Long before Divine, Charles Pierce, Craig Russell, Jim Bailey, or any contestant on ‘Drag Race’ brought the art of drag performance to mainstream audiences, there was Julian Eltinge. Although remembered (mostly) by historians of queer history, he has been largely forgotten by the mainstream public.

The comic book world has long been the domain of men. Both in readers and writers. That is slowly changing, and it’s good news!

Prior to the late 1970s, LGBTQIA coverage in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (previously the Herald Express) was extremely limited. Any photos in our image archive from the newspaper focus exclusively on men being arrested for "masquerading" as women.

“The point of fiction is to give the reader for a few hours the chance to be somebody else, to broaden and deepen his understanding of himself and the strangers among whom he has to pass his days. The best novels do this now as they have always done it. It is a noble thing.”