The Cartoon Closet

In 1993, Canadian cartoonist Lynn Johnston introduced a gay character, 17 year-old Lawrence, into her enormously popular daily newspaper comic strip For Better or For Worse. The four-week storyline, which dealt sensitively with the character’s coming out and his parents’ and friends’ reactions, was one of the first of its kind, and it inspired a firestorm of controversy.

“At the time, I was in a panic, because I had no idea how contentious it would be,” Johnston tells AfterElton.com. Forty newspapers refused to run the “gay” strips at all. “One editor in a small town, his dog was spray-painted, and his kids were attacked at school,” Johnston says, also noting that most of the controversy was religiously based, much originating in the southern United States.

In all, more than thirty newspapers permanently dropped the strip. “I tried to warn her,” says Lee Salem, Johnston’s editor and the president of Universal Press Syndicate.

For Better or For Worse eventually weathered the storm, and is still one of the most popular on the comics pages – one of only five strips to appear in more than 2000 newspapers. “It has more clients than it had back then,” Salem says. And the Lawrence storyline made Johnston one of very few comic creators ever to be named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

All these years later, is there anything about the storyline that Johnston would have done differently? “I would make it longer,” she says. “I loved the story and the challenge.”

For Better or For Worse © 1993 Lynn Johnston Prod.
Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

In retrospect, the controversy isn’t too surprising. It’s exactly what has happened in almost every entertainment medium: a courageous individual dares to include a gay character, draws furious controversy and attention, but then ultimately ends up setting the stage for other creative individuals to follow in his or her footsteps, usually with more nuanced or multi-dimensional characterizations of gay characters or storylines.

It’s what happened with movies like The Boys in the Band (1970) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975). It’s what happened on television with shows like Soap and thirtysomething.

But it didn’t happen on the comics pages. Johnston set the stage, but not much has followed in the ensuing years. In the more than 170 comic strips currently available in the U.S. from the six major cartoon syndicates, there is now only a smattering of gay characters, almost all of them supporting or peripheral players.

On the comics pages, it’s mostly as if gay people don’t exist at all.

Why is this? In interviews with industry professionals, it quickly became clear how cautious the newspaper industry has become, especially the comics pages, and that a richer, more complete gay presence probably won’t be forthcoming anytime soon.

A Leave It to Beaver World

Newspaper comic strips are just for kids.

This is what many people still think. As such, “controversial” topics like homosexuality are often seen as not appropriate for the comics pages.

“The comics by and large have never been for kids,” says Janet Grimley, assistant managing editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “Though there are definitely strips that kids can read.”

“I don’t think comics are [just] for children,” agrees Brooke McEldowney, the cartoonist creator of 9 Chickweed Lane, one of few strips to feature gay characters. “But that’s the way it’s perceived.”

In fact, newspaper comic strips have long taken on even controversial social issues, insists Amy Lago, comics editor at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates such strips as Opus and Candorville. Of the medium’s most famous and influential strips, “They did tend to be progressive,” she points out.

Sure enough, Walt Kelly’s classic newspaper comic Pogo, which had its hey-day in the 1950s and 60s, was well known for its parodies of political figures, especially Simple J. Malarkey, Kelly’s devastating caricature of Joseph McCarthy.

Lynn Johnston, Brooke McEldowney, Charles Schulz

And when Charles Schultz introduced Franklin, a black character, into the world of Peanuts in 1968, he deliberately treated it as a non-event. Schultz made a powerful statement at the time when he had Franklin interact with, and go to a non-segregated school with, the other characters in the strip, who never even acknowledged the color of his skin. (Some argue that Schultz also introduced one of the first quasi-lesbian comic strip characters in the form of Peppermint Patty, whose tomboyishness and impressive athletic ability, revolutionary at the time, was treated as similarly unremarkable.)

The problem is, in many ways, the comic industry stopping changing in the 1960s.

“Newspapers are seen as very liberal,” says McEldowney. “But on the comics page, it [is] still like the 1950s, with Donna Reed.”

It was actually “news” in 1991 when the title character in Blondie, a perennial housewife, finally took a job (running a catering business). And the most revolutionary change to hit The Family Circus was when the mom updated her hairstyle in 1996.

“Editors have to be sensitive to their market,” Grimley says. “You have to decide if you’re willing to upset your readers over a comic strip.”

Next Page! Censorship? And a cartoon character who finds the Brawny papertowel guy attractive!