You may be wondering what the deal is with the chronology of Politically InQueerect, given that the strips have wacky x.x numbers, and there's a couple of minicomics, and there seem to be other random bits and pieces that fit in somehow or other, and it's not clear where The Outfield appearances mesh with the rest of the storyline and blah blah blah. Well, quit yer whinin', because I shall explain it all here.

About the Numbering

In late 2002 I decided to try turning PIQue into a printed mini-comic, so I stopped focusing on strips and planned to do longer, multi-page stories. I put out the first issue in early 2003, which collected all the Todd & Archer comics I'd done to date, plus an 8-page story done specifically for the comic book. Later in 2003 I quit my day job and moved to Austin, Texas. Publishing a mini-comic requires a fair amount of cash up front, a situation not entirely compatible with starting up a self-employment venture, so I had to give up on the idea of minis for the time being.

In 2004 I started doing some new strips for publication, which I numbered 2.x since they are in their own distinct format and come after issue #1 of the comic book. I did five or six strips before other, paying art projects gobbled up all my time and the publishing deal fell through (as they so often do). Later in 2004 the characters from Politically InQueerect started nosing their way into my ongoing queer sports feature The Outfield, and have been making periodic appearances since. The Outfield comics take place several months after the stuff that's happening in the 2.x strips.

In 2006 I decided it was high time to finish up the storyline I'd started in the 2.x strips, so I finished it out with 12 comic book-format pages and printed up Politically InQueerect #2. I also started work on an 8-page anthology story, which takes place immediately after the events in issue #2, but the anthology tanked (yes, folks, this is what publishing is like). So I put those pages online.

In 2007 I began serializing issue #3 online, doing it in comic book format, and assuming someday I'd collect it as its own book. These pages are all 3.x. And now PIQue is once again running in serialized strip format in the queer press, so it's at this point been a strip, and a comic book, back to a strip, back to a comic book, and back to a strip again. Whew! At least I'm trying to keep the page format consistent these days.

The Origin of PIQue

The pencils for the first strip were also done on the same crappy paper, then traced onto vellum and transferred to bristol paper using an erasable, non-photo blue transfer paper. The blue lines were then drawn over with pencil and the pencil lines inked, meaning I drew the first strip five times from start to finish. The concept of going through this lengthy process now utterly boggles my mind, and I'm astounded I had the patience for it at the time. But I didn't know what I was doing, and that tends to lead to inefficiency. Nowadays I pencil directly onto bristol and ink those pencils without a second thought. Here are the original pencils for that first strip, wherein you can see how the characters are already veering away from my initial designs:

The numbers at the bottom refer to the measurements of Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For strip. I had no idea what the "official" size was for a long-form comic strip, but I figured she must know, right, so I'll just do what she did. The joke here is that there's no such thing as an "official" size for a long-form comic strip, any moreso than there is such a thing as an official long-form comic strip, and even if there were the internet wouldn't care. Ha ha! What was that I said about ignorance being inefficient?

I called the strip Young Republicans in Love as it was about the most unbearable title I could think of. In January of 2000 I scanned it in and posted it to the interweb for all the world (at the time about 20 people, as far as I could tell) to see. Initially Todd was supposed to be the older, more aggressive top to Archie's young, naive bottom. They were also supposed to be somewhere between the ages of 22 and 25. And mostly they weren't supposed to exist beyond the bounds of this one-shot comic strip with this one stupid joke.

I almost immediately had several ideas that centered around making fun of the archetypal of gay Republicans and thought maybe I could do a strip using these stereotypes as characters. All I had to do was just avoid allowing these two guys to develop any kind of depth or humanity, since that would fuck the whole thing up. Just gotta stuff 'em in this here box....

They, of course, were having none of it. Writers will often remark how their characters have wills of their own and will go off to do other things while the writer tries to work on this here story. A good writer usually gives up and just lets the characters do whatever they want, sort of like the opposite of a good parent. Todd and Archer put up with my box-stuffing for almost three whole strips before Todd complained that, Republican as it was, he hated corporate tax law and had no desire to be a corporate tax attorney and frankly I could just take that job and shove it and give him something more interesting to do. Archer pointed out that he hates being called Archie, and that his mom and Todd can get away with it but could I please not encourage the rest of the known universe to call him that. And that was it, really. I lost control of them completely at that point, as they quite literally headed out into the woods. I scrapped all the stereoype strips I'd written and just started writing down whatever Todd and Archer happened to be up to.

I also realized I needed a different title. I really, really hated Young Republicans in Love, and it was becoming less a propos with every strip. Todd and Archer weren't quite so blindingly young after all; Archer is clearly in his late-30's/early-40's, and Todd is not far behind. And what if I wanted to introduce other characters who weren't young or Republicans or in love? Politically InQueerect struck me as a workable title since it didn't narrow the focus quite so much. The strip would still be about queers, and the title was reflective of the political incorrectness of gay Republicans in general. It's still kind of a silly title, but what finally sold me on it was the fact that it shortens to PIQue. How could I not go with a title that abbreviates to PIQue?

So there you have it. Not quite the same as the Origin of, say, the Green Lantern, but what can you do? Write about gay Republicans and their friends and relations, I guess.

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