Diana Green was a trailblazer in the way that a number of us in marginalized identities are: we make history by emerging from the dirt that was used to bury us by the powers that be. We are living torches — reminders that no matter how much the world will forget us, kill us, legislate us out of existence, that we will always be here. We are as natural as the sky is blue.
Diana Green, who passed away this month at 71 years old, was a cartoonist and an educator from Minneapolis. She was an adjunct professor at Minnesota College of Art and Design who taught History of Comic Art, Readings in the Graphic Novel, History of Underground Comix, and History of Rock & Roll. Green was contributor to multiple pioneering LGBTQ publications including Lavender Magazine, Gay Comix, Ohama The Cat Dancer, and TransSisters to name a few.
Her own publications include Tranny Towers, Speedy Ricuverri and his All-Girl Orchestra, The Street Giveth and the Street Taketh Away, and Sharp Invitations.
Her academic publications include contributing articles to Comic Art in Museums (2020), Comics Books and the Cold War (2012), The End Will Be Graphic (2012), Comics Through Time (2015), and The Encyclopedia of Comics and Graphic Novels (2010).
Green’s work centered trans people during times where it was still illegal for queer people to have sex, AIDS was still death sentence, and trans people were firmly in the margins. She will be missed by many in the community, as she has touched the lives of multiple generations of creators.
Thanks so much for this fine tribute. I met Diana in the late ’80s/early ’90s when we were commercial art students. Still trying to get my head around the fact that she’s gone; we’d just had breakfast the day before she died.
Diana was among my closest friends for the last seven years. I had so much more to learn from her about comics, art, music, and everything. Her birthday present from me, a history of Hanna-Barbera, is still on order from her favorite bookstore, Majors & Quinn in Minneapolis. I will miss her very, very much. Thanks for this remembrance and terrific photo.
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