Editor Justin Hall was inspired to put together the anthology after curating a show of LGBT comics at the Cartoon Art Museum for the San Francisco Pride in 2006. According to Hall, despite the prevalence of gay maleerotica in the underground comics scene since the late 1950s, LGBT literary comics become a sub-genre only after the 1969 Stonewall riots, when a "sense of community" emerged and the queer underground comix scene began to thrive in San Francisco. With this anthology, Hall wanted to document, preserve and celebrate the "hidden history" of queer comics. Hall selected the works to include based on, in decreasing order of importance, "artistic merit, historic merit and representational merit". He explained that: "First and foremost, No Straight Lines should be a tremendously good read. After that, it should leave the reader with a better understanding of the complex history and diversity of LGBTQ comics".
Themes
To put the material into an "historical and cultural context", the anthology is organized into three sections. The first section, "Comics Come Out: Gay Gag Strips, Underground Comix, and Lesbian Literati", covers the late-1960s and 1970s. It collects gag cartoons from early gay newspapers and magazines that emerged after the Stonewall riots, as well as works from the feminist and lesbian-oriented underground comix, concluding with the creation of the anthology seriesGay Comix. This section includes Trina Robbins' Sandy Comes Out, which according to Hall was the first literary comic that "offered gay people a representation of themselves that validated, as opposed to degraded, their experience." The second section, "File Under Queer: Comix to Comics, Punk Zines, and Art During the Plague", covers the 1980s and 1990s time period, focusing on the artistic responses to the AIDS crisis, as well as the emergence of punk zines and mini-comics. The third section, "A New Millenium: Trans Creators, Webcomics, and Stepping Out of the Ghetto," features work from the increasing number of transgender cartoonists, and details the shift in queer comics from queer comics media towards the internet and crossing over into the mainstream.
Reception
Publishers Weekly noted that many of the comics "hit on concerns and experiences that cut to the heart of the human soul, not just the gay one", and concluded that Hall was "quite successful" at gearing the anthology towards a wider audience beyond the LGBT community, "but without softening the edges that define the genre". Writing for The New York Times Book Review, Glen Weldon felt that "the decision to restrict selections to the Western world is disappointing but understandable", and concluded that No Straight Lines was a "useful, combative and frequently moving chronicle of a culture in perpetual transition". Lee Mandelo of Tor.com wrote that the book was "a great read, not just for the stories alone but for what they represent together: a history, a genealogy, or LGBTQ writers and artists telling stories that reflect their experiences and knowledge of the world". Writing for The American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table, Talia Earle called the book "absolutely fascinating, especially in giving the reader a wide variety of topics impacting the GLBT community". Cathy Camper of the Lambda Literary Foundation praised Hall for taking on the "mountainous" task of compiling a historical collection of queer comics, concluding that he "delivered a classic compilation of stories that promises readers of comics everywhere something wonderful to read". No Straight Lines was nominated for the 2013 Eisner Award for Best Anthology.
Documentary Film
A feature-length documentary film inspired by the book is currently in production. NO STRAIGHT LINES: THE RISE OF QUEER COMICS is scheduled to be released November 2020. www.nostraightlinesthefilm.com
