Donelan (cartoonist)

Donelan was born in Jamaica Plain,^[5] a neighborhood in Boston, but grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the son of advertising artist Paul Donelan. He graduated from Plymouth Carver Regional High School in 1967.^[5] He studied art at Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute but did not finish a degree, and went to work in retail.

He met and began dating Christopher McKenna in May 1979. The couple chose to wait to be married until same-sex marriage was legalized nationally in 2015.^[5] After spending most of their lives together living in San Francisco, the couple eventually moved back to Donelan's hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts after his mother Teresa passed away in 2004.^[5]

In 1977, disappointed that Joe Johnson's pioneering gay comic strips Miss Thing and Big Dick had ended their run in The Advocate, Donelan submitted 29 cartoons to the publication, which turned into a long-running series of his own. "It's a Gay Life" gently lampooned the gay "clone" culture of the time, also known as the Castro clone, focusing primarily on young and middle-aged gay men in their everyday lives.^[6] He continued to work in retail while producing the series, which also yielded two paperback reprints: Drawing on the Gay Experience (1987) and Donelan's Back (1988).^[1]

For eight years Donelan also created sexually explicit comics in color for Advocate Men, later retitled Men, which was an erotica sister publication of The Advocate.^[7] His work has appeared in Drummer,^[8] Frontiers, Gunner, Gay Comix (including one front cover),^[9] and Meatmen (including two front covers and several back covers).^[4]

Donelan's art was produced in seven countries, including South Korea,^[5] and in five languages, including Dutch and Korean.^[10] His work has appeared on t-shirts, rubber stamps, and in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.^[7] He has illustrated calendars and greeting cards as well.^[11]

Donelan created cartoons, pamphlets, and posters to educate the gay community about the importance of safe sex practices and the threat of AIDS.^[5] He did this work for the NAMES Project, which worked to honor victims of AIDS and AIDS-related diseases in an enormous patchwork quilt.

In May 2015, he was a featured panelist at the first Queers & Comics conference, as one of the "Pioneers of Queer Men's Comics".^[7]

• "Donelan" from Strip AIDS U.S.A.
• "The Quilt" from Strip AIDS U.S.A.
• cover of Gay Comix #7 (color credit to Robert Triptow)
• "Night Moves" from Gay Comix #7
• "The Discussion Group" from Gay Comix #7
• "A Donelan Look at Women" from Gay Comix #10
• "A Donelan Look at Men" from Gay Comix #10
• "Blip..." from Gay Comix #25
• untitled from No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics
• untitled from Meatmen #1
• "Interrupted Transmission" from Meatmen #2
• back cover from Meatmen #2
• "It's a Gay Life" from The Advocate (active strip from 1977-1992)^[11][10]

• “I always try to talk to younger gay people, to tell them what happened before … I think it’s important that we all understand what everybody else did before us so that they can appreciate what they have now.”^[7]

• (speaking on the push for equality and acceptance) “We’re still not there, because not everybody agrees that you have a right to be who you are. We’re still the outliers – not part of the heterosexual community that everyone thinks is normal.”^[5]

• "I loved recognizing little bits of real life in the black and white blocks of the daily papers. Hasn't everyone at one time had the urge to cut out a cartoon because 'That's me!'? That's what I wanted to do with my cartoons for the gay community. I wanted to do what Joe Johnson's 'Miss Thing' in the early days of The ADVOCATE had done for me when I was first coming out. I wanted some fairy to see one of my cartoons, say, 'That's me!' and realize that there are others who do what 'I' do, feel as 'I' feel. I wanted to help show other gay people that 'we' have a validity, a sense of humor and a sense of community. Why cartoons connect me to real life, I don't know. But I hope my cartoons connect my readers to our gay life in a positive way."^[1]

• LGBT themes in comics
• List of comics creators
• List of American comics creators