Prism Comics' Charles "zan" Christensen: Q&A

Posted: Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Posted By: Tim O'Shea

Prism Comics may or may not be a group you’ve heard about, but I hope you’ll be hearing more about the not-for-profit organization in the months and years to come. As stated in its mission statement, the group promotes “the work of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered creators in the comics industry.” I recently interviewed Prism Comics President Charles "zan" Christensen about the group and its goals.

Tim O’Shea: Your mission statement is fairly direct: "Prism Comics is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the work of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered creators in the comics industry, and LGBT themes in comics as a whole." How did Prism come into being and how many drafts of the mission statement did you go through before settling upon this one?

Charles "zan" Christensen: The core members of the group were people who knew each other through the Gay League (a website connecting queer comics fans and creators) who worked on a 'zine called Out In Comics. OIC was distributed annually at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, with the fourth and final issue appearing in 2002. We met that year in San Diego and had a big booth presence there, and several of us decided that we wanted to do even more than just the guide. Over the next year, the new group hammered out our goals and structure and legally incorporated as a nonprofit, and made our big debut in San Diego as "Prism Comics" the next year.

The mission statement deliberately focuses on promoting comics work instead of being a "watchdog" or pressure group, and includes promoting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)-themed work of non-queer creators. There've been variations on it, but it's stayed essentially the same from the start, because we wanted to focus on the positive developments for queer creators and comics, rather than harp on the ways that comics (like every other industry) could improve its attitude. Let's face it, the good news far outweighs the bad, these days.

TO: From Prism's perspective what were the greatest accomplishments in 2003 by the industry in terms of producing work in line with Prism's thinking?

CZC: Readers get honest portrayals of queer characters when there are lots of them to choose from, and 2003 was definitely a good year for variety. In mainstream comics, we had detective Renee Montoya coming out in a big way in Gotham Central, Apollo and Midnighter getting married in The Authority, an anachronistic queer cowboy in Rawhide Kid, the relationship of Achilles and Patroklus in Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, the story of the gay-bashing of Kyle Rayner's gay teen assistant Terry Berg in Green Lantern... and so on.

There were lots of very different takes on the queer experience, and when readers are presented with a wider array of options, it relieves any one storyline or character of the burden of representing every lesbian or every gay man. Stories that are forced to do that almost always fail as good art, however they might succeed as attempts at positive social change. More and more, comics are moving away from simple, feel-good supporting gay characters and delving into the complexities and variety of their lives, and that's nothing but good.

The range is even greater in independent comics, where you'll find a lot more series that keep the focus on queer characters and situations, rather than reserving them for guest appearances. You can choose from great stuff like lighthearted lesbian situation comedy of Paige Braddock's Jane's World, the eclectic gay globe-hopping of Justin Hall's True Travel Tales, the transgender tales of Gina Kamentsky in T-Gina, or the playful, twisted free-for-all of How Loathesome by Tristan Crane and Ted Naifeh. There's something for everyone.

TO: What were some of the biggest mistakes/detrimental actions by the industry?

CZC: If there were mistakes made in queer comics in 2003, the most common was the one that's been made again and again in not just comics but every medium: allowing the "event" of the inclusion of queer material to interfere with the quality of the story. For instance, Marvel got lots of exposure when Stan Lee was invited to do an interview on CNN to defend Rawhide Kid from its detractors, but it also resulted in intense scrutiny and some editorial changes. As a result, the book got a really mixed reception, because it wasn't nearly as daring as any of the other titles in the MAX line.

Of course, comics are a business and publishers need to make money to survive, but we always hope they'll balance that with the desire to tell good, honest, entertaining stories.

TO: For 2004, what do you expect do be some of the greatest challenges for Prism?

CZC: Mostly financial ones, I think. We're a nonprofit operating on donations and merchandise sales, and printing an annual guide and having booths at conventions can make for big expenses. Heck, Marvel Comics even cut back on their convention budgets to save money, and here we are wading into the fray!

In particular, we thought we'd nearly broken even for our appearance at Comic-Con last summer, but then we were socked with a surprise bill which hit our pocketbook hard. We're set to embark on a big fundraising drive to fund the next guide and our 2004 appearance in San Diego, but every little bit helps.

If your readers want to help, I'd recommend they browse our online store. They can not only make donations, but choose from a great selection of donated books from very talented folks like Tommy Kovac (Stitch), Donna Barr (The Desert Peach), Tim Fish (Cavalcade of Boys) and Jai Sen (Garlands of Moonlight, The Golden Vine). We've got about 70 titles in stock right now. Eric Shanower, bless his heart, just sent us a big box of comics to sell, including some Transmetropolitan, Nexus and Star Wars books he worked on and his own Age of Bronze.

TO: On a related note, you're juggling several different initiatives at present, including appearing at Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco in February, doing a big creator survey and volunteer drive, and trying to help creators develop and send successful press releases. Could you speak to each of these efforts?

CZC: Alternative Press Expo (APE) is a lot smaller and more low-key than Comic Con in San Diego, and it's a great event to attend if you're interested in self-published and small press comics, including queer comics. I've been there every year for the past four years, and it gets better every time. This year we'll have a full table with tons of comics, buttons special guests and other neat stuff. We'll do what we did in San Diego, and offer a "landing pad" for queer creators attending the show who aren't exhibiting but would like to sit and meet with their fans and sign and sell books.

We took a survey of convention-goers this summer to find out what they were interested in, and wanted to follow that up with a survey sent out to people working in comics. We figured, "who best to seek advice from but the people we're trying to support?" We asked questions about what conventions we should focus on, what LGBT-friendly comic book stores we could get in touch with, and what new ways we could explore to promote peoples' work. Creators can fill out the survey by clicking the big orange link on the front page of our website. We also posted a (lengthy!) questionnaire for anyone interested in volunteering with Prism Comics, either at conventions, in creating our print projects, or in other ways. The more allies we have that we can contact, the better prepared we'll be to appear at new conventions and undertake new projects.

One project I'm particularly excited about is creating an ongoing program to help LGBT creators get press releases about their books out to the press, because it's such a direct expression of our mission statement. We developed a mailing list for press releases that includes over 250 publications (in the mainstream, comics and LGBT press) and we've used that list and some online tools to promote special events of our own. Recently, though, we helped Jane's World creator Paige Braddock polish her press release about her comic strip appearing in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and sent the word out to our contact list. She got a lot of positive attention as a result, including a mention in The Advocate, and we're looking forward to helping other LGBT creators raise their profiles, as well.

TO: In trying to spread Prism's messages, as you've encountered folks, what has been the greatest misconceptions about the group and its intentions?

CZC: The biggest misconception is that we're out to tell people what kind of story to tell. We're not interested in making everyone queer, or forcing writers and artists to include lesbian or gay characters in their work to meet some kind of quota. Our goal is to encourage the people who are already exploring LGBT themes, to make sure that there's a broad diversity in the kind of stories comics audiences have access to. Our mains goals center around diversity and honesty, and bullying someone into telling a story they're not interested in isn't the best way to reach those goals, so we don't advocate it.

TO: Would you say there are more Prism-friendly comics and creators outside of the United States, or inside? Or does Prism even think in those terms?

CZC: As far as our list of creators, we include folks from anywhere in the world, as long as they've published comics (either in print or as webcomics). The site gets a lot of international visitors, as evidenced by the fact that I've sent out packages of books purchased from the online store to Canada, France and the U.K. We haven't attended any non-US conventions yet, but at least we're able to ship the resource guides anywhere they're wanted.

I don't know about the prevalence of LGBT comics creators and fans in other parts of the world -- I'm not an authority on international comics by any stretch -- but I do know that in other countries (Japan in particular) lesbian and gay content is relatively easy to find, though handled in a much different way than in the United States. For instance, there's a whole category of Japanese manga called "Yaoi", which centers around male gay relationships but is most popular with female readers.

TO: So far who have been the most vocal or most surprising opponents (if any) of Prism's objectives?

CZC: We've been blessed with warm receptions most anywhere we appear, and I think that's attributable to the positive mission of the group. If we were more strident and critical of negative portrayals of gays in comics as opposed to promoting the positive ones, I know we'd probably encounter a lot more resistance. I think people understand that it's a big world and there are a lot of different people who want different comics, and it just makes sense to encourage that diversity.

TO: Anything else you'd like to discuss regarding Prism?

CZC: We're here to help, and if there's something we're not doing that you think we should, we'd love to hear from you, whether you're a comics professional or a reader.

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