Welcome to Pride month! LGBTQ+ creators are well represented in the arts and in creative careers, and while we celebrate countless LGBTQ+ artists all year long, we're always excited to turn a particular emphasis to queer, trans, and gender non-conforming artists every June for Pride month.
This blog post is the fourth in a series we'll be running all month long highlighting amazing LGBTQ+ comic artists:
- Series Intro: Roberta Hall aka Happy Impulse
- Feature #1: Blue Delliquanti
- Resource: Six LGBTQ+ Comics You Can Read Online Right Now
- Feature #2: La Guardia Community College Students Kris, Cairo, Vee, and Nini
- Feature #3: Niki Smith
- Feature #4: Taylor Robin (you are here!)
We asked comic artists Blue, Niki, and Taylor the same question: Why do you make queer comics? And they responded in the best way they know how: in comic form!
Today we're featuring Taylor Robin, a comic artist and graphic novelist best known online for his beloved webcomic Never Satisfied, which ran for 10 years until it took a backseat to some of Taylor's other projects, like the award-winning young adult graphic novel Hunger's Bite. Why does Taylor make queer comics? Here's why:
What inspired you to work in comics? What is special to you about the art form?
As a kid, I wanted more than anything to make animated cartoons. It turns out that's hard! Really really hard, especially when you're nine years old. Comics were the next best thing. And then I got older, and it turned out animating was still really really hard, but by then I was pretty good at comics and just kept at it. I still like cartoons of course, but there's a lot you can do in comics that you just can't in a cartoon.
Why do you make queer comics specifically? Why is making LGBTQ+ art important to you?
My comics are queer because I'm queer, whether I want them to be or not – and I do want them to be. While I suppose I could choose to make comics exclusively about straight people, they wouldn't be any safer from the censorship being levied at me because of who I am, merely because I made them. So I'm going to make them the way I want to make them for as long as I can, and then keep making them after that.
What hardware and software do you currently use to make your work, and why do you choose to use Wacom products?
I've been using the same Wacom Cintiq 13HD for going on ten years now, to the point where if the light hits it just right, you can see the ghostly impression of the Clip Studio Paint UI scratched into the screen, right down to the buttons to create new layers. Still works great! I chose it because it was the screen tablet of choice when I was looking to upgrade, and I haven't been made to regret it. I've drawn eight years of webcomics and two full graphic novels on this thing!
About the artist
Taylor Robin is a graphic novelist and is the creator of Hunger’s Bite with Union Square Kids. He also created the popular webcomic Never Satisfied, before putting it on hold to focus on his traditionally published works. He has also worked as a storyboard revisionist at Titmouse, on Harriet the Spy for Apple TV+, and on Kiff for Disney TV.
Check out his work on his website, on Bluesky, or on Tumblr.
