Orlando
Cartoonist: Jules Scheele
Art Assistant: Garry Mac
Based on Novel By: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Avery Hill
To write about Orlando, and indeed Orlando — especially as a queer person — is to write about one’s own self. So, then, let this be my own personal biography.
When did I figure it out?
While I was no doubt introduced to the idea of gender nonconformity through the transphobic Gay Marriage episode of The Simpsons, it didn’t really parse to me as a thing to take seriously. It wasn’t until I was browsing around the internet in high school and discovered some Ranma ½ erotica that the notion firmly existed in my brain.
Still, I was raised in a relatively conservative environment — such that the day I found the aforementioned erotica, I no doubt walked past the kindly pair of grannies sharing pamphlets about the satanic nature of President Barack Husain Obama. As such, some shittiness arose. My first interaction with a gender queer person was during College orientation up in Storrs. We were doing a get to know you exercise involving sharing fun facts about each other. My partner noted their genderqueer nature (if I recall correctly, I think they were trans, but don’t quote me on that). I, being an idiot, shared the information on the white board, earning a condemnation from the volunteer, who explained some ideas to me that should’ve been self-evident.
Over the years, I would have several growing experiences regarding my gender identity. I knew I was queer. One does not find Ranma ½ erotica without having some dalliances in queerness in the first place. It took four years of college to figure out I’m bisexual, but that aspect of my queerness wasn’t really an anxiety pill for me.
Rather, it was the gender element. I would spend nights contemplating my own gender identity, not helped by accidentally finding out two friends of mine were trans months prior to them coming out publicly. I would lie awake, saying to myself “I’m a boy,” “I’m a girl,” “I’m nonbinary” as some sort of mantra to help me sleep. It didn’t work, of course, and I would spend my nights lying awake.
Eventually, it got to the point where I would say some shitty things about the concept of dresses. I would think non-stop about what it means to sit like a man. To walk like a woman. To eat like a nonbinary. My paranoia about my gender identity was at a fever pitch, often to my own detriment. It wasn’t that I was in denial. It was that I had no idea what it would mean for me to be a gender.
When did I figure it out?
I was on the train to Hartford in 2020, about to attend another class for my Masters in teaching. I was initially planning on living in the city for the year, though COVID scuttled those plans rather quickly. Indeed, I had gotten the news that I would be attending the program the week before the quarantine was announced. I had been apartment hunting when the news broke out.
As such, I had to take the train every other day for six months to attend courses at the school. Each time, I would look out the window, and see my own reflection, not recognizing the person on the other side. One day, and I forget the reason why save that it was October and it felt right, I said to my reflection that I was nonbinary. I affirmed my identity over the next couple of days and months, slowly coming out to friends and family alike. The anxieties of my youth slowly slipped away, though some still linger on. I wouldn’t come out publicly until a twitter meme asking about gender identity unveiled itself to the world and I took advantage. That was in 2022, when I lived in Norwich.
Three weeks to the minute I looked in the mirror and I realized that I looked like me.
For a time, I had a concern that I could only look like myself if I was clean shaven. That having such a masculine identifier would destroy any semblance of nonbinary identity. Last year, out of laziness, I simply forgot to shave. When I realized this, I decided to just let it grow out until the spring, the longest it has ever been allowed to grow. Every time I looked into the mirror, I still felt like me. The reflection was still me. And I was not a boy nor a girl. I was me.
When did I figure it out?
When I understood my nonbinary identity, I decided to reach out to some nonbinary friends of mine. The first I considered was named Sam. In retrospect, it was probably for the best that I didn’t reach out to Sam given he revealed himself early the next year to be a snake, a pest, and an all-around jackass. It might’ve made the revelations about him in my small community all the more heartbreaking.
More crucial was the friend I reached out to prior to coming out: Avelo. Avelo is my best friend. I’ve known her since I was in high school. She shared some horror movies with me as a kid as well as introduced me to various albums and other queer arts. She would publicly transition to female in 2021, but at the time she identified as nonbinary. So, I reached out for some advice with my growing understanding of myself. We would talk on and off, with her providing me with advice that would help shape the identity I understand myself to be to this day. Indeed, I was quite happy for Avelo when she discovered her feminine identity and experienced success in the German comedy scene.
I had (and indeed still have) friends I could’ve reached out to for help. But I decided these two because of their relationship with criticism. Both worked as critics at the time (though they have both largely left the field) and I rather liked their work. (Though, in the case of Sam, I think it was more what he was trying to do than what they ultimately did. The fella simply could not get out of his own way, in spite of his massive ego and cruel remarks, to say nothing about the acts of sexual pestilence he engaged with.) And they both, at the time, identified as nonbinary as opposed to a binary trans identity.
That said, I did discuss things with some of my trans friends as well. Though they are largely in the private spaces that mentioning them by name without permission would be, at best, a faux pas.
When did I figure it out?
When I was working in New Haven amidst the autumn of 2022, I had the opportunity to see a performance of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. As with the best performances of the play, it left me haunted and numb. An absolutely bleak portrait of gender, marriage, and parenthood. Two people who live together out of obligation rather than desire.
Around the same time the next year, I mooched off my brother’s membership with Film at Lincoln Center (a membership he no longer has) to get tickets to a rather interesting documentary called Orlando, My Political Biography. In truth, I’ve not read the novel the documentary and the comic I am ostensibly reviewing is about. But the subject matter and style appealed to me, so I checked it out. I was floored by its artistry, especially with regards to its depiction of alternative gender identities, often changing the narrator of Orlando from male to female to nonbinary and beyond. One particularly interesting experience with the film was seeing a scene wherein the director gives the Virginia Woolf novel gender reassignment surgery.
But my dearest engagement with the spirit of Orlando remains the work of Derek Jarman. (I would not see the film proper until 2024.) I was introduced to Jarman through a film critic —I’m pretty sure is the shitty ex of another film critic — doing a review of Jubilee and Blue. Both films sparked my imagination in ways that titillate and fascinate to this day. But it was Blue, Jarman’s spoken word poem about experiencing AIDS, that I was immediately drawn to. The film has a lyrical beauty to it that simply has to be experienced, especially in a dark room.
Last year, my brother gifted Blue to me for Christmas. I watched it at 2 AM one night and fell asleep to its melodic beauty. My local Barnes and Noble, soon to be shuttered by the capricious winds of capital, has copies of Orlando, My Political Biography ready to be purchased at cheap rates. I’m not sure if I can do it, even though I should…
When did I figure it out?
During the summer before my senior year of undergrad, I went to a comic book store that no longer exists. There, I perused the shelves and found a number of out of print works, most notably a poetry adaptation of Alan Moore, Steve Bisette, and Rick Veitch’s The Mirror of Love by José Villarrubia. The poem is an epic about the complete history of queerness from pre-humanity up to the then modern fears of Section 28 and the criminalization of queer folks. It’s a stark, haunting work that brings a tear to my eye every time I read it.
I had the opportunity to read the poem in its entirety to a pair of friends of mine who had the displeasure of reading Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls. They were both heartbroken by the poem and found it beautiful. I’m pretty sure I brought a tear to their eyes, but we were audio only. (Personally, Lost Girls is very much a work that means well but simply cannot get past the pedestal Moore places sexual liberation onto.)
An absence within the poem is that of Virginia Woolf herself. Though, to be fair to Moore, her Orlando does make a significant appearance in one of his major works. Unfortunately, that work is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with artist Kevin O’Neill. The series follows a group of adventurers from the Victorian era across the centuries. It is very much Moore embracing his worst instincts, most notably in the volume that introduces Orlando, The Black Dossier. Still, Moore’s characterization of Orlando is absolutely charming. A rogue living through more than just Virginia Woolf’s tragically short lifetime, remaining the same but different. The stories recur, with only the most superficial of differences. For Moore, such an existence would be considered Hell, especially in a world dominated by IP and superheroes.
Last Christmas, I got the final two lines of The Mirror of Love tattooed on my left arm. “I’d burn throughout eternity/with you.” It is right below a tattoo of a quote from Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s Doom Patrol: “Come in out of the rain.”
When did I figure it out?
Prior to diving into Ranma ½ proper, I came across a fan comic by the late Rebecca Heineman called Sailor Ranko. As the title suggests, it’s a crossover between Ranma and Sailor Moon wherein the cast of Ranma ½ ends up in Azabu-Jūban and hijinks ensue. I was rather charmed by the Ranma cast as a whole, the kind of jerks who are charming instead of painful. (I’ve never been into Sailor Moon because it went too far in its mean spiritedness.) Still, I didn’t end up picking up the manga proper because I had other things I wanted to read.
In 2024, I finally decided to bite the bullet and read Ranma ½ in anticipation for its new anime adaptation. I had previously failed miserably at reading Maison Ikkoku, though that might have been due to my decision to buy each volume and being unemployed at the time. I was falling off of it a bit, but still. With Ranma, I decided to read it extralegally, as many comics readers are want to do with older and largely out of print works.
I had skimmed the book once or twice — at bookstores and my first teaching job’s library — but I’d never actually read the series. When I finally got around to it, I was instantly charmed by its wry and broad sense of humor. Yes, there were the problematic elements regards the standards of gender representation at the time, to say nothing about the frequent usage of sexual assault comedy. But the overall work was just delightful.
In particular, I grew rather fond of Ranma himself. I had heard about the series prior to reading it, as any well respecting queer otaku is ought to. But conversations tended to hue towards Ranma as a binary trans lead. Someone who, upon accepting his female self, never looked back to her male incarnation.
But upon actually reading the manga, I found something more resonate: Ranma wasn’t a boy stuck in a girl’s body nor a girl in a boy’s. She was both. In one arc, Ranma finds himself trapped in his female incarnation by the plots of Shampoo’s granny. When given a brief moment of returning to her male form, Ranma shows a face that can only be described as jubilant gender euphoria. As if he can feel his own face for the first time in years.
A later arc has a guy pretend to be Ranma. In many ways, he comes across as a version of Ranma who was never female. Who embraced the shonen stereotype of training forever and never living a full life. When Ranma sees this guy, roughing it in the cold, showing off his status as a man’s man, not needing anyone at all, she can only look at him with pity. “You’re using your skills for the wrong reasons,” Ranma notes, “You’re using them to just destroy things… not to create anything…”
When did I figure it out?
I had a nervous breakdown in 2016, as a lot of us did. It would be more accurate to say I’ve been having nervous breakdowns between the start and end of my undergraduate period. In 2014, I was informed by my roommate in September or October that he was going to become a commuter student. This would be the third roommate I’ve had in two years. (The first left due to having a radically different schedule involving Swimming and the second was a complete asshole who refused to let me close the window at 2AM despite us living right next to a crosswalk that always blared.) Being young and inexperienced, I did not take this well. Sure, I made myself seem to take it well to him, but I broke down into tears to the point where I had to visit the college’s psych ward.
In 2015, around about August, I had a black out while taking a shower. One minute, I was standing in the shower, banging at the door in need of escape; the next, I was falling down right near my brother. Apparently, I had been standing completely naked in the doorway to his room for at least a minute. I have no memory of this. What I do recall feels like a segment of life completely spliced out with only frames of the moment remaining in the dust.
In 2016, Donald Trump was elected President the day I decided to come out to my roommates.
I’m not sure what this all has to do with gender, but it’s a part of me.
When did I figure it out?
Back when Comixology was a thing, I got a comic called Smut Peddler in, I believe 2014 or 2015. It was specifically the 2012 edition of the book that gravitated me, and moreover a short story within it called “Busking Beguile” by Jess Fink. Fink was, at the time, known for a web comic I truthfully have never read. I’ve seen some panels of it, but I never felt the urge to read it. But the short within here sort of rewired my brain.
The story was, if I recall correctly, set in the 1800s — maybe early 1900s — about a pair of vagabonds conning their way into attending a fancy party. One of them was a polyamorous swinger out to have a good night in the town. The other, more interesting and brain burning for me, was, if I’m remembering correctly, a transman with a singular partner. I wasn’t attracted to the transman so much as was rather smitten with his aesthetic. I didn’t want him, I wanted to become him.
I often think about the implications of that sentence. Especially in the early years of my nonbinary identity, that sentence has haunted the subtext of my mind. Even today, I’m not sure the full implications of what I just typed, what it means to me and the world. It feels messy and problematic, a sort of fetishization of trans identity from someone who, largely, passes. Maybe I was attracted to his swagger and confidence, a sense of engaging the world without fear or anxiety.
When did I figure it out?
I haven’t. At least, not completely. No one ever completely figures it out. There are always gaps in knowledge — both because of a lack of experience and a lack of self-worth. We are, forever, growing, changing beings, never defined by our moment. To quote Orlando, “A biography is complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves when a person may well have as many as thousands. My conscious self desires to be nothing but one self, a true self, a key self.”
We will never be defined truthfully. There are parts of the story that may never be told, be it due to a sense of privacy — both of one’s self and fellow travelers — a sense of shame, or the fog of memory clouding the truth of the matter. A true self will never arise because truth is so often fleeting, so often misconstrued. Truth exists, to be sure. But a true biography will never be fully written. Because all writers are, by their own nature, liars.
When did I figure it out?
Certainly, it wasn’t upon reading Jules Scheele’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Though, to be completely fair, it is a rather charming interpretation of the work. Scheele’s art style reminds me of the cartoonish simplicity of Jess Fink, though I’m sure older examples abound. It may well be I associate the work with Fink on account of my own experiences.
I note in particular the deep linework when it comes to the various characters of Orlando, that highlights the colorful world we grow to experience and, in turn, fall in love with, even in its impermanency. How Scheele draws Orlando to look at once feminine and masculine with solely the angle of their face to extenuate the difference. I note the work’s larger engagement with history, beyond that which Woolf could’ve known before she died. I note the appearance of Thatcher, of Burroughs, of AIDS, drag, and beauty. I note the ever shifting world, and what a blessing, what a curse it is to remain the same throughout.
On a formalistic level, Scheele is doing some fantastic work. While many panels utilize a traditional paneling format, some of the more operatic and dazzling sequences are presented as an orgiastic meld of space and time, with characters from a lost past haunting a future they will never find comfort in. And yes, the sex scenes are absolutely delightful.
Scheele’s adaptation is a delightful fancy, able to deftly move from prosaic description and surrealistic images. It’s well worth reading for all the queer people who survived. And, most of all, for those who didn’t. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves beautiful things.
Orlando is out now from Avery Hill
Read more great reviews from The Beat!
