“I had been publishing Barefootz Funnies by Howard Cruse and for some years he’d been a regular contributor to my anthologies like Snarf, Bizarre Sex and Comix Book,” he says. Now 74, he still retains his passion for comics despite his publishing house closing at the end of the ‘90s. “As a publisher in a field dominated, like so much, by white men, I encouraged work from women and minority cartoonists but by the late ‘70s it was still very rare to see work by openly gay cartoonists,” Denis explains. It proudly brandished the tag line: “Lesbians and Gay Men Put It On Paper!” At the time of its inception, it was distributed by Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press, a publisher based in Wisconsin responsible for putting out underground comics including Bizarre Sex and Bijou Funnies. Simply named Gay Comix (the X was a connotation for the underground culture), it had exclusively queer storylines and was produced almost entirely by gay men and women. But back in the ‘80s amidst the AIDS crisis, there was one underground comic book that was seeking to turn the tide on the ever-present lack of representation.
