American cartoonist
Gerard P. Donelan (born 1949), known mononymously as Donelan (), is an openly gay cartoonist. Part of the first wave of LGBT cartoonists, he drew "It's a Gay Life", a regular single-panel cartoon feature in "The Advocate", for 15 years.
Personal life.
Donelan was born in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston, but grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the son of advertising artist Paul Donelan. He graduated from Plymouth Carver Regional High School in 1967. He studied art at Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute but did not finish a degree, and went to work in retail.
He met and began dating Christopher McKenna in May 1979. The couple chose to wait to be married until same-sex marriage was legalized nationally in 2015. After spending most of their lives together living in San Francisco, the couple eventually moved back to Donelan's hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts after his mother Teresa passed away in 2004.
Career.
In 1977, disappointed that Joe Johnson's pioneering gay comic strips "Miss Thing" and "Big Dick" had ended their run in "The Advocate", Donelan submitted 29 cartoons to the publication, which turned into a long-running series of his own. "It's a Gay Life" gently lampooned the gay "clone" culture of the time, also known as the Castro clone, focusing primarily on young and middle-aged gay men in their everyday lives. He continued to work in retail while producing the series, which also yielded two paperback reprints: "Drawing on the Gay Experience" (1987) and "Donelan's Back" (1988).
For eight years Donelan also created sexually explicit comics in color for "Advocate Men", later retitled "Men", which was an erotica sister publication of "The Advocate". His work has appeared in "Drummer", "Frontiers", "Gunner", "Gay Comix" (including one front cover), and "Meatmen" (including two front covers and several back covers).
Donelan's art was produced in seven countries, including South Korea, and in five languages, including Dutch and Korean. His work has appeared on t-shirts, rubber stamps, and in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He has illustrated calendars and greeting cards as well.
Donelan created cartoons, pamphlets, and posters to educate the gay community about the importance of safe sex practices and the threat of AIDS. He did this work for the NAMES Project, which worked to honor victims of AIDS and AIDS-related diseases in an enormous patchwork quilt.
In May 2015, he was a featured panelist at the first Queers &amp; Comics conference, as one of the "Pioneers of Queer Men's Comics".
References.
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