Comics Newsletter

Kickstart This: The First All-Trans Comics Anthology

Nicole Froio

Staff Writer

Nicole Froio is a Brazilian journalist currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She writes about feminism, human rights, politics, mental health issues, pop culture, books and the media. She was born in São Paulo but moved a lot as a kid, which hinders her ability to root down in only one place in adulthood. Her favorite genres of book are fantasy, YA fiction, romance and any book that requires the main character to find themselves. An avid intersectional feminist, her tolerance for bigotry is extremely low. Blog: Words by Nicole Froio Twitter: @NicoleFroio

The representation of trans people in the media has steadily increased over the last few years, but finding trans stories in comic books is remarkably hard. A new anthology containing only trans creators and stories promises to start closing this representation gap.

We’re Still Here, edited by Tara Avery and Jeanne Thorton, promises to have fifty-five stories by fifty-five different writers and illustrators. The anthology will contain both fiction and non-fiction stories, and is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. A remarkable sampling of stories is listed in the Kickstarter page:

  • An evening discussing the terrors of Donald Trump at a Japanese bar for trans men
  • A trans woman uses MDMA (with complex results)
  • A trans woman visits her grandmother for Christmas (with complex results)
  • Visual essay on sex work, trans masculinity, and testosterone
  • A practical guide to using paganism to navigate workplace terror
  • Trans women pilot giant robots with impeccable synch ratios
  • Toxic masculinity haunts a friendship between a butch lesbian and trans man
  • A devotional essay about angels beyond gender or understanding
  • Two trans women named Sweetness and Lightning blow up a car, watch Akira, and live happily ever after

In addition to adding trans representation to the comics genre, this anthology looks really, really cool. They even have a short sample of the stories in gray scale (the printed paperback will be printed in full color) that you can peruse before you decide to back the project for a copy.