Hazel Newlevant on QUEER AND HOW WE GOT HERE: A (PERSONAL) HISTORY
Release Date: 07/09/2026
Hazel Newlevant on QUEER AND HOW WE GOT HERE: A (PERSONAL) HISTORY
Robots From Tomorrow!
Hazel Newlevant is a Brooklyn-based cartoonist known for creating and editing comics about queer history, bisexuality, polyamory, and reproductive rights. Their cartoonist CV highlights start off with the Xeric Grant-funded mini comic Ci Vediamo in 2012 and the Prism Comics Grant-funded biography of Harlem Renaissance blues singer Gladis Bentley called If This Be Sin in 2013.They decided to branch out into anthology editing in 2016 with Chainmail Bikini, which collected experiences of female and nonbinary gamers in a male-dominated space. The success of that led...
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Greg Pak and Dr. Dan Cassino on STOP PROJECT 2025
Robots From Tomorrow!
Going into the 2024 US presidential election, a group of close to 50 comic book creators got together and put out the STOP PROJECT 2025 webcomic -- a non-fiction anthology that broke down the 900-page conservative wishlist that was Project 2025's MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP into understandable chunks and readers know what they were really voting for if they supported it, or why they needed to vote against it if they didn't. Organized by Scott Dunbier and Steve Lieber, contributors included folks like Jen Van Meter, Lila Sturgis, Gene Ha, Cully Hamner, Greg Pak, Matt Fraction, Mark Russell, Sarah...
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Chris Anderson and Corrine Halbert on POWER PULP COMICS
Robots From Tomorrow!
Readers go to the comic shop to get their comics, but the road those comics take from the creator's drawing tables to the shops has changed a lot in the last 100 years or so. Greg talked with documentary filmmaker Wes Eastin back in February about the comic shop/retailer side of things, but today he's flipping the dial and going to the creative side because this episode features two members of the Comics Collective and Distribution -- CEO Chris Anderson and cartoonist Corinne Halbert --and dives right in to how Power Pulp is their growing answer to the question every creator has to face...
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Josh Dysart on THE HAB
Robots From Tomorrow!
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Josh Dysart on GOODNIGHT PARADISE and UNKNOWN SOLDIER
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[This episode is a remastered version of number 664 in a series, originally released on April 30, 2020.] The last time writer Josh Dysart was on the show, back in 2017, the conversation focused on his run as ongoing writer for Swamp Thing. But for this deep-dive talk, the topics range from his latest book with TKO Studios (Goodnight Paradise), his Eisner-nominated work on Vertigo’s Unknown Soldier, his relationship with both books’ artist Alberto Ponticelli, how much fear and panic is a part of his work process then and now, why new publisher Bad Idea is actually a good idea,...
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Halpern + Faste on INFECTED FOR SCIENCE
Robots From Tomorrow!
Today's episode has Greg chatting with Sydney Halpern, a historical sociologist from the University of Chicago who has written extensively about twentieth-century American medical institutions and biomedical science, including 2021’s Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis, and Trigvy Faste, an Associate Professor in the Department of Product Design at the University of Oregon, as well as an illustrator and designer in his own right. Their book, Infected for Science, coming out May 26th from Graphic Mundi, looks at religious pacifist David Miller and a...
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J. Marshall Smith is a cartoonist, illustrator, and educator based in Baltimore (making us de facto neighbors) who came up through the disciplines of painting and printmaking before finding his way to comics. And that background shows, because his work doesn’t look like it comes from someone who learned to draw from comics, but rather from someone who developed a way of looking at things and then figuring out what comics could do with that. He’s built his readership carefully and honestly – self-publishing collections of comics and art through Kickstarter, mailing drawings to his...
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Aditya Bidikar on IN YOUR SKIN
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Aditya Bidikar, back on the show after 4 years, is a man of letters in the most literal sense. In the more than a decade he has been plying the lettering trade, he has worked with every major North American comics publisher and formed strong collaborations with several groups of creators, none more so than with writer Ram V and artist Anand K. In the words of Multiversity Comics alum and SKTCHD guru David Harper, it is a career consisting of “all bangers”. But he is on the show today to talk about IN YOUR SKIN, his first major work as a comics writer. IN YOUR...
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John Workman & Aditya Bidikar on The (in)Visible Art of Lettering, Part 2
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[This episode is a remastered version of number 776 in a series, originally released on April 21, 2022.] Now you can hear the second half of the two-part chat Greg had with letterers extraordinaire Aditya Bidikar and John Workman! The shop talk continues, as well as thoughts on more recent work like John’s take on the HBOMax Doom Patrol series (after lettering almost the entire Morrison run back in the day) and Aditya’s review of Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters! CHAPTERS 00:00 – Intro 02:32 – Workman’s Monsters?...
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John Workman & Aditya Bidikar on The (In)Visible Art of Lettering, Part 1
Robots From Tomorrow!
[This episode is a remastered version of number 775 in a series, originally released on April 14, 2022.] Today's show has two of the best letterers in comics on for a two-part chat about their craft: Multiversity Comics's 2021 Favorite Letterer winner Aditya Bidikar and legendary letterer/cartoonist John Workman! The generation gap evaporates immediately as the two fellows start talking about digital vs analog approaches, collaboration amongst a creative team, visible vs invisible lettering, being the responsible one in the group, artist integration, and much more! ...
info_outlineHazel Newlevant is a Brooklyn-based cartoonist known for creating and editing comics about queer history, bisexuality, polyamory, and reproductive rights. Their cartoonist CV highlights start off with the Xeric Grant-funded mini comic Ci Vediamo in 2012 and the Prism Comics Grant-funded biography of Harlem Renaissance blues singer Gladis Bentley called If This Be Sin in 2013.They decided to branch out into anthology editing in 2016 with Chainmail Bikini, which collected experiences of female and nonbinary gamers in a male-dominated space.
The success of that led them to keep a foot in both worlds moving forward.
The anthology side racked up co-editing titles like 2017’s Comics for Choice, 2019’s Puerto Rico Strong, and 2024’s Becoming Who We Are: Real Stories About Growing Up Trans. Back on the strictly cartoonist side, they put out the 2017 graphic novella Sugar Town and the 2019 graphic novel No Ivy League.
This body of work over the first decade of their career, give or take, has earned them the Ignatz Award, the Eisner Award, and the GLAAD Media Award.
But that is all prelude to their new book, released last month, which brings them here today.
Queer and How We Got Here: A (Personal) History blends the creator’s personal history with their growing understanding of the larger landscape of queer identity THAT history is unfolding in. By sharing both parts of that journey equally in such a clear and effective narrative, they have made a book that belongs in every library, bookstore, and home.
[This episode is number 838 in a series.]
CHAPTERS
00:00 – Intro
04:38 – Queer History or Personal History - Which Came First?
07:12 – Choosing The Moments
11:42 – Who This Book Is For
20:01 – Identity Categories and History
25:48 – Color Palette Choices
29:08 – Workflow and Archival Process
33:17 – Outlining and Structuring the Puzzle
44:25 – Outro