“Suffering Sappho!”

<p>Comics have been an important locus of queer female identity community and politics for generations. Whether taking the form of newspaper strips comic books or graphic novels and memoirs the medium has a long history of featuring female same-sex attraction relationships and identity. This book explores the past place current presence and possible future status of lesbianism in comics. </p><p>What role has the medium played in the cultural construction social (and literal) visibility and political advocacy of same-sex female attraction and identity? Likewise how have these features changed over time? How have nonheteronormative female characters been raced classed and gendered? What is the relationship between lesbian comics and queer comics? What role has the medium played in establishing the distinction between lesbian and queer female identity as well as blurring reinforcing or policing it? What roles have queer female comics characters and cartoonists played in the origins history and evolution of sequential art as a genre? The essays in this book inspire an engagement with these and other questions as well as provide an exploration of possible answers. They provide a compelling examination of a variety of important titles characters creators topics themes and issues. </p><p>The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the <i>Journal of Lesbian Studies</i>.</p>