Dylan Edwards's Blog, page 2

2023 Year in Review

Without writing a whole book about it, 2023 was an extremely difficult year for me. Started the year with one type of debilitating pain, traded it for another, and landed myself in physical therapy for four months due to an injury to my drawing arm. So, while I don’t always put together a Year in Review post, I wanted to do one this year to prove to myself that I did manage to accomplish some things despite the onslaught of physical problems:

• 12 comics for 12 issues of OUT FRONT Magazine
• approx 180 postcards sent to Patreon supporters
• 5 new sticker designs
• several art shows at Spectra Art Space including Spooky Art, TDOR popup, and Tiny Art (in addition to the merch of mine that they carry year round, mostly stickers, pins, and buttons)
• a new Feeping Creatures micro zine, and a zine of my adventures at a metal show in Japan (which I have not yet added to my online store, it’s currently sitting on my desk waiting for me to get to it)
• participated in a panel discussion for an Estonian queer film festival for their showing of the queer comics documentary No Straight Lines
• speaking of No Straight Lines, when I was originally interviewed back in 2017(?) I had NO CLUE it would be shown on PBS, but in fact it streamed there for several months
• made a soft return to comic shows; while I’m still not inclined to travel much, Denver Zine Fest, DeCAF, Queer Author Expo, and First Friday at Danny the Comic Shop all saw my (masked) face [and you can now get my comics and zines at Danny the Comic Shop, so swing by and support ‘em!]

In the end, that’s not too shabby for a year in which I was physically out of commission for a good 6 months and could barely work. I’m in a better place pain-wise, if not fully back to where I was before. Hopefully 2024 will see continued improvements, and a lot more art!

Also, in the event that you’re wondering where most of my social media activity is happening these days, I’ve taken to shitposting in my Instagram stories for whatever reason. Who knows how long that will continue to amuse me, but for now, I’m most active on IG.

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – December 2023

My comic for this month’s issue is all about the various iterations my fashion sense has gone through over the years. You can read the whole thing in the digital edition of the magazine, where you shall find me ensconced on page 6!

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – November 2023 issue

My latest comic for OUT FRONT Magazine contains “jokes” (I use the term in the broadest possible sense) of dubious moral character, and should frankly be eschewed in favor of something wholesome. I’d avoid page 6 if I were you.

Cheers,

Dylan

Asexual Awareness Week

Why yes, it IS Asexual Awareness Week. Time to share this comic I made about the many and varied flavors of asexuality, and the distinction between aromantic and asexual identity. This is a brief overview of a complex topic, obviously (I have not yet managed to solve all the world’s problems with a half-page comic, for which I apologize), but you get the idea.

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – October 2023 issue – Queer Magic

My comic for the October issue of OUT FRONT Magazine features queer tarot cards of my own devising! One of them is even worksafe, ha ha, heh.

Hit up the OFM website to read the full comic in their digital edition! You’ll find me on page 6.

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – Sept 2023 – Digital Queerness

The September issue of OUT FRONT Magazine is all about digital queerness! My comic takes a look at how online spaces give us access to information about queer and trans identities, info that was often very difficult to come by in the pre-internet world.

Read the whole comic on the OFM website, or pick up a print copy at one of their drop locations! You’ll find me on page 6.

Cheers,

Dylan

Diary Comic – It Happened to Me: Crushing While Aro/Ace

TL;DR: You don’t stop being aro/ace even when you’re having feelings that look, on the surface, strikingly similar to what allo people typically feel. Insert the usual caveat that this is about my own personal experience, other folks will have different takes on this topic.

So yeah, I came down with a crush recently, and decided to draw this little diary comic about it.

[For reference and clarity, I identify as demi/gray for both aro and ace. While I do want to be in a relationship, I don’t catch feels for very many people. I do experience sexual attraction, but that’s even rarer for me than romantic attraction. This particular guy referenced in my comic managed to set off both.]

On a surface level, there’s nothing new or original expressed in this drawing. Pretty standard set of anxieties and behaviors when you’re crushing, right?

And yet, for folks who are arospec or acespec, having what looks like a standard crush is not necessarily the same thing as allo crushing. This is not a dynamic I see talked about a whole lot, so I’mma talk about it.

By way of analogy, let’s say I did a drawing of a cis man and a cis woman who are clearly a couple, and indicate that they’re in a monogamous relationship. Nothing on the surface says that this is anything other than a typical heterosexual couple. Except, wait, what if both people involved are bisexual. Being in a monogamous relationship with someone of a different gender does not automatically reset either person to straight, nor can their partnership be accurately described as heterosexual. Neither person enjoys heterosexual privilege, and each person continues to experience and process attraction differently from someone who is straight.

By the same token, an aro and/or ace person experiencing romantic and/or sexual attraction does not automatically become allo. For my own part, the nature of this particular crush has caused certain allo things to make more sense to me, certain songs or movies or phrases or behaviors, but it feels very much like learning a second language: I just figured out the translation for one or two things that were utterly incomprehensible to me before (“Oh, maybe that’s why allos don’t seem to get bored of yet another rock song that’s about sex. Fascinating.”)

This crush does not at all mean that I will now be a typical alloromantic/allosexual from here on out. I still experience these feelings from a different vantage point, and bring a different set of past experiences to bear, experiences that many allo people have flat out told me make no sense to them (“What do you mean you weren’t aimlessly horny all the time in high school???”). I still approach relationships in ways that seem “weird” to allos. I still won’t be up to speed on attraction dynamics that are deeply intuitive to allo people, but that require translation for me to comprehend them.

And it’s not like I haven’t spent a lifetime trying desperately to understand all of this. I want to be in a relationship, a fact that a number of even my very close friends are shocked to learn, because I don’t perform the typical social signals around that correctly, I guess. And when allo people give me dating and relationship advice from an allo perspective, it most often feels like I’m being offered an array of cow tools. What I actually need (if I may spaghettify this metaphor) is an array of bat tools. They won’t necessarily look less odd, but they’ll at least be the right tools for me.

OUT FRONT Magazine – August 2023 – Disco Divas

My comic for this month’s issue takes a quick look at the history of the “disco sucks” movement. As someone who is very much into metal and punk and not so much into upbeat dance music, I am certainly guilty of having fallen into the “disco sucks” trap in the past. But, it turns out, “disco sucks” is not actually about whether or not you happen to like that style of music …

Read the whole comic in the online edition here (I’m on page 6).

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – July 2023 issue: Queerdos

The July issue of OUT FRONT Magazine is all about Queerdos, and my comic is all about queer and trans feels from playing D&D. Read the full comic online on the OUT FRONT website (I’m on page 26) or pick up a free copy at one of their drop locations in the Denver area!

I know, I know, shocking for a nerdy kid to use Dungeons and Dragons as a way of exploring gender identity and sexual orientation without realizing what they’re doing. I am probably the first queer/trans person to have EVER done this. Amazing.

Cheers,

Dylan

OUT FRONT Magazine – June 2023 Pride issue

My comic for this month’s edition of OFM takes a look at some of my international encounters with trans people. One thing I’ve definitely found to be the case, especially in our modern internet-enabled era, is that there’s a lot of solidarity amongst trans folks across the globe, even to the point of transcending (pun intended) language barriers.

You can find the comic on page 44 of the online mag!

Cheers,

Dylan