The world is, so goes the common belief, more divided now than at any time before. America, especially, feels like it’s reaching a breaking point. Following this belief, renowned comic writer Howard Chaykin (who has worked on almost every comic character you’ve ever heard of plus a ton you never have) created a comic, published at Image, called Divided States of Hysteria, about the conflict that seems almost intrinsic to modern American life.

Perhaps appropriately, this comic has led to a huge conversation about the merits of art, white privilege, the roles of minorities in media, and the ability of art to tackle difficult subjects.

[Content warning: This story touches on graphic depictions of transphobia, transphobic violence, racism and descriptions of assault.]

The comic itself is formed of a frame story set in a flash-future Washington, D.C., with a few vignettes depicting oppressed people fighting back against their oppressors. Some of these are a bit much — a black man taking refuge in a building, sniping from a window; a Jewish man stealing money from his employers — and then there are others where the comic might expect us to feel sympathy, including a cop killer and a trans woman killing her abusers.

While there’s been controversy surrounding the comic since it was first announced — alongside a cover showing a brown-skinned woman in an American flag burqa — further imagery from the comic has only served to regularly stoke the fires of criticism. A Middle Eastern man, lynched, his genitals destroyed, a slur on his chest. A trans woman, naked, her cock hanging out, her head bashed in. And the trans woman’s sequence in the first issue is what pushed this comic out of the view of comic fans and into the mainstream.

Her sequence begins in a strip club, with the woman narrating, revealing that she raped a fourteen year old when she was sixteen, and then showing her on her hands and knees, performing oral sex, surrounded by three men. One of them moves her underwear and that’s when it happens — her dick falls out.

She assures us that the men knew, but now seeing the evidence, it provokes them to rage. She says the men will get off, citing the “trap” defense — or, as is commonly known, the trans panic defense: an actual defense invoked to keep men who have killed trans women out of prison.

The comic shows her being brutally beaten at the hands of men — which, not to be too blunt but, is something that happens to real trans women with above average frequency. To sensationalize it in this way is not only disrespectful, but also fetishizes actual hate crimes. Luckily, though, the trans woman prostitute (a perniciously common media stereotype of trans women is that they are all sex workers) has a gun and blows them away … just in time for the cops to come in. During her mugshot, we see her deadname — i.e., the name she was given at birth which, along with her previous gender, she has discarded. For most trans people, being called by your deadname is as offensive as any slur. If you were looking for a guidebook on how to write a trans woman in such a way as to hurt trans women readers, this is it.

On top of it all, Divided States of Hysteria #1 came out during Pride Month, and was included in Image Comics’ Pride Month cover branding. Lovely.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Divided States of Hysteria is just, pardon the pun, a further example of how divided the state of trans representation in comics is. If you want to write a minority right, and you aren’t of that minority, you must be ready to listen to them. Unfortunately, that isn’t something many creators seem interested in doing. We see the pattern play out again and again.

A high-profile writer or artist makes a misstep in depicting a culture distant from their own, and then when called out about it, all they can do is insist their critics have it wrong, misunderstand them, or that the story isn’t for them. You see it in politics, in your daily life, and in comics. Even comic companies (and television actors) aren’t exempt from this bone headedness.

While criticism was first swelling about Divided States’ failure in trans representation, Image was releasing a press statement calling the first issue incisive and announcing that the comic was going back for another printing. And to be sure, I believe Chaykin means for it to be incendiary and cutting — he’s using it to provoke and incite conversation. However, he’s so far removed from the people he’s depicting that he has no idea whether he’s being provocative or just plain hurtful. He’d need to listen in order to understand, and he doesn’t seem ready to do that.

In the end, Chaykin was proud and critics were aghast. The book sold and the controversy seemed over and done. But as the discussion around trans representation began to die down, the cover for the fourth issue of Divided States of Hysteria was released.

HANGING FROM POPLAR AVE

The cover for this “exciting” and “controversial” series’ fourth issue is a single, graphic image: A Middle Eastern man, lynched, his genitals mutilated, a slur on his chest. Thus began an argument that is still raging.

Some have called for a boycott of the entire Image Comics line — saying the only way that Image will learn is if you hit them where it hurts: their wallet. Others — including creators who work for Image — have come out saying that boycotting individual series won’t hurt Image, but it will hurt the (often minority) creators of the books. Some protest that even being offended at this is beyond the pale (and a call to censorship), and that art is meant to be provocative, with others insisting that this isn’t provocative, it’s vile. Furthering the division is the divide between the fact that Divided States gets published while other creators — including PoC creators and trans creators — struggle to get noticed. In comics, it seems, it’s easy for brown men and trans women to be beaten and mutilated on the page, harder for them to find paying work in the field.

Image has issued an apology (for the cover of issue #4, not the transmisogyny) and pulled it, replacing the fourth issue’s cover — the original can be seen here — with the one planned for issue #6, showing an American Eagle followed by a flock of drones. However, as Kieran Schiach said over at The Guardian, the cover should never have been printed and the fact that it did shows just how privileged the industry is.

When your comic engenders this much controversy, it’s because it is hurting people. And comics, it’s shouldn't have to be said, aren’t as important as people.

DIVIDED STATES

Being seen is important. Not feeling alone is important. When all you see of yourself in art are villains or victims it hurts. It feels like the world doesn’t view you as whole. Marginalized people need to see themselves in art, and it’s not just straight, white, cis, allo people who read comics. But, sadly, this is what a lot of people who aren’t the most privileged have to look forward to when they crack the spine: hate and violence.

The history of trans characters (mostly women) in comics is not a great one — Divided States is just one in a long line. For the last big example of transmisogyny (transphobia that specifically targets trans women) in comics, all we need to do is look at Airboy, published a scant two years ago, which depicted trans women as ultimately men (and also as that most terrible of a thing for women to be... sluts).

Even good representation of trans people tends not to be wholly amazing. Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman depicted a trans woman in a sensitive light, who is seen as a beautiful woman, whole, at the end; but before that she has a goddess refused her entrance to another realm for not being a woman, and oh yeah, she dies. That’s a pretty common thing for women to do in fiction, but especially trans women.

Comics have been around for a long time, but even now they struggle to depict minorities as anything other than victims or stereotypes. For some people, Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan was the first time a comic hero was like them. Dwayne McDuffie — one of comic’s best writers — created an entire line of comics (Static’s Dakotaverse) because he was sick of seeing stereotypical black characters. The best way for you to see yourself in art is if someone like yourself is creating it.

People experience the world differently, especially according to our privilege. People with no experience of or connection to trans people who still try to write them creates stories with the feel of Lucille Bluth’s infamous line in Arrested Development: “It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”

Despite all of this, the state of representation for trans people, people of color, disabled people — all underrepresented minorities — in comics is looking brighter. More and more, people are trying to write sensitive portrayals of people not like them, with the help of those same people. Writers like Kieron Gillen, Andrew Wheeler, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Ryan North, Marguerite Bennett and Gail Simone have reached out to trans people as sounding boards to make sure they’re not screwing anything up. (Disclosure: Wheeler was my editor at the now-shuttered Comics Alliance. He reached out to me, among other trans writers, for perspective on his writing of trans characters.)

And more and more oppressed writers are being given the opportunity to write characters like them. All you have to do is look at things like Melanie Gillman’s As the Crow Flies, Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol run, Jem and the Holograms with artist Sophia Campbell, The Backstagers with artist Rian Sygh, anthologies such as Strange Romance featuring comics written by Charlotte Finn, or, heck, anything Magdalene Visaggio has written, especially Quantum Teens Are Go. Seeing trans women be written so well in such an awesome book feels almost like a blessing.

There’s still work to do, but if there’s one thing comics have taught us is that the story is not over, and that hope will always win out.

Divided States of Hysteria supposes that America, and the world, is more divided than ever. But that’s simply not the case. America wasn’t less divided during segregation, or during the Stonewall Riots. It’s just that those in power could ignore the disenfranchised more easily. Social media didn’t change what was happening, it has just showed us what was happening.

Comics, likewise, are divided: because it used to be that the only portrayals of trans women in print were alien and absurd, unrealistic and (purposeful or not) extremely hurtful and demeaning. But now the light is shining in. You can call it divided, but to me it just looks like it’s changing … for the better.