gay & lesbian COMICS SPECIAL for the new millennium.

Readers pick up their local gay and lesbian publications for lots of reasons--community news, arts coverage, those saucy personals--but the comics rank among the most appealing draws. How are the "Dykes to Watch Out For" doing? Are "Leonard & Larry" still fighting? What bad hair day or date from hell has befallen "The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green"? Characters in gay comics make us laugh, but their stories keep us hooked--because they parallel our own stories of being out in the workplace, in our families, among our friends, and in society in general.

The underground comics of the '60s led to Gay Comix in the '80s, and now the influences of queer characters--and creators--are felt throughout the medium, in magazines and newspapers, in self-published 'zines, in comic books, and throughout cyberspace.

Hetero cartoonists Garry Trudeau ("Doonesbury") and Lynn Johnston ("For Better or for Worse") have plopped openly gay men into one of the last bastions of traditional family values, the daily newspaper comics page. Mainstream comic books have gotten progressive in that department as well, with gay characters turning up in series like DC Comics' The Flash and Marvel's now-defunct Alpha Flight, to say nothing of the increasingly affectionate relationship between Apollo and Midnighter in WildStorm Productions' The Authority.

Outside of the superhero realm, independent comics such as Roberta Gregory's Naughty Bits and Jaime Hernandez's Penny Century are allowed to be truer (and rawer) in dealing with homo lives, but it's unlikely you'll find these titles in the spin rack at your local 7-Eleven.

In this issue The Advocate explores a handful of the many writers and artists who are dragging this venerable and popular art form further and further out of the closet.

Find more on gay comics and cartoonists, and links to related sites, at www.advocate.com