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No Gays In Nineties X-Men? That's What Greek Gods And Goddesses Are For…

Published Sun, 23 Apr 2017 15:20:26 -0500

MK Palmer writes,

In 1992 X-Men, the animated series premiered. Every Saturday morning, I watched my favorite character Gambit, and my crush Rogue (I love feisty women) having fantastic adventures! I was hooked, but it wasn't enough. Each week I dragged a cousin or sibling to my local comic book store.

Over the next few years I read a lot of X-Men comics. I could relate to the fact that they were outsiders, but I never truly identified with them. Not one of them was gay.

Since that time, I have always wanted to write a comic book with gay heroes. I ended up putting my dream aside and set off to college to get a degree in Biology. I graduated and started my career as a Clinical Molecular Biologist. This was not my ideal job, but it paid the bills. Three years ago the company I worked for went through a restructuring (that's a fancy way to say they laid people off) and my position was eliminated. The following few weeks, my mind turned quickly: I wanted to follow my dream and create a comic book, but fear of leaving the corporate world with a steady paycheck scared the hell out of me.

After long discussions with my partner, I dove headfirst into writing a comic book. I enrolled in a few online classes and learned how to write a comic script and panel descriptions. It was there that I met my writing mentor and editor. I had been working on my script for months before I enlisted his help. I sent him the entire story and he tore my writing apart. As nicely as he could, he informed me that my script lacked character development, structure, theme and so on.

My script was crap! I had wasted several months. This feedback was difficult to hear. Fear snuck back in as I considered returning to the corporate world (with my tail between my legs). But I needed to write this story: I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and kept going. I buckled down and put in tremendous work learning the art of storytelling. I tore up my script and started again at page 1, panel 1. After several revisions, my comic book called, MERAKI came to life!

Last year I successfully funded MERAKI: Descent to the Underworld on Kickstarter. My second Kickstarter launched on April 10th and concludes May 10, 2017. After Kickstarter success with MERAKI: Descent to the Underworld, a one-shot comic featuring LGBT heroes, the creative team returned with a 12-issue continuation of the saga of Psi, Thunder, Mino and Fylax.

MERAKI #1 follows Psi's dark journey through the barren lands of Balen where she confronts Mikal Raiders as well as the PTSD from her dark and violent childhood. MERAKI delves into Psi's struggles against the world around her as well as the inner conflict consuming her. Minh Hằng returns as the artist and colorist for this latest limited edition print.

I created MERAKI because I believe we need more gay heroes and it's important to represent the LGBT+ community in fiction. My characters are gay, but that is only one part of them. Each one of them has positive and negative traits that make them human. They are loyal, selfish, forgiving, and vengeful. It is my hope that the theme and characters resonate with all!

Here's a preview of the new comic.

To help make MERAKI #1 a reality, click here.

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