In the comic series Queer Comic Conversations by the artists Illi Anna Heger and Sam Orchard, Illi and Sam take you along on their monthly catch-ups. Illi Anna from Munich and Sam from Wellington meet in different locations, like the CSD, a demonstration, the Munich Pride, Wellington Pride and a gay bar. During their conversations, they cover a range of queer topics such as chosen families and support systems, nonbinary pronouns in both German and English, festivals but also experiences of loss, trauma and violence. Together with us readers, Illi and Sam explore these themes and recommend a variety of queer art and further informational resources throughout their Queer Comic Conversations.
Sam Orchard writes comics, essays and children’s books, creates animated videos, podcasts and resources with the aim of celebrating difference. His ongoing web comic ‘Rooster Tails’ has been running for over 10 years. Written from his life as a queer transgender man, the comic explores themes of mental health, fat embodiment, nerd culture and trans lives.
Sam is also the author of ‘Family Portraits’, a series of short comic stories that amplify the stories of intersectional identities within Aotearoa’s rainbow communities. Sam’s comics and resources about sexuality, sex and gender have been used internationally by SOGI advocates. Sam is currently working on his first full-length graphic novel.
Illi Anna Heger is an author of graphic storytelling, comic journalism and visual explanations. Illi is nonbinary, on the trans masculine spectrum and uses they pronouns. They focus on stories and knowledge from and for their intersecting communities and are working on a book of autobiographical graphic short stories.
They live in Munich and were born in the east of Berlin before the wall came down. Back in 2009 they started creating a set of alternative German grammar to complete he and she with the pronoun xier, which does not indicate gender. Having studied several languages in their lifetime helped immensely to detangle their mother tongue’s grammar. Xier, xieser and more are continually being improved and are already used by translators.
Queer Comic Conversations is a webcomic series by artists Illi Anna Heger (Munich) and Sam Orchard (Wellington) where they discuss similarities and differences about queer and trans lives.The series stretches from July to December 2020; every month, a new episode will be released and is accessible as visual comic and its transcript (text based comic).
At the 2020 edition of International Comic-Salon Erlangen, comic artists Illi Anna Heger and Sam Orchard were talking with journalist Markus Pfalzgraf about collaboritive ways of working in unusal times.
