Queer Graphic Novel & Memoir Recommendations

• Mimosa by Archie Bongiovanni. Best friends and chosen family Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex work hard to keep themselves afloat. Their regular brunches hold them together even as the rest of their lives threaten to fall apart. In an effort to avoid being the oldest gays at the party, the crew decides to put on a new queer event called Grind–specifically for homos in their dirty 30s. Grind is a welcome distraction from their real problems: after a messy divorce, Chris adjusts to being a single parent while struggling to reconnect to their queer community. Elise is caught between feelings for her boss and the career of her dreams. Jo tries to navigate the murky boundaries of being a supportive friend and taking care of her own needs. And Alex is guarding a secret that might change his friendships forever. While navigating exes at work, physical and mental exhaustion, and drinking way, way too much on weekdays, this chosen family proves that being messy doesn’t always go away with age.
• Barbalien: Red Planet by Tate Brombal. Mark Markz has found his place on Earth as both a decorated police officer and as the beloved superhero, Barbalien. But in the midst of the AIDS crisis, hatred from all sides makes balancing these identities seem impossible–especially when a Martian enemy from the past hunts him down to take him back, dead or alive.
• Crema: A Haunted Romance in Three Chapters by Johnnie Christmas. Esme, a barista, feels invisible, like a ghost…. Also, when Esme drinks too much coffee she actually sees ghosts. Yara, the elegant heir to a coffee plantation, is always seen, but only has eyes for Esme. Their world is turned upside down when the strange ghost of an old-world nobleman begs Esme to take his letter from NYC to a haunted coffee farm in Brazil, to reunite him with his lost love of a century ago. Bringing sinister tidings of unrequited love.
• Carmilla: The First Vampire by Amy Chu. Before Dracula, before Nosferatu, there was…Carmilla. Inspired by the gothic novel that started the vampire genre and layered with dark Chinese folklore, this queer, feminist murder mystery graphic novel is a tale of identity, obsession and fateful family secrets. At the height of the Lunar New Year in 1990s New York City, an idealistic social worker turns detective when she discovers young, homeless LGBTQ+ women are being murdered and no one, especially the police, seems to care. A series of clues points her to Carmilla’s, a mysterious nightclub in the heart of her neighborhood, Chinatown. There she falls for the next likely target, landing her at the center of a real-life horror story-and face-to-face with illusions about herself, her life, and her hidden past.
• We Ride Titans by Tres Dean. Pacific Rim meets Shameless in this sci-fi kaiju action adventure, female-helmed thrill ride where one woman must keep the monsters in check – as well as her explosive family! It’s Mechs vs. Kaiju in this hard-hitting, action sci-fi adventure! Kaiju hit hard. Family hits harder. Just when you break free … you get pulled back in. Trying to keep your family from imploding is a tall order. Titan-rider Kit Hobbs is about to find out it’s an even taller order when that family has been piloting the Titan that protects New Hyperion from the monstrous kaiju for generations. With an addicted, spiraling brother, a powder keg of a father, and a whole bunch of twenty-story monsters, she’s got her work cut out for her.
• Flung out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith by Grace Ellis. A fictional and complex portrait of bestselling author Patricia Highsmith caught up in the longing that would inspire her queer classic, The Price of Salt. Flung Out of Space is both a love letter to the essential lesbian novel, The Price of Salt, and an examination of its notorious author, Patricia Highsmith. Veteran comics creators Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer have teamed up to tell this story through Highsmith’s eyes–reimagining the events that inspired her to write the story that would become a foundational piece of queer literature. Flung Out of Space opens with Pat begrudgingly writing low-brow comics. A drinker, a smoker, and a hater of life, Pat knows she can do better. Her brain churns with images of the great novel she could and should be writing–what will eventually be Strangers on a Train— which would later be adapted into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. At the same time, Pat, a lesbian consumed with self-loathing, is in and out of conversion therapy, leaving a trail of sexual conquests and broken hearts in her wake. However, one of those very affairs and a chance encounter in a department store give Pat the idea for her soon-to-be beloved tale of homosexual love that was the first of its kind–it gave the lesbian protagonists a happy ending. This is not just the story behind a classic queer book, but of a queer artist who was deeply flawed. It’s a comic about what it was like to write comics in the 1950s, but also about what it means to be a writer at any time in history, struggling to find your voice. Author Grace Ellis contextualizes Patricia Highsmith as both an unintentional queer icon and a figure whose problematic views and noted anti-Semitism have cemented her controversial legacy. Highsmith’s life imitated her art with results as devastating as the plot twists that brought her fame and fortune.
• Bingo Love by Tee Franklin. When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-’60s, Hazel and Marire unite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage.
• Rockstar and Softboy by Sina Grace. Rockstar plans the greatest house party ever as a means of lifting roommate Softboy’s spirits, but things take a gnarly turn when the dreaded PARTY ANIMAL shows up to make a mess of things… and dredge up long held secrets between two BFFs who seemingly share everything!
• LSBN: A Graphic Novella by Emma Jayne. After many grueling years of defending against colossal, violent creatures, the machine that will turn the conflict in humanity’s favour is nearing completion…until the war unexpectedly comes to a sudden, peaceful resolution. The world rejoices. However, two women fall into crisis as their life’s work becomes obsolete. Commander Sugimoto and her lead engineer Mischa Polyakov have spent nearly every waking moment together since the project’s inception, but without the pretense of their careers and world-ending calamity, do they have a reason to stay in one another’s lives?
• Stone Fruit by Lee Lai. Bron and Ray are a queer couple who enjoy their role as the fun weirdo aunties for Ray’s niece Nessie. Their bi-weekly playdates are little oases of wildness, joy, and ease in daily lives that ping-pong between familial tensions and isolation. As their emotional intimacy erodes, Ray and Bron turn to repair their broken family ties. Taking a leap of faith, each opens up to their respective sisters and learns that they have more in common with their siblings than they ever knew. In time, the emptiness they feel after their break-up is supplanted with a deep sisterly love and understanding.
• Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky. Newly-out trans artist’s assistant Sammie is invited to an old friend’s bachelor weekend in El Campo, a hedonistic wonderland of a city floating in the Atlantic Ocean’s international waters-think Las Vegas with even fewer rules. Though they have not identified as a man for over a year, Sammie’s college buddies haven’t quite gotten the message-as evidenced by their formerly closest friend Adam asking them to be his “best man.” Arriving at the swanky hotel, Sammie immediately questions their decision to come. Bad enough that they have to suffer through a torrent of passive-aggressive comments from the groom’s pals-all met with zero pushback from supposed “nice guy” Adam. But also, they seem to be the only one who’s noticed the mysterious cult that’s also staying at the hotel, and is ritually dismembering guests and demanding fealty to their bloodthirsty god.  
• Wuvable Oaf by Ed Luce. Oaf is a large, hirsute, scary-looking ex-wrestler who lives in San Francisco with his adorable kittens and listens to a lot of Morrissey. The book follow’s Oaf’s search for love in the big city, especially his pursuit of Eiffel, the lead singer of the black metal / queercore band Ejaculoid. Ed Luce deftly weaves stories of the friends, associates and ex-lovers of both men into the story of their courtship. 
• Luisa: Now and Then by Carole Maurel. At 32, Luisa encounters her 15-year-old self in this sentimental and bold story about self-acceptance and sexuality. A disillusioned photographer has a chance encounter with her lost teenage self who has miraculously traveled into the future. Together, both women ultimately discover who they really are, finding the courage to live life by being true to themselves. A time-traveling love story that turns coming-of-age conventions upside down, Luisa is a universal queer romance for the modern age.
• Bloodlust and Bonnets by Emily McGovern. Set in early nineteenth-century Britain, Bloodlust & Bonnets follows Lucy, an unworldly debutante who desires a life of passion and intrigue—qualities which earn her the attention of Lady Violet Travesty, the leader of a local vampire cult. But before Lucy can embark on her new life of vampiric debauchery, she finds herself unexpectedly thrown together with the flamboyant poet Lord Byron (“from books!”) and a mysterious bounty-hunter named Sham. The unlikely trio lie, flirt, fight, and manipulate each other as they make their way across Britain, disrupting society balls, slaying vampires, and making every effort not to betray their feelings to each other as their personal and romantic lives become increasingly entangled.
• X-Gender by Asuka Miyazaki. A diary of my sexual awakening…at thirty-three?!! Asuka is neither a woman nor a man-they’re X-gender (a non-binary identity)-and they’ve realized they like women! Okay, now what? Adult films are fun to watch, but real sex is less appealing. Would having a penis make that better or worse? Periods already suck, and sex means more fluids from more people! This autobiographical manga follows Asuka’s feelings about their body, their relationships, and the fun (and sometimes terrible) experience of having an awakening in their thirties.
• Light Carries On by Ray Nadine. When Leon’s camera unexpectedly breaks, he is forced to borrow a used one from his mom’s antique store. As he snaps the first picture, the ghost of the camera’s former owner is released and the two are inexplicably linked. After taking Leon’s body for an accidental joy ride, the ghost introduces himself as Cody, a queer punk rocker who died decades ago. Of course, he doesn’t remember how he wound up dead but the two decide investigating might be the only way to end the haunting. Leon has been reeling from a recent break-up with his boyfriend, recovering from his time in the military, and trying to become a photographer who can afford to take pictures of something more than high school proms and weddings. So being the only one able to see and talk to a ghost that died before cellphones, Wikipedia, or iTunes seems like a great way to fill his ample free time. The two get closer as they travel around Chicago showing each other the landmarks of their pasts and trying to unearth the secrets around Cody’s mysterious death. They discover they have much more in common than expected as they explore the complexities of life, love, and after death, taking breaks to jam out to tunes, hang out in planetariums, and slurp down tasty frozen beverages.
• Grand Slam Romance by Emma Oosterhous. In this queer graphic novel that’s equal parts romance, softball, and magical girl drama, Mickey Monsoon is the hotshot pitcher for the Belle City Broads, and their team is poised to sweep the league this season. But Mickey is thrown off their game when Astra Maxima shows up to catch for the Gaiety Gals, the Broads’ fiercest rival. Years ago Mickey and Astra were best friends… and maybe more. That was, until Astra unceremoniously dumped Mickey to become a softball wunderkind at a private girl’s school in Switzerland. Now, Astra is flirty, arrogant, and reckless on the field–everything the rule-abiding Mickey hates. Mickey’s rapidly getting in too deep, but are they just in trouble or are they actually in love?
• Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. Shy and softhearted Charlie Spring sits next to rugby player Nick Nelson in class one morning. A warm and intimate friendship follows, and that soon develops into something more for Charlie, who doesn’t think he has a chance. But Nick is struggling with feelings of his own, and as the two grow closer and take on the ups and downs of high school, they come to understand the surprising and delightful ways in which love works.
• The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish. During a painful night that no one really wants to be having, a friendship in the last stages of decay creaks under the strain of a fumbling encounter between its two estranged participants, leaving them even more lonely and uncertain than before. Parrish’s first graphic novel for Fantagraphics is a visual tour de force, always in the service of the author’s ever-prevalent themes: navigating queer desire, masculinity, fear, and the ever-in-flux state of friendships.
• The Short While by Jeremy Sorese. After a party, two men accidentally swap their jackets and are thrust into a most opportune meeting in this tragic but redemptive love story about two men who meet, quickly fall in love, and are separated by an act of violence and trauma. LOVE. LOSS. REDEMPTION. After a party, two men accidentally swap their jackets and are thrust into a most opportune meeting. In each other they find what they’ve been missing. Love. Companionship. Trust. Honesty. Vulnerability. And they find everything they feared. Tragedy. Loss. Loss of self. Loss of freedom. Loss of each other. 
• My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame. Yaichi is a work-at-home suburban dad in contemporary Tokyo, married to wife Natsuki, father to young daughter Kana. Their lives are suddenly upended with the arrival at their doorstep of a hulking, affable Canadian named Mike Flanagan, who declares himself the widower of Yaichi’s estranged gay twin, Ryoji. Mike is on a quest to explore Ryoji’s past, and the family reluctantly but dutifully takes him in. What follows is an unprecedented, revelatory look at and journey into the largely still-closeted Japanese gay culture- how it’s been affected by the West, and how the next generation has the chance to change the preconceptions of and prejudices against it.
• Sins of the Black Flamingo by Andrew Wheeler. Sebastian Harlow is the Black Flamingo, a flamboyant and narcissistic thief who gets his kicks stealing mystic artifacts from the wealthy and corrupt of Miami’s occult underground. When his latest job leads him to his biggest score so far, the hedonistic outlaw discovers something he wasn’t looking for something to believe in.
• The Contradictions by Sophie Yanow. Sophie is young and queer and into feminist theory. She decides to study abroad, choosing Paris for no firm reason beyond liking French comics. Feeling a bit lonely and out of place, she’s desperate for community and a sense of belonging. She stumbles into what/who she’s looking for when she meets Zena. An anarchist student-activist committed to veganism and shoplifting, Zena offers Sophie a whole new political ideology that feels electric. Enamored–of Zena, of the idea of living more righteously–Sophie finds herself swept up in a whirlwind friendship that blows her even further from her rural California roots as they embark on a disastrous hitchhiking trip to Amsterdam and Berlin, full of couch surfing, drug tripping, and radical book fairs. She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki. Cooking is how Nomoto de-stresses, but one day, she finds herself making way more than she can eat by herself. And so, she invites her neighbor Kasuga, who also lives alone. What will come out of this impromptu dinner invitation…?

Graphic Memoirs

• At 30 I Realized I Had No Gender: Life Lessons From a 50-Year-Old After Two Decades of Self-Discovery by Shou Arai. At age 30, Shou Arai (he/him) came to a realization; he had no gender. Now he was faced with a question he’d never really considered: how to age in a society where everything is so strongly segregated between two genders? This autobiographical manga explores Japanese culture surrounding gender, transgender issues, and the day to day obstacles faced by gender minorities and members of the LGBTQIA+ community with a lighthearted, comedic attitude.
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
• Gay Giant by Gabriel Ebensperger. A child who feels like an outsider in a world that’s set against him. A boy who sings on the playground instead of playing soccer, who likes Barbies, and whose secretly favorite car is the one called Tutti Frutti. Gabriel Ebensperger shares with us his struggles with his own inadequacy, his feelings of guilt, and above all, his fear that his “difference” will be discovered. The vibrant bright pink pages of Gay Giant paint a picture of what it was like to grow up being gay in the ’90s, through the voice of an endearing character, who on the way to becoming an adult realizes that the rejection of the world is never over, and that true acceptance comes from within yourself.
• Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank by Eric Orner. Eric Orner, the acclaimed cartoonist of one of the country’s most popular and longest-running gay comic strips, The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green , presents his debut graphic novel–a dazzling, irreverent biography of the iconic and iconoclastic Barney Frank, one of the first gay and out congressmen and a front-line defender of civil rights. What are the odds that a disheveled, zaftig, closeted kid with the thickest of Jersey accents might wind up running Boston on behalf of a storied Irish Catholic political machine, drafting the nation’s first gay rights laws, reforming Wall Street after the Great Recession, and finding love, after a lifetime assuming that he couldn’t and wouldn’t? In Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, one of America’s first out members of Congress and a gay and civil rights crusader for an era is confirmed as a hero of our age. But more than a biography of an indispensable LGBTQ pioneer, this funny, beautifully rendered, warts-and-all graphic account reveals the down-and-dirty inner workings of Boston and DC politics. As Frank’s longtime staff counsel and press secretary, Eric Orner lends his first-hand perspective to this extraordinary work of history, paying tribute to the mighty striving of committed liberals to defend ordinary Americans from an assault on their shared society.
• Marry Me a Little: A Graphic Memoir by Robert Kirby. Marriage doesn’t define a relationship. Unless you want it to. In Marry Me a Little, Rob Kirby recounts his experience of marrying his longtime partner, John, just after same-sex marriage was legalized in Minnesota in 2013, and two years before the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges made same-sex marriage the law of the land. This is a personal story–about Rob’s ambivalence (if not antipathy) toward the institution of marriage, his loving relationship with John, and the life that they share together–set against the historical and political backdrop of shifting attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights and marriage. With humor, candor, and a near-whimsical drawing style, Rob relates how he and John navigated this changing landscape, how they planned and celebrated their wedding, and how the LGBTQ+ community is now facing the very real possibility of setbacks to marriage equality. Heartwarming, honest, and slyly humorous, Marry Me a Little is a wonderfully illustrated celebration of a romantic partnership between two men and a personal account of a momentous and historic moment in the fight for gay rights.
• Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity–what it means and how to think about it–for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
• My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Kabi Nagata. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is an honest and heartfelt look at one young woman’s exploration of her sexuality, mental well-being, and growing up in our modern age. Told using expressive artwork that invokes both laughter and tears, this moving and highly entertaining single volume depicts not only the artist’s burgeoning sexuality, but many other personal aspects of her life that will resonate with readers.
• Death Threat by Vivek Shraya. In the fall of 2017, acclaimed writer and musician Vivek Shraya began receiving vivid and disturbing transphobic hate mail from a stranger. Acclaimed artist Ness Lee brings these letters and Shraya’s responses to them to startling life in Death Threat, a graphic novel that, by its existence, becomes a compelling act of resistance. Using satire and surrealism, Death Threat is an unflinching portrayal of violent harassment from the perspective of both the perpetrator and the target, illustrating the dangers of online accessibility, and the ease with which vitriolic hatred can be spread digitally.
• Washington’s Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben by Josh Trujillo. A graphic novel biography of Baron von Steuben, the soldier, immigrant, and flamboyant homosexual who influenced the course of US history during the Revolutionary War despite being omitted from our textbooks. Author Josh Trujillo and illustrator Levi Hastings tell the true story of one of the most important–but largely forgotten–military leaders of the American Revolution, Baron von Steuben, who brought much-needed knowledge to the inexperienced and ill-prepared Continental Army. As its first Inspector General, von Steuben created an organizational framework for the US military, which included writing the Blue Book guide that became the standard for training American soldiers for more than a century. Von Steuben was also, by all accounts, a flamboyant homosexual in an era when the term didn’t even exist. Beginning with von Steuben’s career in the Prussian Army, Trujillo explores his recruitment by Benjamin Franklin, his work alongside General George Washington at Valley Forge, and his eventual decline into obscurity. In Washington’s Gay General , Trujillo and Hastings impart both the intricacies of queer history and the importance of telling stories that highlight queer experiences.Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag by A. K Summers. Teek identifies as a masculine woman in a world bent on associating pregnancy with a cult of uber-femininity. Teek wonders, ‘Can butches even get pregnant?’ Of course, as she and her pragmatic femme girlfriend Vee discover, they can. But what happens when they do? Written and illustrated by A.K. Summers, and based on her own pregnancy, Pregnant Butch strives to depict this increasingly common, but still underrepresented experience of queer pregnancy with humor and complexity – from the question of whether suspenders count as legitimate maternity wear to the strains created by different views of pregnancy within a couple and finally to a culturally critical and compassionate interrogation of gender in pregnancy. Offering smart, ambitious art, this graphic memoir is a must-read for would-be pregnant butches and anyone interested in the intersection of birth and gender, as well as a perfect queer baby shower gift and conversation starter for those who always assumed they ‘got’ being pregnant.

To find more great books browse the book lists created by the librarians at Robbins or go to the book recommendation page for the Robbins library