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 first in a series we'll be running all month long highlighting amazing LGBTQ+ comic artists. We asked each of them the same question: Why do you make queer comics? And they responded in the best way they know how: in comic form!
First up is Blue Delliquanti, an award-winning comic artist and writer based in Minneapolis, MN. They created the comics O Human Star, Meal (with Soleil Ho), Across a Field of Starlight, and Adversary. They also teach comics courses at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Why does Blue make queer comics? Here's why:
What inspired you to work in comics? What is special to you about the art form?
I believe comics are as close as an art form can get to capturing how we experience our memories and imaginations. We don’t passively watch them like films … we pore over images and text like we would in books. We return to some moments to study and reinterpret them over and over.
A panel’s composition, colors, values, text, lack of text … there’s so much capacity for context, rhythm, and meaning in just a short sequence!
Why do you make queer comics specifically? Why is making LGBTQ+ art important to you?
Comics were my entry point to learning more about queerness as a young person. Online comics, especially. Later, when I began meeting new people at conventions, that community of queer comic artists gave me even more insight on what I wanted to do.
Queer people’s lives, bodies, relationships, and families are given space on comic pages and in public comic events. Comics are a technology for envisioning our future!
What hardware and software do you currently use to make your work, and why do you choose to use Wacom products?
I almost always use pen and paper to explore my comic ideas before I work on the pages in Clip Studio Paint. The tablet I use is the same Wacom Intuos 5 that I drew with 15 years ago! I look at my desktop screen while I draw with it, which is a sitting position my spine massively prefers. But having a device be a core component of my process and work this reliably for this long is something I don’t take for granted!
15 years is amazing! But we recently released the new Wacom Intuos Pro line, and you got a chance to try one out. What do you think so far?
It was fun getting to play with how portable the new tablet is with the Bluetooth setting – with my desktop computer, it allowed me much more flexibility at my desk and chair. I've been trying to be more mindful of my posture to prevent drawing injuries, so that's helpful. There's a lot of opportunities to bring it along if I'm working outside my home office as well, and I'm looking forward to giving that a try.
About the artist
Blue Delliquanti is a comic artist and writer based in Minneapolis, MN. From 2012 to 2020, Blue drew and serialized the science fiction comic O Human Star, which can be read online at ohumanstar.com! Blue is also the creator of graphic novels and novellas like Meal (with Soleil Ho), Across a Field of Starlight, and Adversary. They teach comics courses at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. They are a Lambda and Prism Award winner and have been nominated / shortlisted for a variety of other awards, too! A new book, in collaboration with Cory Doctorow and J. R. Doyle, is called Unauthorized Bread, and will be released in 2027.
Check out their work on their website or on Bluesky, Instagram, Tumblr, Patreon, Pillowfort, or Mastodon.
