GETTING PERSONAL
CANADIAN ARTIST, fashion illustrator and cartoonist Maurice Vellekoop (inset, right) is known for his exuberant and vividly colourful work for magazine clients like GQ, Wallpaper* and Rolling Stone, including memorable comicsstyle reportage for Vogue from the Paris couture shows and his own playful queer erotica. This month, the artist’s inimitable vibrant style, featuring apple-cheeked characters with swooping, exaggerated curves, serves his coming-of-age and coming-out story, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.
The title, a line from The Carol Burnett Show closing song, is a nod to being a child of the TV age, when he grew up on a diet of I Dream
of Jeannie, Planet of the Apes and Bewitched, and yearned to play with Barbie. But Vellekoop, 59, was the youngest child of Dutch immigrants who were devout members of the Christian Reformed Church, a strict Calvinist sect. His religious upbringing in suburban Toronto instilled profound guilt and shame about his homosexuality, which he describes as a “celibacy versus damnation indoctrination” that “had sunk into my psyche.” Then he
had to navigate dating in the 1980s just as
AIDS appeared, which led to a succession of awkward sexual encounters – he writes about being unable to orgasm with a partner – and failed relationships. Vellekoop’s parents (now deceased) are central figures in this intimate memoir, as he struggles through bouts of depression on the journey to self-acceptance. The story, recounted in an episodic style, chronicles about 40 years of his life, which begins as young Vellekoop wanders streetscapes featuring bygone cinemas, bars and shops, and so the book doubles as a nostalgic time capsule of Toronto in the ’70s. It’s also rife with references to pop culture – Walt Disney, 1930s screwball comedies, Peanuts
– which fuel his imagination and (along with therapy) help Vellekoop process the trauma of his repressed upbringing and its effects on his adult relationships. This compelling memoir deserves a place alongside other landmark autobiographical LGBTQ+ graphic novels, like Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. —Nathalie Atkinson