Writing

The Context (2020)

Published by Primary Information, Segade’s graphic novel The Context reimagines the superhero comic book as a queer parable of belonging. The story follows six powerful beings from different worlds who find themselves inexplicably adrift together in an otherwise lifeless void: Biopower, Cathexis, Barelife, Objector, Drives, and Form. As a lifelong fan and a more recent critic of the superhero genre, I approached my first graphic novel as a solo performance, acting out all the roles: writer, penciller, inker, colorist and letterer. The Context considers the form of the graphic novel through conceptual, minimalist, op art, and constructivist aesthetics, while paying homage to the great cosmic comics of the 1970s and ’80s: Silver Surfer, Legion of Super Heroes, Green Lantern, Adam Warlock and X-Men (to name a few). A meditation on group dynamics, composed of foreshortened figures in flight set against an endless field of stars, The Context illustrates a vastness that extends past the boundaries of different art forms and ways of being. 

A Maricón Beauty
published in Artforum, October 2018

THE MUSTACHE is where they met. The Chicano and gay-liberation movements of the late 1970s weren’t closely aligned politically, but the artists Joey Terrill and Teddy Sandoval, in whose lives these movements intersected, found the nexus already coded onto their bodies. Cholo and clonecame together right above their lips.

Fanbase and Superstructure
published in Artforum.com, December 2015

JOCKSTRAP NIGHT WAS CANCELED, so everyone at the bar was in clothes they hadn’t planned to wear. I spotted three men in Captain America T-shirts and made out with one of them. I tell this story to my workout partner, who sports Iron Man–themed compression garments from Under Armour. Next to him in the locker room, another jock is squeezing into red Lycra with a Superman insignia on the chest. Walking home, I check Instagram, noting that, in my feed of comic-book memes and action figures, Beyoncé has dressed up as Storm at a costume party. I dodge a little kid on a scooter dressed as Thor, padded muscles sewn into the sleeves. In my apartment, I click on Hulu, scanning blurbs for The Flash, Arrow, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. My domestic partner negotiates a détente: He puts on the news between two superhero shows. Distracted, I swipe through zentai fetish sites, searching for a Cyclops bodysuit, then reach into my bag and pull out the latest issue of X-Men.Maecenas non leo laoreet, condimentum lorem nec, vulputate massa. Mauris id fermentum nulla.