1972 | Trina Robbins – Sandy Comes Out story
The first known coming-out story done in comics, and the first “literary” queer comic story.
1973 | Mary Wings – Come Out Comix
The first known lesbian comic book by an out lesbian.
1976 | Roberta Gregory – Dynamite Damsels strip
The first continuing American comic book series (there are only 2 issues, but hey) entirely created by a queer person or by a woman.
1977 | Rupert Kinnard – Brown Bomber strip
The first serialized Black queer character in comics.
1983-2008 | Alison Bechdel – Dykes to Watch Out For
A weekly comic strip, and one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture.
1994 | Jennifer Camper – Rude Girls and Dangerous Women
Cartoons that examine race, gender, politics, and sexuality, often in a sardonic and sarcastic way, and where Dykes Rule.
1995 | Howard Cruse – Stuck Rubber Baby
Cruse’s debut graphic novel, looking at homosexuality and racism in the 1960s in the southern United States.
2006 | Alison Bechdel – Fun Home
Graphic memoir about her relationship with her closeted father, named Time Magazine Best Book of the Year.
1980’s | Howard Cruse – Wendel
widely considered to be the first gay comic strip to be featured in mainstream media.
2012 | Justin Hall – No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics
An anthology of queer comics covering a 40-year period from the late 1960s to the late 2000s.
2020 | Maia Kobabe – Gender Queer: A Memoir
Top “Most Challenged Book” of 2021 and 2022, reported by The American Library Association.
More good reads at The Queer Comics Database, the definitive list of queer comics artists from all over the world.