In recent years, indie comic readers have been gifted with more and more works, from short autobiographical comics to webcomics and zines to anthologies with the erotic in mind. More comics and comic-related reading material crowdfunded, printed out for conventions, and uploaded online exploring not just queer identities but queer desire and queer liberation. This collection, Arrive In My Hands: Queer Erotics Comics by Trinidad Escobar serves the medium well.
Arrive In My Hands: Queer Erotic Comics
Trinidad Escobar
Black Josei Press
Digital Copy Available February 2022/Physical Copy Available June 2022
I first came across Filipina cartoonist and poet Trinidad Escobar’s (Be Gay Do Comics, The New Yorker, Drawing Power) work through the artwork of Ode to Keisha, written by Jamila Rowser, last year. In the short comic about friendship and identity, I noted Esobar’s attention to detail in such a heartwarming auto-bio comic, and her masterful handling of the panels that paced the story well. Even in only black and white, I was moved by the comic with her artwork onboard and didn’t feel like the visual narrative was lacking in the absence of color. I was overjoyed to hear that I would be able to read her next work, Arrive In My Hands: Queer Erotic Comics, a collection of poetry-comics and speculative comics exploring everything from self love to validation of self to rebellion and end of world musings.
There are several places of importance in this book: strip malls with nondescript optometrist offices, oceans with riotous waves, forgotten roads, and even graveyards. The characters that take up space in these pages include bespectacled customers, witches, hunted lovers on the run, and even some creatures belonging to the sea. There’s a kind of cheekiness that comes with Escobar’s writing, making entries like “Fever of Stingrays,” a stunning oceanic encounter, and the simple but memorable three-paneled “Part-Time Tutor.” These are only a handful of examples of the short poems in comic form that bring awe and laughter to the table.
One of my favorite comics, “Patient & Seething,” finds a young woman reading, relaxed in a public library as zombies swarm outside. The opening stanzas start with, “If this is the end of the world, then I will search for books unburned,” and present a young woman content with her version of the world, unhurried. Her brown skin stands out against the muted tones of the interior of the library building and the garish yellow of the sickly sky of the outdoors. Clad in only blue jeans and socks, breast bare and free, she chooses, freely, to make the end of the world what she wants to, on her own agenda, doing what brings her peace and sweet release. This comic stood out not just for the visuals but also for the unhurriedness during an apocalypse and this sole woman’s ownership of her time.
The final two poems present the longest pieces in this body of work and are stunning in prose just as much as they are colored and illustrated. The second to last comic, which shares the title of the book itself, “Arrive In My Hands,” is co-written by Escobar and Meredith Hobbs Cooks and presents a woman in a beautiful gown searching and traveling. With a reddish, blue, and gold color scheme she moves from the water to land to deep in the forest. The start of the comic begins with these haunting words: “I rustle. You are a ship longing for land in open waters.” The poem comes to a brilliant finish with visuals fit for a fairytale, the stanzas dripping with longing and almost otherworldly beauty seeping between the words.
The best way to help describe how reading Arrive in my Hands makes me feel is the inclusion of a line from Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power” essay from her book, Sister Outsider. Lorde wrote: “When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women…The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.” Erotica, long damned and misunderstood, has been maligned over the years as a genre and Escobar’s work here presents a bold reclaiming of not just the genre, or of comics, but also of work with an appreciating female gaze that never feels grossly exploitative.
The women and female-presenting persons in these comics and poems are empowered and enraptured. They are either in control of the pleasures and experiences they are involved in or active participants. No one is coerced, threatened, or forced, and there’s a certain type of playfulness throughout the book along with a side of wonder. At one hundred and twenty pages, Arrive In My Hands isn’t terribly long, but it doesn’t have to be as it is a solid collection that nails exploration, style, and softness.
Escobar bares herself, her soul, and her loves on the page. She invites readers on a journey full of spontaneity, magic, and poetic musings that stand to challenge our thoughts on morality and the norm. I arrived at a much different place after reading Arrive In My Hands – one that desires much and that includes seeing much more sensitivity, vulnerability, and just plain fun in comics.
I have also arrived at a place of loving more and more illustrative examples of queerness open and unafraid on the page and of course, being happy to see more of Escobar’s work. She proves here with this collection for mature readers that she is a powerhouse as this is a compelling, beautiful, and unforgettable immersion of comics and poetry that shouldn’t be missed.
