My Comrade, No. 1: Gay Lib!

New York: [My Comrade], 1987. Xerox. Saddle stapled. 7 x 8½ in. [44] pp. Heavily illustrated throughout with black-and-white illustrations, photographs, and photo-collages, along with numerous illustrated ads for local businesses. Near fine.

The premiere issue of My Comrade, the campy, anarchic queer zine published by drag artist, performer, and publisher Linda Simpson - this issue featuring drag performer Tabboo! as a Patty Hearst-inspired cover girl, and a special photo-profile of Lypsinka.

My Comrade was an underground gay culture zine that captured the zeitgeist of New York's gay downtown scene. It set itself apart from the deluge of Xeroxed zines popping up in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s through parody of both mainstream tabloid magazines and the self-serious gay press, a feisty, ironic sensibility, and radical left sympathies and sloganeering, My Comrade acted as a showcase for photographers, illustrators, and writers of the queer subculture. Eleven issues were published irregularly between 1987 and 1994, and a handful of issues have followed since in a series of reboots.

This first issue includes an arts roundup column by Lypsinka ("L'Artificielle"), and a photo-profile; an interview with George Wayne, founder of arts and fashion zine R.O.M.E.; a photo series featuring drag performer Tabboo! dressed as Patty Hearst (also pictured on cover); a Spanish-language photo-comic featuring Aner Candelario and Tabboo!; the "My Comrade Centerfold" (Terrorist Hunk); and more.

A scarce record of the irreverent queer downtown scene.