The Re-Live and FWP comic, Coming Home #2, has launched today and is now available to purchase online and through comic shops.
Coming Home #2 is the second issue of comics from Arts in Health charity Re-Live, and the first in partnership with Fighting With Pride, the LGBTQ+ military veterans charity. The second issue focuses on the impact of the ban on LGBT+ veterans’ mental health.
The stories told in Coming Home #2 reflect the complex and diverse experiences of LGBTQ+ people who have served over the past decades. Flight Lieutenant Steve Purves joined the RAF in 1972 as an electrical engineer and in 1985 was sentenced to six months in prison for a consensual relationship with another man. Corporal Ruth Birch and Private Julia Currey, who met while serving with the British Army in 1980s, began a secret relationship with its own coded messages. They were eventually discovered by the Army, forcing them to split up following interrogation by the Special Investigation Branch; Ruth & Ju were reunited 22 years later in Porthcawl, south Wales and were finally married in 2017. Flight Lieutenant Caroline Paige MBE became the first openly serving transgender officer in the British Armed Forces in February 1999 and Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Craig Jones MBE came out on the day that the Gay Ban was lifted in January 2000;
Re-Live’s Karin Diamond and Steve Sullivan worked alongside each veteran over eight months to hear their mental health stories and explore how they could best become scripts for comic stories. The scripted stories were then sent to leading British LGBTQ+ and allied comic artists, chosen for their work’s compatibility with each story. These include leading LGBTQ+ artists including Ed Firth, the creator behind the ongoing Horny & High anthology comic who is currently Artist in Residence at The Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles; cartoonist and illustrator Anna Readman who won the Observer/Faber Graphic Short Story Prize for Dancing Queen; Ria Grix whose work has appeared in The New Scientist and Star Trek Magazine and AJ O’Neill, an Irish LGBTQ+ freelance illustrator, graphic artist and choreographer.
The artists shared their work at each stage of its creation, from first rough sketches, through to the finished inked and coloured pages, and allowed the veterans and Re-Live to have input at every stage, ensuring that the finished work is an honest and accurate reflection of the veterans’ real-life experiences.
Karin Diamond, co-editor, Coming Home comic said: “It’s been an honour to work with this group of LGBT+ veteran storytellers and support them to share such powerful mental health stories. When I first heard some of these stories it’s hard not to think ‘that’s unbelievable’ but the fact that these are true stories makes them all the more impactful. We hope that the comic reaches other veterans who might be holding their own mental health stories and helps them to see they’re not alone and that it is OK to take the first step in getting some help and support. We also hope Coming Home enlightens and informs comic readers about some of the hidden struggles members of our Armed Forces go through.
You can order Coming Home #2 directly from the Re-Live shop https://www.re-live.org.uk/cominghomecomic
You can also learn more about the comic and veteran contributors on the ITV News website at: ‘They said I was a danger’: LGBTQ+ veterans share their stories 25 years after ‘gay ban’ lifted | ITV News
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