by rory midhani
feature image by Bishakh Som
I love Kickstarter. It’s allowed so many amazing comics anthologies to be made. From Chainmail Bikini to Elements to Beyond to Power & Magic, women and queer people have been using the platform as a way to launch their own projects that tell their own stories and support their own communities. The next project that’s bringing these voices into the spotlight is highlighting trans comic creators, and it’s called We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. We’re Still Here is being edited by Tara Avery and Jeanne Thornton, and you can support it on Kickstarter right now.
art by Veronica Casson
In We’re Still Here, there are fifty-five different stories, all with different trans creators or creative teams. There’s no set genre for these comics, so there’s everything from slice-of-life to visual essays to sci-fi to nonfiction. According to the Kickstarter, in We’re Still Here “you’ll find all the hit trans content you crave: the weird stuff, the stuff that goes to uncomfortable places, the stuff that highlights little-known kinks and contradictions in the trans experience, and most importantly, the stories about trans people having a good, maybe sad time.” They continue to list a small sampling of the types of stories that are in the anthology.
- 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”
art by Kai Egener
This anthology boasts fifty-five different trans creators or trans creative teams! That’s so many! I’ve never read comics by a lot of them; I’m so excited to discover so much new talent! There are some people I’m very familiar with, like Tamra Bonvillain, Annie Mok, Sophie Labelle, E Hetrick Jackson, Melanie Gillman and Mia Rose Elbo, but that still leaves four dozen new creators for me to discover. That’s exactly what I was talking about with how great these Kickstarter anthologies are: I might have never known about many of these creators if it weren’t for We’re Still Here.
art by Robin Billadeau
Now, I get to share with you this super cute and amazing short comic by Renny Triangle about a trans girl going out in public for the first time in “girl mode” with her boyfriend and coming out to herself. Triangle’s comic is incredibly sweet and will hit you right in the gut and the heart if you you’re trans.
For just $15 you can get an eBook version of the anthology or for $25 you can get a physical copy.
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Welcome to Drawn to Comics! From diary comics to superheroes, from webcomics to graphic novels – this is where we’ll be taking a look at comics by, featuring and for queer ladies. So whether you love to look at detailed personal accounts of other people’s lives, explore new and creative worlds, or you just love to see hot ladies in spandex, we’ve got something for you.
If you have a comic that you’d like to see me review, you can email me at mey [at] autostraddle [dot] com.
That date comic brought me so many little feels! As a cis woman that presents as a cis woman, I never paused to think about something so simple as dressing up for a date.
That comic is beautiful, and the anthology seems amazing.
Just pledged :D thanks Mey!
Weirdly enough, I just pledged for a digital copy yesterday. Looks like a superbly broad range of styles and themes, and I was delighted to see Egypt Urnash (of the excellent Decrypting Rita, and Five Glasses of Absinthe) amidst the roster.
Well I just cried.
I love this!
OMG that’s so beautiful!
Wow! Nailed it!
I so remember the fear of going out for the first time, the trepidation, the nerves, the sudden realization that my “dressing up” wasn’t just some weird thing I did my entire life that it was who I was meant to be. From that moment on I no longer felt my own light dwindling like a lightening bug on the windshield of life, slowly fading out. From that moment my soul bagan to glow and shine brightly. It changed everything.
I know where I am going to spend a little of my next paycheck. Thank you Mey for sharing.
Sounds like my kind of graphic novel
Christ, I teared up when I saw my comic was up here in full, and all the lovely comments about it below. I’m so glad you guys enjoyed it, and I’m super excited for how much support the kickstarter is getting!
EEEE! I’M SO EXCITED FOR THIS! found out about this bc my friend, Althea Solis (illustrator extraordinaire) was selected.
STOKED STOKED STOKED