A Little Tid-Bit About Liz and Jen

 

The 1980s Liz and Jen strip was interesting at the time for reactions. Art packages went to various UK comic publishers such as Thomson, Fleetway and Marvel UK and while I never expected any feedback from Thomson my visits to London gave me quite a bit of feedback.

The strip was one that had two editors at Fleetway praise it, however, the company was not geared to having a "coming out" strip in one of their titles.  Later when Egmont purchased Fleetway and killed off so many projects I was surprised when the Liz and Jen strip was mentioned as having caught peoples' attention. Egmont -Fleetway were publishing "Right On" titles such as Crisis and Revolver.

That written when I said "Well, how about the Liz and Jen strip if you like it that much?" the panic set in.  Every time it was the same excuse that "higher ups" might not like it because of the story focus. Even in the 1990s it was extremely rare to find a gay comic character -the main one was a very campy humorous one and it was outside of mainstream comics (I think it was a one off). Attitudes had not really changed from the 1970s.

At Marvel UK the strip got good feedback but there was no way that it would have fit into one of it's titles. Oddly, at Fleetway and Marvel UK I was somewhat shocked to see that a certain adult (and best selling) series I wrote for Fantagraphics was known. Known and in people's desk drawers! The artist on that series/trade was Art Wetherell and he phoned me one evening to say he had been to Marvel in London and the editor and two other staffers had copies of the trade version. We had a chuckle over a possible "new direction" for Marvel UK!

Liz and Jen were created around the same time that Love & Rockets appeared in the UK. The characters had made an appearance as the focus for the first Freelancer story in Black Tower Presents #1 and that sparked the idea to get their solo story published.

Oddly, I kept getting asked why I have no "gay" characters when I have had gay characters since I first started publishing but they were not the "norm" that you would see in any comics where characters had to be very camp.  That written I was also featuring "black" characters when they were a rarity in anything other than humour strips.

Just a little tid-bit for anyone interested.