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Identity Politics and the Queer Comics of Leanne Franson and Ariel Schrag
The world of comics has traditionally been highly heteronormative and male-biased. That Leanne Franson and Ariel Schräg, two women, would engage this discourse with comics that tackle questions of identity formation for their queer heroines is, therefore, remarkable. It is in this generally hostile (homophobic, misogynist) atmosphere that their highly autobiographical characters each struggle to forge an identity that is not simply the one she is called to but one that also situates her uniquely in a subculture that has historically internalized homophobia itself. While this journey of self discovery is not portrayed in dramatic/traumatic terms in either text, each heroine is consciously trying to position herself in relation to conflicting ideas of what an acceptable identity, especially in the form of self-presentation, should look like.
Issues of sexual identity and the meaning of difference are explored, both visually and textually, in the comics of Ariel Schräg (US b. 1979) and Leanne Franson (Canada b.1963). Almost a generation apart in age, their works nonetheless expose similar anxieties about fixed sexual identities and the issue of how the adoption of a specific identity serves to position one in queer discourse. Schräg exhaustively chronicled her emotional life in her high school years in comics now collected into three large volumes, totaling almost 700 pages, which she began to publish in small self-published splits while still in school. Franson writes Liliane, Bi-Dyke which is available as a web comic and which has also been collected into mini-comics and small books dating from the early 90's. Both artists/writers are engaged in a conversation about the reductive and divisive nature of sexual identity politics. They argue against adopting any hierarchy of particular sexual identities and instead focus on proffering a challenge to normativity in general, and heteronormativity in particular.
Schräg and Franson aren't just telling queer stories in the highly heteronormative world of comics; they're telling their own stories. Schrag's comics are autobiographical; Franson describes hers as semi-autobiographical but often adds the phrase "true story" in small print at the end of a narrative sequence. Schräg uses the term "dyke" or "lesbian" for herself but portrays Ariel having sex with men as well as women, while Franson...