{"id":7548,"date":"2012-03-07T18:39:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T23:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/?p=7548"},"modified":"2012-03-07T18:40:56","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T23:40:56","slug":"my-introduction-to-little-heart-1st-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/?p=7548","title":{"rendered":"My Introduction to Little Heart (1st Draft)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I feel like I’ve been far too lax in getting the word out about <\/em>Little Heart, a forthcoming comics anthology full of great comics work, that’s also supporting a great cause. Below, you’ll find the first draft of my introduction to this book (sure to be edited because it runs 1200+ words!) and I hope that in talking about my life and the work in this book, I can convince you to take a chance and buy one today. Full details about this book and purchasing info at\u00a0http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/765505753\/little-heart-a-comic-anthology-for-marriage-equali<\/a>. And, not to rush you, but you need to do so by next Friday March 16th at the latest. – Chris<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

I married my husband Andrew in 2006, shortly after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the gay marriages that had been performed by our provinces since 2001 (give or take) were in fact informed by\u00a0Canadian<\/em>\u00a0values, not merely provincial ones. Despite a challenge or three from the Conservatives, the law\u2026 and my marriage\u2026 has remained on the books to this day.<\/p>\n

Growing up as a gay kid, and then a gay teenager, and finally a gay adult, the notion that I\u00a0could\u00a0<\/em>ever get married was simply not something that occurred to me. Perhaps it was just a failure of imagination on my part, but from what I knew and had experienced of gay culture, gay people could have just as loving, committed, and important relationships as heterosexual people could\u2026 but \u2018marriage\u2019 was just something that wasn\u2019t for us. I can\u2019t tell you how happy I was to be wrong about that, and I am forever in the debt of the brave gay and lesbian couples that fought the battles, and won them, that allow me to have rights that I quite frankly should\u2019ve been born with. That gay kids today, and the gay teens and adults of tomorrow, will hopefully never have been without.<\/p>\n

I met my husband in 2004, and I\u2019ve spent the better part of our 8 years together indoctrinating him into the world of comics and graphic novels. I\u2019m a comics guy; I’ve read written, drawn, lettered, published, talked about, and sold comics since I was 8 years old, and indoctrinating new readers is just what we do. Andrew didn\u2019t really have comics growing up\u2014I think he\u2019d only ever read Spiegelman\u2019s\u00a0Maus<\/em>\u00a0for school when he met me. He\u2019s an opera, symphony, perfect diction kinda fellow, and so when sharing my first comic with him I went the intellectual route and chose McCloud\u2019s “comics textbook”\u00a0Understanding Comics.<\/em>\u00a0Frankly I was\/am so in love with Andrew he probably could\u2019ve hated it and we\u2019d still be together, but he loved it and we talked about it at length, and he was curious for more. Now I can\u2019t say for certain, but I\u2019m pretty sure the very next comic I gave him was Maurice Vellekoop\u2019s sadly out-of-print classic\u00a0Vellevision<\/em>, a repository of accumulated gay culture, gay wisdom, and gay folly. It\u2019s was also quite the unique work at the time as, save for perhaps Howard Cruise\u2019s excellent\u00a0Stuck Rubber Baby<\/em>, it was the only \u2018gay graphic novel\u2019 I was aware of that wasn\u2019t intended solely as pornography (though, make no mistake,\u00a0Vellevision\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>got some pretty great scenes in it that address those particular interests\u2026!). He loved that too, and when Vellekoop\u2019s \u201cA Nut At The Opera\u201d came out it was the best of both worlds for both of us!<\/p>\n

In 2011, it was very heavily rumoured (and somewhat supported) that if the Conservatives in Canada were elected with a majority government they\u2019d reopen \u2018the marriage debate\u2019 and that future marriages between same-sex couples, and even already-conducted marriages between same-sex couples, could be stopped or annulled. I know, it seems crazy that something that\u2019s been happening for 10 years (give or take) could, with a change in government, be stopped or rescinded, but looking at the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party right now, where they\u2019re seeking to roll back women\u2019s rights 50 or 60 years, well, it still doesn\u2019t seem so far-fetched does it? I made a fairly impassioned plea to vote against the Conservative party because I didn\u2019t want the nature of my relationship attacked or invalidated by a bunch of government thugs\u2026 and this is where Raighne Hogan, editor of this book, noticed what I was saying and decided I might be a good person to say a few words on its behalf.<\/p>\n

And here we are.<\/p>\n

Little Heart: A Comic Anthology for Marriage Equality<\/em>\u00a0is a fascinating document of a time and a place, of comics creators coming of varied sexualities and genders and backgrounds coming together to comment on the nature of marriage and the nature of love. Of course Maurice Vellekoop is here, and his journalistic piece on the realities of gay marriage in Canada 5-10 years later is just as melancholic and just as ironic and just as delightful as his work has ever been. Marinaomi\u2019s wonderful piece about the trials and tribulations of getting married in a \u2018non-traditional way\u2019 certainly hit home, as did Noah Van Sciver\u2019s thoughtful piece of comics journalism about miscegenation\u2014last century\u2019s marital \u2018boogeyman.\u2019<\/p>\n

Probably the pieces in this book that ring truest to my experience are the ones by Jeremy Sorese, and Emily Carrol and Kate Craig. Sorese\u2019s \u201cLove Me Forever! Oh! Oh! Oh!\u201d resonates deeply with me, because the incredibly talented Mr. Sorese, at 23, has all the same questions about life and relationships and especially gay marriage (\u201cWho is walked down the aisle? Who wears white?\u201d) that I did at 29 on my wedding day. My only advice to Mr. Sorese, 10 years my junior, might be that I found my answers to those questions by doing them, and if that\u2019s what he wants I hope he gets the opportunity. Likewise for the talented Carrol and Craig, mine and my husband\u2019s wedding rings are vintage (or perhaps \u2018second hand\u2019 if you\u2019re feeling uncharitable), and I couldn\u2019t help but wonder at the lives lived by the bearers of those rings before we wore them. Carrol and Craig in their ring neatly encapsulate the hopes of marriage, of commitment and anticipation, that I feel unite anyone who enters into the practice, while still making allowances for the unique relationships and agreements that define every union.<\/p>\n

Even the pieces that don\u2019t directly address marriage, but instead talk about queerness obscured, like \u201cRoosterlegs\u201d by Ed Choy and Sam Sharpe, or mediate on the complicated nature of young love, like Joseph Remnant\u2019s \u201cI Told You So,\u201d speak to human experiences that touch all of us. Moreover every contributor to this book answered the call, \u201cHelp us support marriage equality in Minnesota,\u201d by doing what they do best; creating comics\u2014regardless of style, theme, or materials used. They\u2019ve come down on the side of supporting the rights of all people to equality under the law and by picking up this book and supporting this fight you have too.<\/p>\n

I was taught from an early age that equality needed to be fought for. I learned last year that what should be inexorable rights are not always so, and we must fight on. I learned from Jeremy Sorese that rights are worth fighting for even when they might not speak to us directly, from Marinaomi that celebrating what we have does not come at the expense of fighting on the behalf of others, from Noah Van Sciver and Emily Carrol and Kate Craig that love\u2014and marriage\u2014have always faced questions and obstacles, and from Maurice Vellekoop that even when marriage turns out not to be what you think it would, that the core concept of equality is still incredibly important. Finally, I learned from Raighne Hogan, 2d Comics, and the dozens of contributors to this fine volume that this is a battle that may need to be fought state by state, and even heart by heart, but that people regardless of background can come together and lend their voice. I\u2019m happy to be lending mine and, by purchasing this book, thank you for lending yours.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Christopher Butcher, March, 2012.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel like I’ve been far too lax in getting the word out about Little Heart, a forthcoming comics anthology full of great comics work, that’s also supporting a great cause. Below, you’ll find the first draft of my introduction to this book (sure to be edited because it runs 1200+ words!) and I hope … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My Introduction to Little Heart (1st Draft)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1,16,338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canadian-cartooning","category-general","category-queer","category-wheres-chris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7548"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7557,"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions\/7557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comics212.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}