Visions of Queer Places

Abstract

This article discusses two queer comics from Finland in the 2010s, H-P Lehkonen’s Life Outside the Circle (2017–2018) and Edith Hammar’s Homo Line (2020), analysing them as identity work and acts of queer world-making. Both comics depict migration and foreground identity formation in relation to place. The analysis focuses on the intersectionality of queer identities, marked as minority positions with regard to power structures related to gender and sexuality—where a binary conception of gender and heteronormativity dominates, with systemic hierarchies related to place and different national and regional cultures. Utilising the genre conventions of romance and autobiography, the comics renegotiate hetero- and cis-normative identifications and envision alternative queer spatial formations.