No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics (Documentary)

Let me start with a confession that I have not read any queer comic books till date and I don't think I will. It is just not my scene. So keeping that in mind, my thoughts on this documentary were already biased. Although I do understand the importance (historical and current) of queer comic books and how it helped our community, I sometimes look at things from a personal entertainment point of view, and I know where this is going to lead to. This PBS documentary shines a light on the trailblazing LGBTQ artists making underground comics and strips in the 1970s and the ’80s. It tells the story of five scrappy and pioneering cartoonists who depicted everything from the AIDS crisis, coming out, and same-sex marriage, to themes of race, gender, and disability.

No Straight Lines details how people like Come Out Comix creator Mary Wings and Rupert Kinnard — the cartoonist who created the first Black, openly gay superhero — were some of the first people to recognize how underground comix presented a unique opportunity for queer people to create their own stories. Built around a series of interviews, the film paints a picture of how restrictive cultural forces like the Comics Code Authority inspired a generation of rebellious artists to independently make books of their own featuring subject matter that couldn’t be printed anywhere else. Though No Straight Lines is very much a celebratory tribute to each of the trailblazing artists it features, it is very careful to frame their individual stories and the genesis of underground comix as important pieces of a larger queer history. The documentary illustrates how, through their art, creators of queer comics have been able to help countless people feel a sense of community at times when it was all but impossible to be openly queer.

As mentioned above, even though the topic was not really of interest to me, I did learn a few things from it. It was interesting to see how diverse and varied the characters and stories of some of these comic books were. Although I do have to admit that constant movements between the 5 main artists and their work, prevented me from being able to focus on ny one of them specifically and I found myself getting distracted and losing interest, especially since I came in the film with a blank slate having absolutely no prior knowledge. Bringing multitudes of queer experience to life in a changing world, No Straight Lines works best when letting its interview subjects tell their personal stories alongside these comics showcasing everyday pursuits of love, sex and community. But mostly it was just nice to see a celebratory portrait of this community finding their voice, and then generations later helping a new youth discover that they were not alone. The object of the film is to offer a colorful and intriguing buffet of artists and stories that will inspire you to keep looking for more to find and enjoy, but only if you a fan of comic books and specifically queer ones at that. For rest of us like me, it was mostly a meh!! (3/10)