Bi Visibility is launching on Kickstarter August 30th, featuring nine separate stories pertaining to the bisexual experience, with a beautiful variety of art styles to tell them.
The stories are written by Kathryn Calamia, Wells Thompson, Kay Rose (who also created the art for her story), Jimmy Gaspero, Andrea Towers, Christie Porter, Julius Dulinayan, Tiffany Babb, and Haley Rose-Lyon. There is an enjoyable balance of serious and comedic storytelling methods — the perfect amount of pulling your heartstrings and tickling your funny bone in a single collection. Bisexuals are often an overlooked part of the LGBTQ+ community, so it’s essential to have anthologies like this that cover situations that aren’t frequently talked about. Situations such as what it’s like to come out to people you know will be accepting, deciding whether or not to tell people who you’re unsure will be, and imposter syndrome are all explored in a way that is sure to connect with many who are reading.
Bi Visibility would not be the same without the brilliant artistic contributions from Dominic Bustamante, Ile Gonzalez, Kay Rose, Beck Kubrick, Elaine Tipping, Phillip Sevy (pencils), Sarah Stern (colors), Maru Davalos, Megan Huang, and Eileen Widjaja. It is such a wonderful collection of different art styles, some of which are stunning semi-realism, and others utterly adorable cartooning. Some stories, such as “Will I Regret It?” utilizes more realistic art to complement the serious tone of the story, while others like “The Punchline” have cute art styles telling serious stories. The realistic art styles make it very easy for the readers to feel connected and engaged with the story; the cute styles can still pull on the reader’s heartstrings, but has the added bonus of making an optimistic ending seem even sweeter.
Taylor Esposito lettered every story in Bi Visibility, which shows his versatile lettering talents. Esposito’s lettering is always a perfect fit despite an enormous variety of art styles and tones throughout the anthology. For example, in the stories “Gay Panic” and “I Wish,” captions are used. Despite being the same technique, they have significantly different colors to better complement the palette the artists of the story used and keep a consistent tone.
It has been a long while since an anthology book engaged me like Bi Visibility did. If you are bisexual, it is an excellent reminder that you are not alone with the worries and issues you have, and if you are not, it brings to light many problems that are often overlooked. I could not recommend Bi Visibility more.
