the Grey Otter: Another Uneasy Night
Added 2023-06-25 19:58:40 +0000 UTCFirst Page | Previous Page | More Grey Otter
Prism, the non-profit organization supporting LGBTQA+ comics creators and fans, used to put out an annual book. It featured articles, creator listings and bios, and comic pages, either short stories, excerpts of longer works, and pin-ups from some of the creators listed inside. It had to be safe for all ages, so my work was limited... but I made it into a few issues (and into the offshoot Unsafe For All Ages, edited by Zan Christensen for this very reason). The first time was in 2005 with a 2-pager I asked Steve Lozier to write for me (this was the period we were working on a proposal of a long-form Grey Otter story for consideration for the first Queer Press Grant). Here I am posting it as one post instead of two.
Another Uneasy Night was birthed out of my desire to get across the notion that religion makes doing good a selfish act, when the same act done without the threat/reward system of heaven and hell is selfless, good for goodness sake, rather than to ensure a better eternity for your soul. This is the story Steve came up with, and whereas I don't think it hit my mark entirely, I couldn't think of how to do it any better, at the time. I've since seen Rust Cohle on True Detective say it very well, and the God parody twitter account most recently say it very succinctly.
It's alright. I've been around long enough to feel bashings are very tropey at this point, but hey, they are still relevant. I still really like the Bible Thumper's design.
