The Cartoon Closet

© Brooke McEldowney, Distributed by UFS, Inc.

Now and then, a gay character has managed to work his way into this Leave It To Beaver world. In addition to For Better Or For Worse’s Lawrence, there is Mark Slackmeyer and his former partner Chase in Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury (a previous gay Doonesbury character, Andy Lippincott, died of AIDS in 1991). On 9 Chickweed Lane, Seth, the housemate and confidante of the main character, is gay and has a boyfriend. And some read six year-old Andrew in the comic strip Soup to Nutz as potentially gay, since he sometimes plays with dolls and finds the Brawny paper towel guy attractive.

When Berkeley Breathed ended Outland (a Bloom County spin-off) in 1995, he famously outed notorious womanizer Steve Dallas, though that was mostly just a sight-gag. In 2003, he brought the character back in a follow-up strip Opus, but by then he had been “cured” of his homosexuality.

Strips such as Life in Hell and Ernie Pook’s Comeek have gay characters, but they’re weekly comics and tend to run in alternative periodicals, not daily newspapers.

Meanwhile, a few other comics have brought up gay issues, especially Candorville and The Boondocks (which the author discontinued in 2006). Mallard Fillmore, a conservative cartoon, also tackles gay issues, though always in a critical, and usually insulting way. And in 1993 (at the same time Lawrence was coming out in For Better or For Worse), Beetle Bailey even acknowledged gays in the military, with a voice proclaiming “Hooray! It’s so long overdue!”

But it’s getting harder. It’s been years since a new gay character has been introduced to the comics pages, in either an existing strip or a new comic. And AfterElton.com learned of none that are in the works.

Newspapers in a Panic

In March of this year, Greg Evans’ comic Luann, which appears in over 350 newspapers, featured a female character wanting to go to a dance with a male fire captain, only to learn that the captain was already taking “Tony.”

Later, another character says, “You mean the Captain is--?” one character starts to say.

“Not asking me,” the female finishes.

According to Evans, the strip was specifically written in a vague way so that the fire captain could be interpreted as gay – or not. “The truth is, plenty of readers still find this material inappropriate for the comic page,” Evans says.

In other words, in the year 2008, many cartoonists are too frightened to even use the word “gay.”

“There’s this perception that [the comics page] is conservative,” says the Washington Post Writers Group’s Lago. But when pushed, she concedes that it’s more than just a perception, and in some ways at least, the industry is getting more conservative still. “It gets harder and harder to push these issues,” she admits.

In fact, the traditional newspaper industry is in a panic. As people turn to the Internet and cable television, and tune out news in general, circulations and ad revenue are in steep decline. In March, the Newspaper Association of America reported that print advertising revenue had plunged almost ten percent in the last year — the steepest decline since the association started measuring in 1950. And circulation at the nation’s top 25 newspapers has fallen by 1.4 million in the last four years, also 10%.

As a result, newspapers are desperate to save money. They’re cutting staff and shrinking coverage. On the comics pages, they’re running fewer strips (and at smaller sizes). At the syndicates, they’re introducing fewer new comics, and in terms of content, they seem more cautious than ever.

In other words, as the late columnist Molly Ivins once put it, the response of the newspaper industry to their declining prospects has been to make their product “smaller and less helpful and less interesting.”

The problem, says Grimley, is that many existing comics have fans who have been reading the strip for years. “How can we get room to try new strips without upsetting readers?” she says. “Because comics get to be a habit.

“The biggest concern comic strip editors have is mixing it up,” she says. “Giving their pages variety.” In the liberal Seattle market, Grimley would definitely be open to a strip with gay characters, but says she’s never been offered one. “We’re at the mercy of the syndicates, what they offer us,” she says.

But by being so slow to change, newspapers may be alienating the very folks most interested in comics, some of whom might be turned off by the timid nature of today’s strips. It’s probably not a coincidence that at the same time interest in newspaper comic strips is waning, the popularity of webcomics, with few or no content restrictions, is exploding.

In addition to his traditional strip 9 Chickweed Lane, Brooke McEldowney also draws a webcomic, Pibgorn. “I’m much more free there,” he says.

A Subtle Form of Censorship

When it comes to newspaper comics, everyone, editors and cartoonists alike, agrees: the industry is afraid of controversy, especially organized letter-writing campaigns.

“There is such a strong voice from the religious right,” says For Better Or For Worse’s Lynn Johnston, “and they can force a strip to be pulled. The comics is the one page that editors feel like they shouldn’t have to worry about.”

“I think everybody’s cautious,” agrees the Washington Post Writer Group’s Lago. “Particularly if there’s an organized campaign. It becomes more and more difficult for the syndicates.”

“They get one letter, and they think it’s a deluge,” laughs McEldowney.

Next Page: AfterElton.com gets the runaround from comic strip editors!