Photo by Matt Baume.
West Hollywood resident and comic writer Josh Trujillo, author of the Love Machines anthology, has always had fond memories of Long Beach that are intimately attached to his love of the comic world. Despite multiple rounds as a panelist at massive conventions like the San Diego Comic Con or WonderCon, this year marks the artist/writer’s first venture to the Long Beach Comic Con (LBCC), acting as a panelist on the “It’s a Queer, Queer World!” panel.
In a sense, Southern California has always been a strange, queer world for Trujillo.
Back when he lived with his mother in Rancho Cucamonga, the then-youngster begged his mother to make the seemingly endless trek to Long Beach when it had hosted the famed Anime Expo for two years, in 2001 and 2002. In a time when DVDs were relatively new, the LaserDisc was dying, and VHS tapes still ruled, the Anime Expo was a world of wonder for anyone interested in the niche market (at least at that time) that was the world of anime, manga, plashes, and JPop. Think Sailor Moon-clad women (and men) getting down to Two-Mix and Ayumi Hamasaki while waiting to hear about the release of Brigadoon.
Long Beach hosted 13,000 fans in 2001 and nearly 18,000 come 2002 before the nation’s largest anime convention headed to our northernly neighbor in Los Angeles, where it has been hosted ever since.
“I had such a poor understanding of how conventions worked,” Trujillo said. “We unfortunately arrived on a Sunday afternoon during closing ceremonies. Still, the spectacle of all of the cosplay fans and the excitement was enough to get me to come back the following year, and the year after, and the year after.”
But the interplay of Long Beach’s love for comics/manga and its LGBTQ community is what is driving Trujillo’s appearance at this year’s LBCC—an interplay that is felt by many LGBTQers who love comics. Comics, after all, share one particular trait: they tell the story of the marginalized and outcast and show them gaining power in one sense or another, be it for good or evil. It provided people, especially the Little Guy, a voice.
“The fun thing about a comic, whether you’re reading or writing one, is that it’s just you and the page,” Trujillo said. “It’s a very personal experience, and I think people on the margins tend to gravitate towards those kinds of activities because they feel out of place… My earliest memories are of getting the Sunday comic strips read to me, and I loved how each cartoonist had their own unique style. I have always known that I wanted to create my own stories and worlds. Early on I realized that you could have a stronger point of view in a comic, as opposed to the cartoons I grew up with, which were mostly watered down toy commercials.”
This isn’t to say that the comic world has always been gay-friendly. As comic historian Amy Kiste Nyberg pointed out in her seminal work Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, the Comics Code Authority, formed in 1954 by the Comics Magazine Association of America after an onslaught of gory comics like Tormented and Web of Evil hit the shelves, didn’t permit any direct reference to homosexuality until 1989. Even Los Angeles County outlawed the sale of all crime and horror comics to minors in 1948 and attempted to ban crime/horror comics entirely in 1954 before the move was deemed unconstitutional.
This resulted in authors using subtle subtexts, witty hints, and indirect ways of creating a LGBTQ history within comics. Even with the onslaught of major and independent comic book publishers noting the need for more LGBTQ and minority characters and plot lines. Though warranted, Trujillo feels that the “nauseatingly mainstreaming” of comics comes with a price: tokenism.
“Nobody I grew up with read comics and being a fan made me feel like an outcast,” Trujillo said. “Now thanks to the internet I’m able to connect to the large and vocal comics community from anywhere… We now live in a world where X-Men and The Avengers are nauseatingly mainstream, so young LGBTQ comic fans now have a much different experience than I did growing up. Yes, unquestionably, it’s a blessing that we have a black Captain America or a female Thor, but there’s a risk of tokenism in these events since they’re almost always temporary.”
Part of what Trujillo hopes to exude while on the panel is the fact that LGBTQ community needs to be virulently vocal about the community’s presence and voice within the comic scene and that such visibility is not a commercial ploy but part of creating a gay history that was largely censored as comics became a nationwide phenomenon.
Even more, according to Trujillo, the hardcore LGBTQ fans of comics—the ones who sported Gambit shirts long before Urban Outfitters made them—need to also speak up before the love of their fantasy characters are caught up in commercialization and hipsterdom.
“Twelve years ago I could go to a gay bar and see a guy with an X-Men shirt and strike up a conversation with him about it, because of that shared interest,” Trujillo said. “Now you can’t really tell who the ‘real’ comic fans are, since you see Wolverine on sneakers and pretzels and everywhere.”
Beyond delving into pertinent questions surrounding comics and their relationship with the LGBTQ community—what new responsibilities do comic creators have to themselves and readers when dealing with LGBTQ issues and characters? What will the future of LGBTQ culture look like in comic form?—Trujillo will be offering a special edition of The Auger, his collaborative comic with London artist Elliot Baggott, as well as discussing his Love Machines anthology.
Largely inspired by HG Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come and the work of MIT Professor Sherry Turkle, Love Machines tackles the always-of-topic relationship between man and technology.
“We always look forward to how we’re going to have robotic limbs and computer girlfriends,” Trujillo said. “Love Machines came from the realization that people have already been intertwining their lives with technology for centuries. Innovations in transportation, medicine, and entertainment have completely transformed the way we live, and few have explored how this has transformed all of us as romantic and sexual beings. The fun thing about Love Machines is that it’s an anthology, so with each story I get to draw new inspiration. Everything from Dagwood to Evangelion has had an impact on how I’m telling these stories.”