Gaytheist - September/October 2025 Edition of Devin's Chicago Comics Book Club Digest

Also, Some Thoughts on "Growing Up Religious"

Hello, everyone! We had another new person this month, and it turned out all of us in attendance had lived in Cleveland before Chicago for varying lengths of time. Small world! Lol I’m going to be absent next month, but we planned all the way into Spring 2026. I can’t wait to hear all about what I miss!

In this issue: What We’re Reading - About What We’ve Read - Shameless Self-Promotion - Some Thoughts on “Growing Up Religious”

This was our third time reading something that had previously been posted on Webtoon, with previous experiences evenly split between positive (Heartstopper) and negative (Lore Olympus). Fortunately, everyone enjoyed this comic. Those who read it online even had something of an advantage because there were behind the scenes posts and comments about its creation. I was worried for a moment that there were changes from online to print, but that wasn’t the case. None of us had much experience with Orthodox Judaism, so we learned a lot about that community. One or two people felt that a bit more contextualizing or information would have helped, but we also recognized that it wasn’t the author’s intention or responsibility to educate us. Surprisingly, Flamer only came up once despite having a similar arc of a religious gay young man coming to terms with his sexuality. Compared to Aiden in that book, Lonnie was more confrontational while his growth was more interior. The ending of Gaytheist was very abrupt; one person felt that was the only negative about it. We all wanted to read more and hope a second volume is forthcoming.

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, October 15 to discuss Trese, Volume 1: Murder on Balete Drive.

What We're Reading

October 15 - Trese, Volume 1: Murder on Balete Drive by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo

November 19 - Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson

December 17 - Berlin by Jason Lutes

January 21 - Dandadan, Volume 1 by Yukinobu Totsu

February 18 - The Summer Hikaru Died, Volume 1 by Mokumokuren

March 18 - Witch Hat Atelier, Volume 1 by Kamome Shirahama

Next month’s selection is only available on hoopla, so everybody make sure you have the app and a Chicago library card! I’ll be reading it, and I hope people let me know what they think while I’m out of town. Also, nobody wanted to take the holidays off and Hostage turned out to be more of a testing ground than I thought, so we’ll be closing out the year with two large volumes. And it looks like 2026 will be the year we dive into manga, after all! At least for the first few months. We had enough people for a quorum and I took advantage. XD

About What We’ve Read

You can learn more about Gaytheist and the creators at Lonnie Mann’s website. He spoke to Broken Frontier about it for Pride Month this year. You can read his other major comics work, Thoughts from Iceland, also on Webtoon.

The latest NEWS digest is available here. The next NEWS digest will be posted in two weeks on Friday, October 10. It might be a bit out of date, though.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I’m heading to New York Comic Con for the first time in less than two weeks! The schedule I shared last week is still probably incomplete and if C2E2 is any indication, I’ll be attending maybe a tenth of those panels to spend time with friends and network with professionals.

In November, I’ll be speaking to a college class at UIC about “Comics Writing, Superheroes, and the Public Domain.” That’s my working title. I’ll record it and there will be more details in next month’s newsletter.

Rise of the Flightless is still available!

Geek Collective’s Archetypes #2 is available digitally.

The proofs for Prism have arrived, and it’s available for preorder.

The first anthology to publish a comic I wrote, CyberSync, is available for purchase. It’s gone into a second printing!

Some Thoughts on “Growing Up Religious”

I struggled to come up with a topic for this month. At first, I thought I’d clarify my thoughts on religion as a whole, but that would take a whole book to untangle. Sometimes, I worry that I talk too much about my former evangelical beliefs. I thought instead that I would take this opportunity to clarify something.

Contrary to what some may think, I was not raised evangelical. My family was actually Methodist. It’s hard to imagine a more mainstream Christian denomination; everything from Blazing Saddles to Stephen King’s The Stand to Peacemaker has name checked it in one way or another. My father was the head of the local Methodist men’s group, but church was more a social tradition than anything else.

I took it very seriously, though. I read the Bible constantly and would have discussions with the pastor before and after services. I taught the high school Sunday school class when I was still in eighth grade. My introduction to evangelicalism came via my aunts, my mother’s sisters. Their extremism was mocked privately by the rest of the family, but I bought into what they had to say. I remember debating evolution with my ninth grade biology teacher with a passionate ignorance that is all too common in the United States.

When I left home for college, that’s when I really fell down the rabbit hole of white American evangelicalism. This is part of why I find it hilarious when conservatives describe college as some bastion of liberal indoctrination. Yes, my Milton professor mocked George W. Bush, but my T. S. Eliot professor had a Dole/Kemp bumper sticker (there’s a joke in there somewhere). My philosophy professor bragged about being descended from Confederate soldiers and my poli sci professor had guest lecturers from the Million Mom March and the NRA.

Anyway, I became the president of the campus chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and attended a local evangelical church. My parents were not happy about this. My father’s exact words were, “It’s not some tambourine-waving freak church, is it?” Their opinion did not improve with time. Shortly after I graduated college, they tried to get the church shut down as a cult.

There’s a whole lot more to this story, but I’m almost out of time. I’m sure it raises further questions, and maybe I’ll get around to answering them in a future essay. For now, I thought I’d fill in some of the gaps in my religious history.

Thanks for reading! I know this was a short one this month. My day job has gotten a lot busier lately and I’ve been preparing for New York. Feel free to share any thoughts or comments below. Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Take care of each other. Make sure to be here next month for Trese, Volume 1: Murder on Balete Drive by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo!