SuperQueeroes – Our LGBTI* Comic Book Heroes and Heroines Schwules Museum*, January 22-June 26, 2016

SuperQueeroes – Our LGBTI* Comic Book Heroes and Heroines at the Schwules Museum* in Berlin presents the first exhibition of queer comics in Europe. The exhibition provides a comprehensive survey of comics with LGBTI characters and narratives, primarily from Europe and America. As a foundational endeavor, SuperQueeroes raises important questions regarding the curation of both comics and the history of sexuality, whose critical examination remains relevant for the future work on queer comics that the exhibition will likely inspire.

SuperQueeroes -Our LGBTI* Comic Book He r o es and Heroines at the Schwules Museum* in B e rlin (January 22, 2016-June 26, 2016) presents the first major exhibition of queer comics in Eur o pe . 1 C omprised of works by nearly one hundred comics artists and organized by seven curators, SuperQueeroes provides a comprehensive s urv ey of comics with LGBTI characters and na r ra tive s, primarily from Europe and the United States. 2 The exhibition illustrates the inventiveness and plurality of nonnormative sexual cultures to whic h comics graphically testify (fig.1).As a foundational endeavor, SuperQueeroes raises a two-fold fundamental challenge-narrating sexual diversity through the disparate histories of its literary and visual representation; and curating comics in attune ment to the ir his to r ica l and material specificity.A critical examination of SuperQueeroes's moments o f ins ig ht a nd inconsistency is relevant for the future scholarly and artistic work on queer comics tha t the exhibition will likely inspire.
Once relegated to the realms of the low and the vernacular within the m as s c ultur al industry, comics have recently and continue to emerge within academic, curatorial, and archival contexts, redefining the scope and methodologies of cultural inquiry.Through the ir serial interrelation of images and texts, the manual and the mechanically r e pr od uce d, a nd the autobiographical and the fantastical, comics remain an elusive medium in spite o f the ir quotidian ubiquity.While comics share affinities of genre with pop art, DIY pra ctices, illuminated manuscripts, serial literature, and filmstrips, they remain graphic ally unique in literary and visual stylization.
In both their industrial norms and depicted content, comics have conventionally reflected and imagined hegemonically heteronormative worlds, particularly through the figure of "the superhero" and its implicit heroization of heterosexuality, m a le d o minanc e, physical strength, and idealized bodies (Superman remains a p r ime e xam ple ).Ho we ver , recent comics and their scholarly reception have attenuated this do minant c o nventio n, in turn producing and describing the relation between comics and minoritarian historical representation.As literary and comics scholar Hillary Chute contends, "[c]omics-as a f o r m that relies on space to represent time-becomes structurally equipped to challenge dominant modes of storytelling and history writing."3The contestation of dominant historical narratio n 1 SuperQueeroes defines "queer c omics" as "c omics that include L G BTI c haracters and tell L G BTI s tories." T his definition elides "queer" and "L G BT I" and us es "queer" as an umbrella s ignifier for "L G BTI." T his prefigures my forthc oming c omments on the terminological and hi s torical tension between s pecifically gay politic s and queer as a politic s, evident in the exhibition's s ection on mains tream c omics.For the purpos es of my review, I will c ontinue to us e the term "queer c omic s." See http://www.sc hwules mus eum.de/en/exhibit ions/view/s uperqueeroes-our-lgbti-comic-book-heroes-and-  In opening wall texts, the curators set the historical parameters of SuperQue ero es a s the late 1960s through the present, encapsulating a period beginning wi th the Stonewall Riots of 1969 through the consequent and varied formations of sexual politics in recent history.As the apotheosis of the gay liberation struggles of the 1960s, Stonewall symbolically ushered in a new era marked by the personalization of politics, specifica lly the public urgencies of gay and lesbian visibility, gender and sexual self -identification, and communal solidarity.Despite the American (US) focus of this narrative, the historical framework of the late 1960s through the present productively s tr uc ture s Sup e rQ ueer oes without feeling reductive or prescriptive, since the exhibition is grouped around various themes-independent queer comics from the United States, independent queer comics f r o m Europe, mainstream comics, everyday heroes, the comics author as hero, queer approache s to comics genres (cowboys, cops, adventurers), comics and AID S, a nd the c e nso rs hip o f comics.The post-Stonewall time frame is signified by the exhibition's displays of the proliferating queer comics culture in the United States, wherein the work of many nowrenowned independent practitioners beginning their careers in the 1970 -80s-like Mary Wings, Alison Bechdel, Jennifer C amper, and Roberta Gregory -was streamlined and published under Howard Cruse's Gay Comix series (1980-1998).In contra st to this line a r development in American queer comics history, the European comics presented p r ov ide a n instructive counterpoint to the exhibition's chronology.Created under varying c ultur al a nd geopolitical circumstances, the work of the European artists featur ed , s uch a s R alf K ö nig (Germany), Nazario (Spain), Luca Enoch (Italy), Helena Janecic (C roatia), and Beata "Beatrix" Cymerman (Poland), evinces a multitude of queer ex perience a g ains t a s ing ula r historical narrative.Their works emerged autonomously and precariously in loc a lly s p ec if ic contexts, often with neither formal networks of queer exchange no r s o c ial la nd sc ap es o f queer acceptance.
Both American and European independent queer comics challenge dominant his to r ie s by bearing witness to an astonishing plurality of queer experience -the curators' most captivating statement.From the quotidian to the spectacular, the asexual to the pornographic, the disabled to the fat to the dressed in drag, the exhibition testifies a politics rooted in a heterogeneity of sexual intersections and erotic encounters tha t q ue er c om ics artists actively reimagine in graphic narrative form.Rupert Kinnard's B.B. and the Diva (1979) depicts the first gay and lesbian-identified African-American protagonists in c o m ic s , while Justin Hall's Glamazonia (2010) portrays the adventures of the eponymous "Unca nny Super-Tranny."Gaye Mae Kincaid's Sapphowoman and the Greater B elf as t Dy k es (1980) references literary history by reinventing Sappho, the Ancient Greek homoerotic p o et, a s a lesbian superhero of Northern Ireland.A central section on the AIDS crisis further articulates the didacticism of independent comics as instruments of safe sex education a nd stigma fighting. 5These depictions of sexual plurality within the representational and social spaces of independent comics materialize many political worlds of queer life, pleasure, a nd a c tivis m, which SuperQueeroes convincingly advocates against cultural norms of invisibility and erasure.
A section on mainstream comics proves to be less successful (fig.2).The introducto ry wall text argues that social progress is evincible through the increased visibility of nonnormative sexualities in mainstream comics.Various depictions of LGBTI character s a nd narratives in mainstream comics are presented, yet the central display of the X -Men c o mic books featuring the superhero Northstar exemplifies the section's b r o ad er o ve rs ights .I n 1992, Marvel expanded the scope of sexual representation in mainstream comics when writers determined that Northstar would come out as gay.Twenty years later follo wing the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York, Marvel depicted "the firs t g a y we d ding " in comics when Northstar married his long-term partner Kyle.6 SuperQueeroes celebrates Northstar's narrative as a prime example of cultural acceptance and social change on b e ha lf of Marvel comics and its audience.Northstar's story, among others, reflects the departure of m a ins tr eam c o mics f r o m their heteronormative industrial moorings, as well as productively e xp a nd s the s p he re o f representations rendered legitimate, both within and beyond comics.Nevertheless, one must question whether narratives like Northstar's simply react to a dominant teleology of mainstream gay politics, rather than actively envisioning a politics rooted in the heterogeneity of queer experience.7While the independent comics presented testify a diversity of desires through affective and imaginative representa tions d e rive d f r o m liv e d realities, the mainstream comics section compounds the pragmatic reduction of queer politics into gay visibility.8This instance counterproductively risks advoc ating a "ho mono rm ative time line," where linear gay expectations either hegemonically s ingular ize q uee r liv e s o r further pathologize ones that fail to conform.9Moreover, the challenges raised by the normatively "progressive" narratives of mainstream comics reflect the exhibitio n's b r oa de r elision of "queer comics" with "LGBTI stories," whereby queer is conflated with the individual (and unequally distributed) politics of sexuality and gender assumed under "LGBTI."Thus in contradistinction to a mainstream gay politics of acceptance and assimilation, which too often stands in for "LGBTI," "queer" antagonistically emerged as a sexual politics of world -building against normativity-both projects being necessary, historically contingent, and irred ucib le.Nonetheless what SuperQueeroes makes clear, and fails to que s tio n, is tha t m a ins tre am comics follow from mainstream gay politics.
Beyond the productive questions of sexual representation that surface throughout SuperQueeroes, one technical limitation of the exhibition lies in the challenges of curating in accordance to the multifaceted medium-specificities of comics.Affixed to the g a lle ry wa lls painted with black frames and yellow backgrounds to imitate a comic strip's graphic structure, most comic books were represented solely by their covers o r we r e o p ene d to a singular narrative moment, reducing longer stories to their most str iking im ag es (f ig .2).While comics are at once verbal and visual, they are fundamentally a tactile m e d ium to b e flipped through and read closely.Moreover, the affective and identificatory power of c o mic s lie in their narrative temporality as well as in the intimate and embodied r e latio n o f c o mic book to the reader.By excluding the possibility of holding and reading the comics on display, SuperQueeroes unintentionally undermined both the narrative and tactile dimension of comics as a book form.Instead, the exhibition privileged optical exp er ienc e, im ag es o ve r text, and a selective narrative interpretation, and further necessitated a strong r e liance o n explanatory wall texts for curatorial cohesion.This could have been easily r e c tif ied with a small sample of comics available to be actually read, underscoring their circulatory potential as a mechanically reproduced medium designed for reading, sharing, a nd the b uilding o f community and solidarity.
The final section on censorship deftly frames the rhetoric of heroization that runs throughout SuperQueeroes.On display is Frederic Wertham's 1954 study Se d uc tion o f the Innocent, where the German-American psychiatrist maintained that comics lead to j uv enile delinquency and homosexuality.From his earlier writings through Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham's work both reflected and contributed to the postwar milieu of public paranoia a nd fear of external contamination.Its exposition and critique of the supposed negative effects of reading comics proffered a stricter revision of the Comics Code -the ind ustr y's s tand ar d s implemented by comic book publishers-in addition to further establishing a no r m o f s e lfcensorship among comics artists. 10Through an archival mapping of documentary photographs and newspaper articles, SuperQueeroes visualizes the widespread institutionally organized burnings of comics throughout the United States and Europe f ollowing Wertham 's publication and the tightening of the Comics Code.The censorship, sexual patholog iz atio n, and mass burning of comics that SuperQueeroes presents, as well as the exhibition's contextual interpolation into the cultural fabric of Berlin, draw an implicit and unsettling twofold parallel to specters of German history-the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the nation-wide book burnings of 1933.While implicating an open and reflective relation to national history, SuperQueeroes reorients and compounds the courage of recreating queer life in comics-the medium that, as Hillary Chute argues, makes "vis ib le the s ite o f o ne's inscriptional effacement."11Against the inscriptional effacements of censorship, pers ec ution 10 For a detailed his tory of the C omic s Book C ode, s ee Amy Kiste N yberg, Seal of Approval: The His tory of the Comics Code (J ac kson: U niversity of M ississippi Press, 1 998).
heroines / C ontemporaneity: H istorical P resence in V isual C ulture http://c ontemporaneity.pitt.eduV ol 5 , N o 1 "A gency in M otion" (2 0 16) | I SSN 2 155-1162 (online) | D O I 1 0.5 195/c ontemp.2016.1 77 within the discursive and representational space of comics is most compellingly rehearsed in the exhibition's transposition of superheroes into the eponymous SuperQuee ro es , p o s iting the figures in comics as sites of heroic queer reimagining and the medium o f c o mic s a s its privileged form.