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Lazarov'd: When They Ask Patton Oswalt To Speak For Dead Gay Puerto Ricans

by Aldo Alvarez, Ph.D. AKA Dale Lazarov

1. As you may have heard, Marc Andreyko put together an IDW/DC Comics fundraising anthology to honor the LGBT Puerto Ricans who died in the Orlando attack and to fundraise for them. I applaud effort to feature LGBT Puerto Rican comics creators who can represent the LGBT Puerto Rican experience in Orlando like Daniel Lindelof.

Actually, I don't mean that. As is usual when it comes to crony anthology projects, I heard of a white straight male artist from the Bay Area who was "recruited" — his word, not mine — to contribute to this anthology in a timely manner by a straight white male writer he'd collaborated with years ago…and who helped get the project together.

The white straight artist told me I could participate in the IDW/DC Orlando anthology by *promoting it*…immediately after I told him that *I was snubbed for it*.

2. As you can imagine, this patronizing stance made me go from disappointed to Gay Puerto Rican Spitfire With a Ph.D. Is Going To Read You To Filth In Public. The snub is unintentional, I am told; I was just overlooked. Yes, because the intentionality was elsewhere. Love is love but the fraternity of social privilege and patronage gets to speak all of it. That's who gets to represent. That's who gets a reasonable deadline for their contribution. Everybody else gets overlooked unless they speak up and, even then, things will be set up for them to fail to participate. After my complaint became public, I was offered a week to turn in something. I cannot make this happen as a) I have to turn in a 64-page graphic novel script I signed a contract for on the same deadline, and b) imagine how impossible it will be to find an LGBT Puerto Rican artist, hopefully from Orlando, to do the art to that deadline with the time I have to find him or her. (Finding a queer Puerto Rican illustrator for the comic was my heart's desire when I first pitched my contribution to Andreyko.) I even offered to Andreyko that I'd write about the gay Puerto Rican experience in Orlando since I know it directly. You would think that my participation would somehow legitimize the project — I mean, I have had latino gay sex with gay latinos of and in Orlando at least 16 times in the past year — but apparently, once you get the one gay latino comics guy everyone's heard of, you don't need any more.

3. The straight white male writer who helped organize the anthology project, and was my first contact with someone involved in it after the straight white male artist patronized me, did not understand how the anthology wasn't "good news". What was good news is that someone, like the straight white male writer, who works in academia, doesn't get it, because he is a perfect evocation of how straight white men have no fucking idea of how privilege works and how patronizingly they employ it.

No, I am no saying that I have a problem with Patton Oswalt speaking for people who are not his exact peers even though he's the most ungaylatino person listed in advance publicity for the anthology. That's silly. The problem is that ONLY Patton Oswalt and his peers get to speak for the LGBT Puerto Rican dead because he has the privilege of having written one JLA graphic novel and playing the second banana in the MST3K relaunch. Most comics cronies are white straight guys with white straight guy cronies. Which is why it's more likely for Patton Oswalt to write on behalf of dead LGBT Puerto Ricans than a live LGBT Puerto Rican. It's standard for crony culture to maintain its privilege while looking generous and taking the brave stance of helping the underprivileged…by…wait for it….rounding up privileged folks who already have a voice in the culture to speak for the underprivileged. This is probably why I was expected to be happy: hey have no idea that they're hijacking silenced voices to make theirs louder. Because that's the norm.

Unfortunately for them, I am a gay Puerto Rican comics creator with a Ph.D. so I know "being spoken for means having a voice" is bullshit and I don't mind getting loud about it. I have nothing to lose by pointing out that more productive solution would be something like "I want you to have a voice so here's this privilege over here that I am sharing with you". This sharing of privilege is not just about "opportunity". It's about "representation". If they had more LGBT Puerto Ricans in the announced line up, I would have not taken my exclusion so personally.

J Eric Goines, a black gay artist who is not latino but gets it, asked me: "Was it like most publishers, where the decision makers are White Non-Latino and Male, so most of the people picked were White, non-Latino and Male? […] Apparently nobody alerted [Marc Andreyko et al] to the optics of White Men telling Latino stories (again) while there were perfectly qualified Latinos, some with connections to the massacred that were ignored (again), unless, of course, you can help sell it into your already-built market." I can't say for sure, but it sure looks like it from vantage point of the crack I keep falling into when I am overlooked.

4. Well, as I write this, I am getting over it. I really shouldn't have reached out to Andreyko as we're just Facebook acquaintances. (He claims to be a fan, though. And I have a screengrab that documents it.) My mistake was that I thought I had a chance to contribute or that my contribution would in any way be meaningful:

a) 28 million dollars have already been raised for the cause of the afflicted by the Orlando massacre on LGBT Puerto Ricans. This anthology ain't going to add much other than making its comics frat feel better about itself. I am so sorry, your self-congratulation is just not going to feel the same way after you read this.

b) Comics anthologies are almost entirely all the documentation of a fraternity of social privilege and patronage. (See who got invited and by whom and for what purpose they claim it to be, which is transparently about benefitting the institutionalization of that fraternity's status as progressive or charitable organization and not a circle jerk.) My mistake was assuming that my pitch of a story from a gay Puerto Rican comics writer of proven talent with ties to Orlando was of value and I even offered to get the artist for it which would lessen the editors' load. It doesn't have any value, really, as I am not part of the fraternity the anthology is meant to document and promote.

c) I am told a literary anthology fundraiser for Orlando includes plenty of latino writers and gay writers of multiple genres so it isn't a fraternity of social privilege project. That may be because the lit world is far more intersectional and the culture's awareness of how privilege and patronage preserves itself makes it harder to get away. This awareness makes editors more conscious about going further than aggregating contributions from friends.

So now you know why comics has a diversity problem: when offered free work that comes from the direct cultural literacy of being a gay Puerto Rican in Orlando by someone who has published nine graphic novels that the editor claims he's a fan of, it's overlooked. If this happened to me, imagine what happens to LGBT Puerto Rican comics creators who have less access to publication than I do.

5. Some final thoughts:– I look forward to Andreyko's comic about Wonder Woman weeping over dead LGBT Puerto Ricans because love is love.

— I wish the anthology the best of luck dodging and/or enduring the criticism of The Bolshevik Commentariat of Twitter and Tumbler, who are young and haven't had this has happen to them over and over and over and over. They won't get over it because they haven't experienced it as business as usual and move on. And they're going to pillory whoever they can. You may as well quit social media now if you don't have the emotional resilience for it.

— I hope, the next time I think of offering to contribute work to a cronyfest anthology project, I stop myself. I don't really need it. I'll just get back to sure-thing book-length publication with folks in Europe who offered to publish my work without knowing me personally because of the quality of my work.

— I will now soothe myself by remembering the Orlando gay Mexican guy who slept in my arms every night when I last visited Orlando. That was two weeks before the mass shooting. And he was the point of my visit – we got nowhere near an amusement park. I was only there for the spicy gay latino manlove that gets people massacred.

About The Author(s):

Aldo Alvarez, Ph.D. is the author of INTERESTING MONSTERS (Graywolf Press, 2001) and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University of the City of New York and a Ph.D in English from Binghamton University (SUNY).  He's tenured faculty at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago and teaches writing, research, fiction, gay and lesbian literature, graphic novels and LGBT Studies. He was born and raised in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, a shipping port and college town in the west of the island that received comics pamphlets, glossy comics magazines and comics hardcovers from all Spanish- and English-speaking countries.  He also writes and art directs gay graphic novels as Dale Lazarov.

Dale Lazarov writes, art directs and licenses wordless, gay character-based, sex-positive graphic novels published under the Sticky Graphic Novels imprint: TIMBER (drawn by Player), SLY (drawn by mpMann), BULLDOGS (drawn by Chas Hunter & Si Arden), PARDNERS (drawn by Bo Revel), PEACOCK PUNKS (drawn and colored by Mauro Mariotti and Janos Janecki), FAST FRIENDS (drawn by Michael Broderick), GREEK LOVE (drawn by Adam Graphite), GOOD SPORTS (drawn by Alessio Slonimsky), NIGHTLIFE (drawn and colored by Bastian Jonsson and Yann Duminil), MANLY (drawn by Amy Colburn), and STICKY (drawn by Steve MacIsaac).  Sticky Graphic Novels are published in hardcover by Bruno Gmünder GmbH and in digital format through Class Comics.  In his secret identity, he is Aldo Alvarez, Ph.D. and he lives in Chicago. His website is at StickyGraphicNovels.com.

Bleeding Cool forwarded Dale Lasarov's article for comment to Marc Andreyko this morning, without response. However, he has since announced Jose Villarubia as an existing contributor to the comic book.

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