream comics contained only subtle hints or subtext regarding an LGBT character's sexual orientation or gender identity. However the practice of hiding LGBT characters in the early part of the twentieth century evolved into open inclusion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and comics explored the challenges of coming-out, societal discrimination, and personal and romantic relationships between gay characters.
LGBT existence was included only via innuendo, subtext and inference. LGBT themes in comics are a relatively new concept, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ( LGBT) themes and characters were historically omitted from the content of comic books and their comic strip predecessors due to anti-gay censorship.
Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson in a panel from DC Comics Batman #84 (June 1954), which was used by Frederic Wertham to allege that comic books promote homosexuality.