Drawn Together: Comics, Diversity and Stereotypes. Directed by Harleen Singh. San Francisco: Kaur Films, 2018. 52 minutes.

No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics. Directed by Vivian Kleiman. Los Angeles: GOOD DOCS, 2021. 79 minutes.

Harleen Singh’s Drawn Together (2018) and Vivian Kleiman’s No Straight Lines (2021) are energetic explorations of prejudice and activism that will easily spark broader conversations about equity and representation in a range of classrooms. Both neophytes and longtime lovers of graphic sequential narratives have much to learn from these films because they are fundamentally about the power of passionate people to compel change—comics just happen to provide the setting and material for that advocacy.

In its first few minutes, Drawn Together manages to establish the power of stereotypes, trace a quick comics history, posit that “our society today is much more diverse than at any time in our history,” and then ask whether comics can “be a medium for embracing this diversity and challenging stereotypes” (1:43). Continuing in this quick-and-punchy style, the film introduces three comics professionals—Keith Knight, Vishavjit Singh, and Eileen Kaur Alden—whose experiences in comics and cosplay manifest the film’s argument that diverse representation today can be the antidote to histories of racism, xenophobia, and bigotry in US culture.1 In one segment, the filmmakers crowdsource definitions of “a superhero” from attendees at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con International. The resulting character is someone who “takes action when others don't,” demonstrates vulnerability and humility, and adheres to a strong moral code—all traits unencumbered by gender, religion, race, or even body type (2:46). As Alden says near the film’s conclusion, “There are tremendous possibilities; anyone can bring their story and make it part of the narrative of our culture” (49:34).

While Drawn Together argues for the power of comics to battle hate, No Straight Lines describes how LGBTQ+ comics creators have been doing just that for decades. This film does a fuller job of reviewing the essential mile markers of comics history—from early strips and the Golden Age of Comic Books to the current moment of webcomics, New York Times bestsellers, and the award-winning Broadway adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s memoir Fun Home (2006). The documentary covers the underground comix movement, zines, and syndication opportunities in niche urban publications to convey the ups and downs of comics publishing in the twentieth century. It also devotes sufficient time to challenges like tokenism and fights for intersectional representation, the traumas and activism of the AIDS era, and the longstanding effects of suppression from the Comics Code Authority—which was “designed to reinforce the most bland vision of what American life should be like” (4:28), according to Howard Cruse. Largely because of its extended interviews with cartooning luminaries such as Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, Jennifer Camper, Rupert Kinnard, and Mary Wings, No Straight Lines is at once intimate and significant. It is a flashy and joyful history that traces queer representation from painful obscurity to flourishing visibility.

Both films are lively, heartfelt, evocative, and engaging, with a clear place in literature and fine arts classrooms where comics is the central subject. But No Straight Lines would also make valuable contributions in entry-level women’s, gender, and sexuality studies courses, while Drawn Together would be at home in many racial and ethnic studies, religious studies, and pop-culture studies courses, especially where comics may introduce fresh material. While neither film is likely to satisfy the needs of an advanced class, the documentaries lucidly address and do not overly simplify key feminist issues, such as intersectionality, cultural constructions of identity, and representational politics. For instructors looking to pair these introductory films with more advanced readings or to do some homework for themselves, the body of scholarship relevant to the themes of these films is rapidly growing.2

That said, teachers should be aware that both films are inherently optimistic and may require additional support to expose the limitations of their linear progress narratives. For example, neither documentary addresses the recent surge of book bans, which disproportionately target texts featuring characters of color and racial themes (30 percent of bans) or LGBTQ+ characters and themes (33 percent), according to a PEN America report (Meehan and Friedman 2023).3 Because the films focus on visibility achievements, viewers could mistakenly conclude that censorship and the fear of “corruption” from comics are historical artifacts—rather than ongoing battles.

Either of these films could be comfortably paired with any current Marvel/DC blockbuster and any number of contemporary comics readings—especially those known for drawing the ire of the book-banning crowd, such as Mike Curato’s Flamer (2020), Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (2019), G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel (2014), Jul Maroh’s Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013), or Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar (2003), in addition to Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006). Students could be asked to draw their own conclusions about how far along we are in the effort to increase diverse identity representations and abolish stereotypes in comics. After watching these films, students will be equipped to examine both how much ground has been gained in recent decades and how much important work remains to be done.

1 Keith Knight is a syndicated political cartoonist and creator of the strips The K Chronicles, (Th)ink, and The Knight Life. Vishavjit Singh is the creator of the webcomic Sikhtoons, and he cosplays as Sikh Captain America. Eileen Kaur Alden is the co-creator (with Supreet Singh Manchanda) of Super Sikh, illustrated by Amit Tayal.

2 Here are just a few highly recommended titles for background research or to assign to advanced students: with Drawn Together, consider Scott Smith and José Alaniz's Uncanny Bodies (2019), Tahneer Oksman's “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?” (2016), Frederick Luis Aldama’s Graphic Indigeneity (2020), and A. David Lewis and Martin Lund’s Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation (2017). With No Straight Lines, consider selections from Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren's The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader (2022) and Ramzi Fawaz’s two recent monographs (2016; 2022), as well as the special issues of several journals (Abate, Grice, and Stamper 2018; Fawaz and Scott 2018; Fawaz and Smalls 2018). Additionally, several online resources offer thoughtful primers, including Fawaz (2018), Galvan (2022), “Queer Comics” (2023), and the Graphic Possibilities Research Group (n.d.). Beyond the basics, Margaret Galvan’s incredible work with archives of queer comics and zines can be explored in the digital humanities projects cataloged on her website (2017) and in her recent book, In Visible Archives (2023). Finally, for overall comics history and critical foundations, Hillary Chute’s powerful and fundamentally feminist Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere (2017) is an excellent introduction with chapters that specifically address gender, queerness, and superheroes.

3 The PEN America report indexes school library and classroom bans totaling 1,145 unique titles over a nine-month period in 2021 and 2022, with that total reaching 1,477 titles after an additional six-month review later in 2022. The updated 2023 report continues and expands the concerns expressed the previous year, which articulates the stakes of these statistics in its conclusion: “In many cases the books targeted are those that depict identities and stories that have only recently found their way onto shelves. This campaign is a threat to those gains” (Friedman and Johnson 2022). Of course, Drawn Together was released in 2018, and many social commentators point to the racial tensions and political activism of 2020 and beyond as animating the recent book-banning surge; however, Fun Home was creating plenty of controversy on college campuses as far back as 2015—this is not a new phenomenon by any means.

Krista Quesenberry is an assistant professor of English at Albion College in Albion, Michigan, where she teaches professional writing, technical writing, and journalism. Her research centers on twentieth and twenty-first century lifewriting—from memoirs to comics to correspondence. Krista’s scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Medical Humanities, the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Life Writing, and More Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods (Routledge 2019). For more than ten years, Krista served as an editorial and research assistant for the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (Cambridge UP). She holds a dual-title PhD in English and in women’s studies from Pennsylvania State University (2016).