QUEER!CONTENT COMIX & ZINES

QUEER!CONTENT COMIX & ZINES

Conceived beside the muds of Maiwar, Q!C is an independent zine publication celebrating queer media and identity. We pay our respects to the queer and First Nations stories both told and untold in this place.

Q!C has been many things since it began in 2013 — adapting to the needs of its readers and contributors. Right now it’s the experiment of Brisbane-based author Wolfram-Jaymes Keesing, who uses Q!C to deliver workshops on responding to media, research on developing book publishing and storytelling skills through zines, and events that connect curious minds with their local LGBTIQ+ organisations.

Q!C prioritises how queer folk negotiate their own identities through interactions with media rather than pressing the politics so often forced upon us. It encourages LGBTIQ+ folk to reach outside their tribes and engage in larger conversations about queerness. It’s nerdy, it’s neighbourly, it’s intentionally niche.

#FANZINE #MODERNISM #LITERATURE #POETRY #HISTORY

Q!C#01: ANOTHER TIME

Another Time is a reflective zine discussing assessments I wrote on Lord Alfred Tennyson and W. H. Auden during my undergraduate years. It is critical of the cisheteronormative academic world that minimises, isolates, or otherwise erases queerness from the literary canon, but also of the high expectations I set for my lecturer — a queer woman — without acknowledging the challenges she faced working within that academic system.

An average attempt by an average student, Another Time aims to grant these authors their queerness by contextualising their work for modern readers. It is but an introduction to two authors who perpetuated our ancient histories in the late 19th and early 20th century.

#FANZINE #TELEVISION #FUJOSHI #BOYLOVE #COMICS

Q!C#02: HARDSTO69ER

I loved Hearstopper. But were we too eager to ignore its rotten foundations? Given its origin as a fujoshi webcomic targeting female readers, and subsequent adaptation by a company facilitating queerphobia, I feel it’s necessary to interrogate how content producers deliver queer narratives to young viewers.

In Hardsto69er I observe how attitudes towards queer representation have changed over the last thirty years. I discuss the didactic potential in writing models for young readers that inform positive queer identities, and problematise Heartstopper by contextualising how it functions instead as BoyLove.

I also cover my sixty-nine day Heartstopper marathon, however, so you’ll have to decide for yourself whether there’s any credibility left in my writing.

#COMIC #HUMOUR #HALLOWEEN #HORROR #ROMANCE

Q!C#03: (BB) HOW TO BUILD A BOYFRIEND

Created for ComicStreet 2023, this is a fun little comic about romance, murder, and the ultimate DIY project: building myself the perfect husband. Twelve pages of full-colour, hand-drawn illustrations. What else do you need to know?

Far shorter than I’d have liked, How to Build a Boyfriend was intended as an insert for a yet-finished zine called Unburry Your Gays. Piggybacking on the popular phrase ‘Burry Your Gays’ coined to problematise the trend of queer deaths in 00s popular media, Unburry Your Gays is a big flock-off nerd sesh over the literal rise of undead and living dead queer characters in media; specifically your ghosts, ghouls, and constructs, ignoring werewolves and vampires because I don’t have the flocking time.

#PERZINE #MEMOIR #COLLAGE #MILLENIAL #HOMELESSNESS

Q!C#04: HAÜS OF HAUTE DOGUE

Haüs of Haute Dogue was gonna be about the queer joy we find after thirty. About having a good time at the pub with your chosen people, and not worrying too much about the small stuff that weighed you down in your twenties.

Then I lost my full-time income and had to move home once, twice, three times in a matter of months. The physical, mental, and financial strains of living rough in a housing and cost of living crisis quickly took their toll.

Yet as I unpack my life after having it stacked in moving boxes for a year, I have to reflect on the absurdity of my survival. In Haüs of Haute Dogue, we attempt to answer but one question: how the flock do I keep getting in and out of these situations!?

HoHD is a 16pg A5 zine of 5000wds made from a looping collage experiment I call ‘The Zine that Never Ends’, which begins again (visually) where it finishes.

#COMIC #HUMOUR #MEMOIR # FANTASY #SEXPOSITIVITY

Q!C#05: (BB) THE NEED FOR SEED

Each and every one of us carries some adolescent transgression into adulthood as shame. Rocked by raging hormones through puberty, raised in a conservative world that refuses to teach us about our bodies, and too often disenfranchised waiting for unjust laws to change… yet we ultimately hold ourselves accountable for not getting everything right when we were children.

The Need for Seed is a memoir comic reflecting on personal moments that have been disproven as ‘cringe’ or ‘unique’ through conversations with friends. It aims to dismantle the notion that we shouldn’t talk about sexuality in ‘polite society’, but is first and foremost a reminder that I, Wolfram-Jaymes Keesing, have better things to do with my life than feel shame over things I can’t undo.

Twelve pages of hand-illustrated comic, created for ComicStreet 2025.