I went through a period a while back where i was looking for
trans women characters in contemporary comics and graphic novels* and a lot of people referred me to Neil Gaiman, with
The Sandman series in particular, and told me about how he's friends with ~real live trans women~ and all that. And i still see him referenced, here and elsewhere, as providing some of the best inclusions of trans people in those forms of visual media to date.
The problem was, I already owned the entire series (for a long time; i got them when i was in my mid teens), had gone back and read it again, and found it disappointing in most parts which included trans women and in others it actually brought up feelings of body dysphoria and memories of violence. And while i do appreciate some of the more gender fluid characters in the series--especially Desire--they're not trans women.
( Large scans under cut, some NSFW, a little bit of tl;dr rambling, and may contain spoilers for those of you who haven't read it yet but plan to )And, reading this, i'm like, my
god, this is some of the best, least cissexist inclusion of trans women in comics?
So yeah, i don't know, i'm mostly posting this here for the discussion (which i won't, unfortunately, be able to participate in beyond this post until later tonight)--what do you think about Gaiman and the stories i've posted scans of, where have you seen trans women in comics that i've maybe missed, and so on and so on.
*
Somewhat unsuccessfully, unfortunately