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Gamer Girl & Vixen

Published Sun, 24 Apr 2016 13:00:49 -0500

Kristi McDowell writes for Bleeding Cool,

I came out of the closet in 1998. That year, voters in Maine repealed a law offering discrimination protection, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the military policy on homosexuals in the service and Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in a little town called Laramie, Wyoming. It was kind of a scary time to be gay. I didn't have the internet yet so the only place I could find any gay or lesbian ANYTHING was the local library.

It was tough. There just wasn't a lot out there for a 16-year-old girl trying to figure herself out. I was lucky to find Annie on My Mind and Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden and Every Woman's Dream by Leslea Newman. But as a comic fan, there was hardly anything I could find. I took comfort in what I did find, and Garden and Newman remain some of my favorite authors to this day for that one moment of "Oh my God, I'm not alone" they each provided me. Can you imagine how I might have felt if there had been LGBT comics or graphic novels in my local library?

Flash forward nearly 20 years and in some parts of the country, it's still scary to be gay. LGBT protections are being revoked hand over fist and the number of homeless LGBT youth is shameful. Heck, most LGBT characters in film, television and other media have to die in order to tell a "good story." We have come a long way but we still have a long way to go.

Something else we still have is the local library. For some, the library is still the only safe resource they have to find their own identity. There are so many great books and online resources now, but there's still a need for LGBT comic books and graphic novels. It's one of the reasons I've brought Gamer Girl & Vixen to Kickstarter. I'm making the kind of graphic novel I wish I'd been able to find at my local library. I want someone to have the "Oh my God, I'm not alone" moment that I had.

I'm so passionate about getting these books into as many libraries as possible, we've added a reward tier that gets you get the graphic novel, an extra book to give to a friend or loved one and we will donate a copy of the Gamer Girl & Vixen graphic novel to the library of your choice in your name. You can bring an LGBT graphic novel into your community so that someone out there might feel less alone.

The Kickstarter campaign ends May 2. Pledge to Gamer Girl & Vixen today!

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