Weekend conference brings comics out of the closet

"Dykes to Watch Out For" is a comic strip, just like "Calvin and Hobbes" or "The Family Circus," but "Dykes" offers a lesbian perspective on the world that won't be found in any of the Sunday Comics.

Alison Bechdel, OC '81, and creator of "Dykes," as well as three other major gay and lesbian cartoonists, will be at Oberlin College this weekend. They will be participating in "A Tip O' The Nib: Celebrating the Works of Gay and Lesbian Cartoonists," a conference presented by the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC).

Cara Wick, LGBT community coordinator at MRC, and organizer of this conference, describes the artists as "the most well-known and important gay and lesbian cartoonists of the past two decades."

The group includes Bechdel, Howard Cruse, creator of "Stuck Rubber Baby," Diane DiMassa, creator of "Hothead Paisan," and Rupert Kinnard, creator of "Cathartic Comics." The cartoonists will present their work in Wilder 101 this Saturday, as well as signing books and collaborating on a drawing that will be donated to the MRC.

For Wick, the conference is the result of months of hard work and planning. Since thinking up the idea during a dinner with Bechdel, organizing the conference has meant, according to Wick, putting together "hundreds of details."

"The main thing," said Wick, "was, would the artists come? After that, I had to make sure that there was student interest in the idea. As soon as I dropped the news, there was lots of enthusiasm." Student enthusiasm also greatly helped in the realization of the conference. "This could not have happened without student input," Wick said.

Wick attributes her own enthusiasm for the idea to her love of gay and lesbian cartooning. "Gay and lesbian characters are important, because they allow you to laugh at yourself. Living against the grain of a heterosexual society is hard. These cartoons make a life that's overwhelmingly hard into one that's overwhelmingly funny. People commit suicide because they are gay. It's important to be able to sit back and smile."

Each of the cartoonists provides their own humorous take on being gay or lesbian in America today, and collectively, they cover a broad range of issues. "They cover everything from current events of the day, to Ellen coming out, to problems of relationships, to dealing with homophobia," said Wick. "They cover different aspects."

The characters the cartoonists use to discuss these aspects differ as widely as the aspects themselves. They range from Hothead Paisan, the namesake of DiMassa's strip - a lesbian who became a terrorist after watching too much TV- to The Brown Bomber, star of Kinnard's strip and a "part-time superhero/fairy."

As different as the content and style of the strips are, they all have a common identification as gay or lesbian comics. When asked whether this label constrained the artists to issues of sexuality, Wick responded that, in her opinion, the label is liberating, not constraining. "If you don't say you're gay, people think you're straight. Saying you're gay opens up opportunities. It offers a new field to write about."

This new field is one that, according to Wick and others, should receive a great deal attention from the gay and lesbian community this weekend. "This is the first conference of its kind, and has attracted reporters from the Gay People's Chronicle, and the national gay and lesbian newspaper, the Washington Blade," said Wick.

Julia Nieves, Associate Dean of the MRC and member of the conference's organizing committee, added that "Oberlin College has been a place where the LGBT community has been active and outspoken and continues to be so... Many people in the community read Bechdel and DiMassa."

First-year Mary Margaret Towey, who is also a member of the conference's organizing committee, believes he conference will be important beyond the gay and lesbian communities. "The conference is important in the same respect that any gay or lesbian creative artist needs visibility. Any chance they have to bring it to the outside world is good." Towey added that she believes Oberlin will be a receptive community for the conference. "We're not exactly toad-suck Arkansas where people would stampede and call guys in white sheets."

This humorous illustration, by Diane DiMassa, is featured on the cover of a lesbian cartoon anthology, Dyke Strippers: Lesbian Cartoonists A to Z. DiMassa, along with Alison Bechdel, OC '81, and others, will visit Oberlin this weekend for "A Tip O' The Nib: Celebrating the Works of Gay and Lesbian Cartoonists."