Void

The main narrative of Balboa’s Play with Fire is his own preoccupation and confusion regarding both his sexual orientation and gender identity. His queerness is an element that he cannot pinpoint, or fully understand for the entirety of the graphic novel. For the most part, it lingers in the margins, but it is never fully explored. Despite his familiarity with LGBTQIA+ themes that derive from his artistic and cultural background, Balboa is not able to process nor entirely understand his non-normativity, arguably because of a lack of education on the topics and because of the damaging consequences of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich Reference Rich1981). Narrating from the present and from a different self-understanding, Balboa turns back in time, following a quest for his own queer memories. Mimicking the author’s own thought process and recollection practice, Play with Fire and Transformer continuously move back and forth in time, oscillating between Balboa’s present, his childhood, and his early twenties, showing the early signs of his non-normativity and the discomfort and pain that the lack of knowledge caused him. He depicts flashes of memory, which appear individually on the blank page and not boxed within panels. This stylistic choice emphasises the fluidity of Balboa’s memory timeline.

The first scene of the graphic novel is not set at the time of Play with Fire’s writing, that is, in 2019 or 2020, but in 2014, long before his transition. He depicts himself as going to the cinema with a friend to watch Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013).Footnote ² As the film’s infamous sex scene is projected onto the screen, a small speech bubble illustrates Balboa’s astonishment. The following scene represents him the next day, still preoccupied with thoughts of the film and that scene, but unable to explain why the film had such an effect on him. Then, rather than returning to the present, the narrative shifts to Balboa’s first sexual encounter with a woman in 1999. His thoughts about the film remain unexplored, lingering as an afterthought in the margins and anticipating what is yet to come.

Similarly, Balboa retraces instances in which he experienced his gender dysphoria, although not naming it as such. For instance, he turns back to 2011 and to his first artist’s exhibit in a gallery in New York. He represents himself being introduced to a trans man and being surprised by his use of testosterone. The man’s radiating confidence clashes with Balboa’s own discomfort, his unease in wearing a dress. While he is not able to identify the cause of his distress, Balboa comments: “I feel so far from myself” (2020, 15).Footnote ³ In the following panel, he depicts himself as a monkey, saying: “I feel like a circus monkey who has been put in a pink dress to take pictures with patrons (2020, 16), as a monkey figure replaces his human one, and smiles awkwardly.Footnote ⁴ In depicting his self-portrait, Balboa swiftly moves from a stylistic to a realistic style, diving into his discomfort and into his own awkwardness. The choice to rely on this specific style highlights the fact that his distress was very personal and that he still feels its echoes. While at the time he was not able to understand it, in the present he is fully aware of it and of his own physical uneasiness.

Transformer returns to Balboa’s past but focuses on his childhood memories. Turning back from the present and to 1985, he recounts how as a child he wanted to be perceived as “one of the boys” (Reference Balboa2023, 15).Footnote ⁵ Drawing an image that is extremely similar to the monkey figure in Play with Fire, Balboa depicts himself as being domesticated by his mother, this time, wearing a school uniform: while he portrays himself as happily unruly, with dishevelled hair, his mother attempts to control and standardise him by using a hair clip to keep his hair in place. By drawing the two self-portraits one next to the other, Balboa underlines the way he wanted to be and the way he was limited in his self-expression. In the following pages, Balboa describes a feeling of awkwardness, which can be immediately associated with gender dysphoria, but that remains unintelligible to him, “I have never known how to situate myself… inhabiting my body has always been an abstraction […] I have never understood how to perform femininity. I have never been a woman and in a way I have always known it” (2023, 17).Footnote ⁶ Pointedly, the section “I have always known” is circled with a red pen and accompanied by an explicatory statement “at least my brain” (2023, 17).Footnote ⁷ It is clear that Balboa was not able to consciously process his feelings. While on a deeper level, the level of “my brain,” he was aware of his dysphoria, he was not able to completely understand his feelings and his embodied discomfort. His body and his mind were two separate entities. Moreover, he did not know how to change his situation, as he says: “Femininity (and being a woman) was an imposition. I wanted to fit in, to exist, but I had no idea where to start” (2023, 19).Footnote ⁸ Despite his familiarity with LGBTQIA+ cultural works, he was not accustomed to understanding his own feelings, suffering because of it.

A similar epistemological emptiness is present in Barba. Trenta also used to suffer because he was not able to understand himself. In the graphic novel, this feeling takes the form of an actual void, which is drawn in the upper part of his torso. From the present, he comments that:

The emptiness is further explored in the following pages, which depict the graphic novel’s protagonist, Ale, desperately looking for a sphere that could fit in and fill his chest. While he draws himself in black and white, only using simple black lines, the spheres are colourful and more refined, drawn using watercolours. They invade his house, appearing to everyone, to the point that his flatmate asks him about them, to which he replies: “I cannot get rid of it. Not until I find the sphere that fills this void” (2022, 22).Footnote ¹⁰ If Balboa represented himself as a monkey in a dress, similarly, Trenta’s uneasiness is represented as an obvious physical sign. They both visualise their discomfort, externalising their feelings and providing a visual reference to their readers.

While initially he is not able to identify it as such, the missing sphere is the visual metaphor for his gender identity and the way he used to feel empty and incomplete. The comics medium adopted by Trenta is particularly effective in representing a feeling he was unable to express; by depicting the void icon, he conveys what he could not articulate in words. Ale says: “I was born as Lisa, but inside I have always been Ale. That’s the void. It took me a while to realise it. I feel disconnected” (2022, 27).Footnote ¹¹ When asked how long he has felt like something was missing, Ale replies that he has always felt that way. The question prompts the protagonist to turn back in time and to his childhood memories. Unlike the previous scenes, the memories are drawn in full colours and disregard the previous panel structure in favour of depicting specific elements as vignettes outside of panel lines. Trenta includes his mother’s car and various elements that he associates with his grandparents, such as an apple and a cornfield. While representing his younger self, he adds: “When they called me by my name… it sounded distorted, it distorted me. It wasn’t my name” (2022, 33).Footnote ¹² Much like Balboa, Trenta also underscores his need to revisit his childhood memories and recollect the signs that were there from the past.

Trenta highlights his lack of knowledge, saying, “I was a boy in a girl’s body. And I knew it. But I couldn’t explain it, I couldn’t give a name to what I felt” (2022, 34).Footnote ¹³ Hence, Barba emphasises the lack of information regarding gender and sexuality themes, which cannot solely be accounted for by a personal lack of information, rather, it is a wider and structural problem. This lack of knowledge led to Trenta’s anguish and to actions that seemed inexplicable. For instance, he recounts how, as a child, he used to steal insignificant objects from his male classmates, such as a pen and a pencil sharpener. He explains that he used to steal from them because he wanted to be a boy like them, thinking that the objects could have magically turned him into one. This behaviour was caused by his inability to understand himself, as he comments: “I thought I was a kleptomaniac, but instead I was a transgender child. And maybe if I had known that, I would have saved myself a lot of paranoia” (2022, 43).Footnote ¹⁴

Although he could not recognise his feelings, his mother did. Amidst his confusion and his lack of knowledge, she was the one who pointed him towards the right direction:

The panels illustrating her coming into Ale’s room to talk to him are drawn in bright colours. She gently tells him that talking to someone might help fill his void, albeit coming from a similar place of ineffability, “I would never have expected this from her. I always had the feeling that my mum also experienced this disharmony a bit. Without being able to give it a name” (2022, 78).Footnote ¹⁶ As she encourages him, Trenta depicts a profound transformation in Ale’s body: his void is filled. While in this moment they do not have the vocabulary to talk about his feelings, Trenta’s drawing expresses the ineffable and, subtly, a way out of his dysphoria.

Play with Fire, Transformer, and Barba all explicitly associate their authors’ struggles in understanding their gender identity with a lack of awareness of queer and trans themes. If Balboa and Trenta had been aware of what it means to be queer and trans earlier in their life, they would not have had the complicated and agonising journey that they had. Their works highlight the fact that instead of antagonising society over the so-called “gender ideology,” politicians and activists that care for children and their wellbeing should instead nurture a type of education that is aware of differences in gender and sexuality as well as their embodiments, an education that allows children to understand themselves better. Restricting and limiting their education is not the means to protect them.

Memories

In front of a lack of educational tools and self-awareness, Balboa and Trenta both narrate being able to understand themselves through the instrumental input of LGBTQIA+ works. Writers and cultural figures played a vital role in filling the voids that they both had to face. Crucially, many of the works that they mention in Play with Fire, Transformer, and Barba are autobiographical works. Their authors often relied on autobiography as a form of activism, turning life writing into a powerful self-affirming move. As commented by Balboa, “I am a big reader of autobiographies (be it graphic novels, writing, poetry, documentary, music) and I need other artists to tell me about their wounds in order to heal my own” (Mackenzie Reference Mackenzie2020).

Overall, Balboa’s works are filled with LGBTQIA+ cultural references, which are scattered throughout both Play with Fire and Transformer and play an essential part in his life, coming out, and transition. The former does not only reference Blue is the Warmest Colour, but also more localised aspects of LGBTQIA+ culture, such as the novel L’arte della gioia (The Art of Joy 1998) by Sicilian writer Goliarda Sapienza and three Italian bookshops.Footnote ¹⁷ For instance, at the beginning of Play with Fire, Balboa struggles to come to terms with his non-normative sexual orientation and his attraction to women. Before his transition and after he has sex for the first time with a woman, Balboa visits a now-closed LGBTIA+ bookshop in Rome, Libreria Babele. Libreria Babele was a key part of queer cultural life in Rome, remaining open for 16 years since its founding in 1993 (Boni Reference Boni2009). However, it was forced to close in 2009 due to widespread homophobic, racist, and hostile attitudes within the Italian cultural sector (Boni Reference Boni2009). Balboa draws himself in the bookshop, looking around for a non-existent book titled “10 Questions to Figure Out if You Are Gay” that could allow him to better understand himself (2020, 11).Footnote ¹⁸ He was there “a bit to inform myself but mostly to feel part of a whole” (2020, 11).Footnote ¹⁹ The following panel represents Balboa as lying on the ground, surrounded by the wide variety of queer books that he purchased at Libreria Babele. They are by authors such as Sappho, Sylvia Plath, and Renée Vivian, and include topics such as the Stonewall Inn and LGBTQIA+ history more in general. The presence of the bookshop spotlights the role that literature has in the formation of the queer and trans identity, and it testifies to Balboa’s desire not only to pay homage to queer and trans cultural works but also to the labour of the booksellers, who are included in a panel (the last owner, Claudio Catalano, is easily recognisable).

In Play with Fire, another LGBTQIA+ Italian bookshop plays a crucial role, that is, Rome’s Libreria Tuba. Located in the Pigneto neighbourhood, Tuba was founded in 2007, and its owners describe it as a “women’s bookshop, a coffee shop and a bar, it’s a women-run business open from early morning until late night” (Libreria Tuba 2024). Like Libreria Babele, Tuba is also included after one of Balboa’s first sexual encounters with a woman and after his coming out as a queer person with a selected group of friends. First, Balboa portrays himself as meeting a friend over for drinks at the bookshop and talking about his latest date. The graphic novel includes many details of Libreria Tuba, such as its bar counter and the different book categories (new releases, gender, comics, feminism). While sitting at the table, Balboa spots a beautiful woman coming in. Over the next few days, he discovers her identity, assumingly Federica Tuzi, and by chance finds her novel, Più veloce dell’ombra (Faster than a Shadow, 2018), at another bookshop in Rome, Giufà Libreria. After he messages her, they decide to meet for the first time at Libreria Tuba. This time, the bookshop is represented from the outside and occupies a full page of the graphic novel (Figure 1). On the wall, graffiti states: “Pigneto rules” (2020, 84).Footnote ²⁰ The page also includes various posters decorating the façade of Libreria Tuba, such as a poster of Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic era (2013) by Paul B. Preciado, and two posters of two feminist Italian graphic novelists, Cristina Portolano and Vanna Vinci. Bookshops are instrumental in Balboa’s sexual orientation coming out and tightly interwoven with his first sexual encounters with women.

Figure 1. Play with Fire (Reference Balboa2020), Nicoz Balboa.

A final and crucial scene regarding the literary references in Play with Fire is present towards the end of the graphic novel after Balboa has come to terms with his trans identity. In a bleed that occupies two pages, Balboa re-makes The Nightmare (1781) by Henry Fuseli. Instead of representing a woman in a sleep-like pose available for the male gaze, Balboa places himself front and centre, reclining towards the ground in a pose that mimics that of the painting. It is not a moment of objectivization, but a scene of deep self-awareness: Balboa depicts himself overtaken by a red and fierce fire coming out of his body, representing his feelings of acceptance towards his non-normativity. Not replicating the empty bedroom of the original painting, Balboa depicts himself as surrounded by books belonging to the queer canon, such as poems by Eileen Myles, Sappho, the graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Reference Bechdel2006) by Alison Bechdel, Trans Teen Survival Guide (Reference Fisher and Fisher2018) by Fox Fisher and Owl Fisher, and Drag King Dreams (Reference Feinberg2006) by Leslie Feinberg. These self-narratives surround and nurture Balboa, providing a point of reference for him.

In Transformer, while initially, Balboa illustrates how watching one of the few heterosexual sex scenes in the TV show The L Word (2004–2009) triggered his dysphoria and the belief that he will never be like the man on the show (2023, 43), other cultural references generate the opposite effect. For instance, despite being harassed and shamed by the personification of his dysphoria (drawn as a mythical creature) while watching The L Word, Balboa is also protected by the Spanish trans philosopher Paul B. Preciado (Figure 2).Footnote ²¹ Preciado appears as a spirit above Balboa to defend and encourage him, saying: “Self-pity is just fear of living your life […] you have every right to be who you are” (2023, 75).Footnote ²² Preciado impersonates the memory of his books that Balboa had read in the past, embodying his own words and theories. He is the cultural memory of the trans community. Furthermore, if on the one hand, Preciado supports him, on the other Balboa himself endorses the former, introducing him to his audience as a cultural figure, as he is briefly introduced by a balloon saying that he is: “One of the leading exponents of contemporary philosophy. His work spans gender studies, pornography and sexuality, performance, contemporary art, biopolitics and queer theory” (2023, 75).Footnote ²³

Figure 2. Transformer (Reference Balboa2023) by Nicoz Balboa.

Similarly, when he depicts his first sexual encounter with his current partner, Eileen, Balboa is initially held back by the fear of not being enough. Again, like in the previous scene, he is supported by Preciado. In this case, the gay and trans activist Lou Sullivan also appears. Balboa explicitly calls for them, saying: “Guides help me to get through this crisis I can’t do it alone” (2023, 116).Footnote ²⁴ Like Preciado, Sullivan is also introduced to Balboa’s readers through a balloon, as “the first trans man to openly identify himself as a gay man. In the 1970s and 1980s. It is thanks to him that we have the modern understanding that gender identity and sexuality are two separate things” (117).Footnote ²⁵ As he is held tightly by Preciado and Sullivan, the former tells him: Trustt that your body is love. Trust that it is perfect. Trust that your body is a resistance to patriarchy,” while the latter adds: “Trust that you are worthy of love just as you are. And trust Eileen, show them who you are and give them the chance to love you” (2023, 117).Footnote ²⁶ Sullivan too is the personification of his words and of his written works in particular, such as We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961–1991 (Reference Sullivan2019).

The words and books by Sullivan, Preciado, and the autobiographical narratives written by many others allowed Balboa to fill the void caused by a lack of education and information regarding queer and trans culture and identities. In a key passage of Transformer, as he lists testosterone, binder and soft packer as essential elements for his wellbeing, Balboa also crucially adds:

These thoughts are accompanied by small portraits of key queer and trans authors such as Preciado, Sullivan, but also Leslie Feinberg, Porpora Marcasciano, Mario Mieli, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel, Max Wolf Valerio, Guillaume Dustan. They all appear as spirits, drawn in blue like Preciado and Sullivan in the previous pages. The personification of these authors plays a crucial role, as they visually constitute a supportive community for Balboa. They stand next to him, leading the way. After having charted this cultural memory, Balboa turns to his own teenage memories and draws himself as an insecure 16-years old. Alongside his younger self, Balboa depicts himself, now serving as the guide, encouraging himself, and saying: “You can do it young Nicoz” (131).Footnote ²⁸ In the final pages of Transformer, he plays the same role for his younger self that Preciado and Sullivan had played for him.

References to the LGBTQIA+ cultural memory are also present in Barba and they equally foster the protagonist’s understanding of his identity. These references span from music, as the graphic novel includes a panel referring to the song “Resistere” by the queer Italian duo La rappresentante di lista, to books. In a decisive scene of Barba, Trenta depicts himself as going to a bookshop after a therapy session. Taking a leap towards his identity, he asks the bookseller for books about gender identity. While the bookshop is not clearly identified, Trenta’s shopping bag suggests that he visited one of the stores of Feltrinelli, one of Italy’s most famous bookselling companies and bookshop chains. His desire to visit the bookshop is motivated by a specific memorial and identitarian desire: “I wanted to read stories of other people who felt something similar to what I felt. To understand. To understand myself better. Better still” (2022, 125).Footnote ²⁹ Much like Balboa, Trenta too turned towards queer and trans autobiographies to understand himself. For instance, he depicts the bookseller handing him a copy of Fumettibrutti’s P. La mia adolescenza trans and a stack of other unidentified books (Figure 3). Fumettibrutti’s inclusion is vital, as she became a cultural sensation when her autofictional graphic novel came out, as she discussed her adolescence, her trans identity, and her various struggles using a direct and unfiltered style. Aided by the fact that it was published by Feltrinelli Comics, P. became particularly popular upon its release due to its explicit narrative and because the work allowed Fumettibrutti to publicly come out as a trans woman (Mandolini Reference Mandolini2022, 89–90). The reference to P. underscores the influence that Fumettibrutti has had on Italian comics, popularising the genre, and her role as a trailblazer for trans narratives in general and Barba in particular.

Figure 3. Barba (Reference Trenta2022) by Alec Trenta.

Beyond the specific case of Fumettibrutti, Trenta’s trip to the bookshop is monumental because of his conversation with the bookseller as well. After she hands him the books, she asks: “Are you interested in these topics?” (2022, 125).Footnote ³⁰ Trenta notices that it is the first time that someone has referred to him using male pronouns. After he replies that he is, the bookseller asks for his name, to which he replies: “Ale” (2022, 126). Much like it is the first time that someone refers to him using male pronouns, it is also his first time using his new name, which emerges “suddenly […]. Nobody knew that name. Not even me, until that moment. Only her, only that person” (2022, 126).Footnote ³¹ The page is composed of three strips, each featuring both Ale and the bookseller. Ale’s face is progressively zoomed in across the panels as he utters his name, underscoring the deeply personal nature of the moment, the point at which Ale asserts agency over his own life. In this way, books and bookshops play a vital role in Barba, safeguarding the development of the queer and trans community and creating a space for self-understanding and growth.

Balboa and Trenta highlight the role of culture as a purveyor of the queer and trans memory: their own childhood memories begin to make sense once they have access to the cultural memory of queer and trans individuals. In this way, Play with Fire, Transformer, and Barba highlight not only the initial invisibilisation and suffering of their protagonists but also the hope that they find in the queer and trans cultural memory that preceded them (Rigney Reference Rigney2018, 372).

Genealogy

Meaningfully, not only were Balboa and Trenta formed by other queer and trans life narratives, but they also narrated their own lives. Play with Fire, Transformer, and Barba do not entirely subscribe to the memoir definition, but rather to the ‘autofictional’ label. For instance, Balboa depicts himself at the beginning of Transformer clarifying that: “This book is not a memoir but an autofiction, so any resemblance to names, things, cities and animals is coincidental. Some things told in the book happened, others are invented. What is true and what is not is irrelevant to the story” (2023, 5).Footnote ³² While not explicitly stated as such, Barba follows a similar pattern, as highlighted by the subtle difference between the author’s name, Alec, and the protagonist’s, Ale. Their works exemplify the durable bond between comics and life stories (Chute Reference Chute2011). In particular, because of Balboa’s and Trenta’s interest in narrating their own trans lives, the three graphic novels exemplify the ability of comics as a medium to “recover marginalised and minority voices from the peripheries of representation” (Nabizadeh Reference Nabizadeh2019, 1). As argued by Golnar Nabizadeh, “autobiographical comics frequently show how individuals and communities may respond to and grapple with trauma and loss, and frequently in resilient and generative ways” (2019, 8).

Following the footsteps of the artists, writers, and cultural practitioners who inspired Balboa and Trenta when they were young, they in turn play a similar role for their readers. They practice an activist queer pedagogy. As argued by Cris Mayo and Nelson Rodriguez, queer pedagogy moves towards the marginalised and the invisibilised, it “can help us to see what isn’t there” (Reference Mayo and Rodriguez2019, 3). Hence, a queer educational approach has an activist dimension, as it enters into spaces where it was not invited (Kumashiro Reference Kumashiro2002, 11). Their self-representation becomes a way for them to provide their readers the general knowledge that the Italian school curriculum is lacking and that they also did not have growing up. As exemplified by the short introductions to Preciado and Sullivan, Balboa is interested in charting the wider memory map of the queer and trans community to become a guide for his readers, one that he would have needed when he was younger. If at the beginning he is moved to narrate his life for his own self-discovery needs, as he is moved to create Play with Fire after he visits an exhibit by trans artists:

Afterwards, Balboa embraces a wider sense of responsibility and more of an activist stance. He states: “I want to narrate my transition to create a space. A space where I can exist and feel seen. If you tell my story, it becomes real. And if it is real for me, it will be for those who need it to be” (2023, 12).Footnote ³⁴

This responsibility is present in Balboa’s work through other elements as well. For instance, Transformer starts with an introduction by Balboa, who represents himself as a figure talking to the audience directly, clarifying the intentions of his work and the general cultural baseline. He promptly proclaims: “But, before we begin, let me explain a few key concepts so you won’t feel lost” (2023, 5).Footnote ³⁵ He then humorously depicts himself as wearing glasses and holding a clipboard and saying: “Folks, here is a crash course on gender & ə” (2023, 6).Footnote ³⁶ Not only does he explain terms like “transgender” and “cisgender,” but also the meaning of “transitioning” and “gender dysphoria” and his use of the inclusive “ə.”Footnote ³⁷ Balboa’s activist intent is highlighted by the dedication of Transformer, which honours the trans community: “This book is dedicated to all trans* people who every day decide to live their lives with their heads held high. And to all trans* people who have lost their life through suffering or at the hands of transphobia” (2023, 151).Footnote ³⁸ Balboa crucially blends these textual forms of activism with the representation of his own self, his own body taking centre stage and talking to the audience. He proudly foregrounds both marginalised knowledges and the invisibilised trans body.

Trenta adopts a similar approach, openly moving from the cultural memory that supported him to creating himself a graphic novel that could be included in that genealogy, in order to support new audiences and readers. First of all, he achieves this by narrating his own life story, albeit fictionalising it. In a recent interview, when talking about developing Barba, he commented:

In this way, he replicated the seminal role that other texts, such as P. by Fumettibrutti, had on him and on his life.

Then, he contributes to the Italian queer and trans community by including explanatory panels as a form of activism, much like Balboa. For instance, Trenta includes a “big gender explanation” (2022, 45).Footnote ³⁹ Adopting a school manual style, Trenta places a human body at the centre of a page, highlighting three aspects with arrows: gender identity (connecting it to the brain), sexual orientation (pointing to the heart), and the sex assigned at birth (linking it to genitalia). Each element is associated with questions such as “If they close their eyes how do they see themselves? A man? A woman? Both? Neither? Sometimes they feel like a man and others like a woman? Do they identify as non-binary?” (2022, 47).Footnote ⁴⁰ He further adds: “These three elements belong to each of us, and they always have. They are not connected to one another. They do not influence each other. Moreover, gender identity and sexual orientation can be not fixed in time” (47).Footnote ⁴¹ In this way, Trenta assumes the role of teacher to explain to a broad audience, assumingly comprised of both members of the LGBTQIA+ community but also of heterosexual and cisgender readers, basic concepts in an accessible way.

Then, Trenta delves into more specific trans themes, such as the definition of dysphoria, “if you look up the meaning in the dictionary, you find that it is the exact opposite of euphoria. A sense of discomfort that knocks you down” (2022, 61).Footnote ⁴² Meaningfully, Trenta replicates the same format of the man used as an example to talk about gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex but places himself and his body at the centre. Barba thus includes a Vitruvian image of Trenta, naked and with his arms open wide at the centre of the page. He depicts the body that his dysphoric feelings would like him to have, saying: “I am a boy. I am a boy, inside and out. With a body that matches my being I would feel a balanced euphoria. Light. Extended. Constant” (2022, 73).Footnote ⁴³ He draws an impossible body, one that emerges from his deepest insecurities. This illustration exemplifies the role of comics as a medium. By combining the textual and the visual elements, Trenta highlights the role of comics in providing a visual representation for those who are not used to seeing themselves represented as openly and as objectively.

However, after the exploration of his body dysphoria, Trenta describes the details of his gender-affirming journey. He provides the step-by-step details of his experience, referencing his meetings with a psychologist, endocrinologist, and lawyer, while acknowledging that each trans person has a different approach and experience, “there are those who want to reach hormone therapy, those who do not. There are those who wish to have the surgeries, those who do not. There are those who want to do only some of them. This does not make one path more or less valid than another” (2022, 80).Footnote ⁴⁴ Afterwards, Trenta fills a full page with another image of himself adopting a Vitruvian pose. However, if the previous panel depicted his idealised body, this time, he represents his acceptance towards his own body and its current shape. He proudly draws his chest tape, body hair, and genitals, saying: “This is my body. And I put it here. On a blank page. In ink on white paper. One sharp stroke. Bam. Maybe non-conforming? It exists, though. As the sky exists. As the earth exists” (2022, 137).Footnote ⁴⁵ Placing his body front and centre, Trenta disrupts his body dysphoria, but also the refusal to show trans bodies that infects much of mainstream media. He moves from a stylistic style to a realistic one, fully embracing the educational gesture of his work. Significantly, he adopted similar imagery for a poster for the Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) in 2023, as he commented, “the first idea that came to me was to represent my body. I think that putting on paper, with no words, a body that some people may not even imagine exists, is a very strong message” (Rodi Reference Rodi2023).

Like Balboa, Trenta also concludes his graphic novel with a gesture towards the Italian trans community. He includes the information on a website dedicated to it, infotrans.it, “a web portal that brings together in an interactive map the services dedicated to transgender people throughout Italy and useful information on healthcare and the protection of rights,” adding the Gay Help Line phone number and the name of their app (219).Footnote ⁴⁶ Hence, Barba is not only informing its readers through Trenta’s story and through his explanations but also through this information section.

Ultimately, both Balboa and Trenta engage in a form of memory activism, by representing the wider queer and trans cultural genealogy. In this way, they follow the footsteps of queer comics functioning as collective memory (Cariani Reference Cariani, Halsall and Warren2022, 51). Simultaneously, they become themselves part of it. They become the cultural memory references for their audiences, responsible for their readers. As stated by Carmen Leccardi Reference Leccardi, Tota and Trever2015:

Drawn not only towards the queer and trans cultural past and towards finding new ways of preserving it (Gutman and Wüstenberg Reference Gutman and Wüstenberg2023, 5), Balboa and Trenta look also towards a future of activism and memory.

Finally, while they are part of a queer and trans genealogy, Balboa and Trenta significantly spotlight the present trans embodiments and positionalities. They carve an educational space for individuals who are consistently marginalised and almost completely absent by school curricula. If traces of gay and lesbian writings were scarcely present, trans notions are even less present. In this, they provide an original contribution to the Italian queer literary memory, offering a different perspective from the one of the past. Most importantly, their originality stems from their engagement with the visual. Comics as a medium are particularly powerful in representing invisibilised subjects, as not only do Balboa and Trenta refer to a previous literary genealogy, but they also innovatively contribute to it with a visual element, furthering and diversifying the representation of the LGBTQIA+ community.