‘Doctor Aphra’ wins a GLAAD Media Award

The Star Wars comic featuring an original character created for the comics also featured a same-sex relationship.

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra has won a 2020 GLAAD Media Award, in the “Outstanding Comic Book” category. The awards were announced by GLAAD on Twitter.

The comic features the adventures of Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra, a character created specifically for comics. She is a lesbian, having a same-sex relationship with Magna Tolvan, a member of the Imperial army when they first meet.

Aphra was created by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca, but the comics that were nominated were created by a large cast of creators who GLAAD recognized on Twitter: Simon Spurrier, Emilio Laiso, Andrea Broccardo, Wilton Santos, Caspar Wijngaard, Marc Deering, Don Ho, Walden Wong, Chris Bolson, Scott Hanna, Elsa Charretier, Rachelle Rosenberg, Chris O’Halloran, Stephane Paitreau, Lee Loughridge, Edgar Delgado, Jim Campbell, Joe Caramagna.

The announcement video also included some words from Spurrier on the win:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Sarah Mirk

The writer, editor and journalist discusses her two most recent projects — ‘Year of Zines’ and ‘Guantanamo Voices.’

Sarah Mirk is mostly known as a writer and editor for her work at Bitch Media, and for her books like You Do You and Sex From Scratch. She’s also written comics for The Nib and Symbolia, and has done cartoons for The New Yorker.

This year, though, she has two major projects coming out that show the breadth and depth of her work and her talent. Year of Zines is out now. The book collects 100 of the comics that Mirk made in 2019 where she made literally a zine a day. In the fall, Abrams is publishing Guantanamo Voices, which Mirk wrote and edited, telling the stories of veterans, prisoners, lawyers and government officials, with a number of artists.

Taken together, the books show off the inventiveness, skill and roving mind of a creator who is clearly just getting started. More recently, Mirk has been covering the protests in Portland in work that can be seen on her Twitter and Instagram. Mirk was kind enough to chat about her work.

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