Climbing the Spiral Staircase: Queer Censorship, Comiket & Reactionary Western Optics
(An exceedingly rare, never before documented text from Comiket 5, volume 2 of Spiral Staircase contains the works of both well known and obscure Year 24 group shoujo and shonen-ai / BL / yaoi illustrators and mangaka. Acquired from the estate of a deceased mangaka who's family asked me to archive a few of their texts. Cover illustration by Tomoko Nakamine (中峰智子), Personal collection.) I've been digging my heels into a lot of different topics lately, mainly at the behest of getting more information out that I find is seriously lacking, though in these moments of reflection, I've had a lot to shoulder and digest. Thankfully, doujinshi, even in its most obscure forms, is in no short supply. I've made a lot of acquaintances lately who have been in high spirits about sourcing and locating these sorts of works, though there has been quite a lot carrying on in the backdrop. For one, Comiket 106 recently ended on a resoundingly positive note on the 17th - an onslaught of bran...
