Flamer (2020)

Flamer is a semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Mike Curato. It is set in 1995, in a Boy Scouts summer camp, and tells the story of Aiden, who is bullied for his appearance, including acting in a manner considered stereotypical of gay men. Curato was a scout and used his experience as a closeted teenager to write the novel.

The book was published in 2020 by Henry Holt and Company and was praised both for its emotional story and its artistic choices, such as the use of red tones for emotional moments while being mostly drawn in black and white. Flamer received a Lambda Literary Award in 2021 in the young adult category.

Plot

The novel is set in 1995, when Aiden Navarro, a 14-year-old Filipino American teenager, goes through the last week of a Boy Scouts summer camp, before having to return home. Having just finished Catholic middle school, where he was constantly bullied for being overweight, biracial, and queer, Navarro is excited for his trip to the summer camp, where he has always felt appreciated by his friends as a good scout. Aiden considers the Boys Scout camp to be a safe space, where things are peaceful and predictable. He also enjoys going to the summer camp since it means being far from his abusive father.

Things are different this year, as the other boys he is spending time with are going through puberty, and spend their time trying to prove to each other who is more manly, which includes the use of homophobic slurs. Although Aiden attempts to be like these boys, his inability to fit in leaves him especially frustrated and upset.

While there, Aiden also writes to his pen pal, a girl named Violet, with whom he is very close and feels comfortable sharing more intimate subjects. In his letters, Aiden talks about the things he was taught in Catholic school, how homosexuality is morally wrong, and his romantic feelings for another camper, Elias.

Throughout the week, Navarro attempts to suppress his feelings towards Elias and himself, which leads to self-loathing and suicide ideation. Although Aiden manages to fight off the negative thoughts and emotions inside him in the end, he leaves the scout camp with the understanding that life for him will not be easy.

Major themes

One of the subjects present in Mike Curato's debut graphic novel is the toxic masculinity and homophobia that Navarro contends with, which happens during his time at the Catholic school and while at the summer camp. This is also portrayed when Aiden attempts to fit in with his pubescent campmates by acting heterosexually and imitating their "homophobic, macho behaviour".

Flamer also deals with struggles of identity, as the main character, who had a Catholic upbringing, does not fully understand his feelings towards other boys, and has trouble accepting his own queerness, as he was taught that being gay is considered a sin. The bullying suffered by Aiden in school and during the summer camp causes his self-hatred to increase, which eventually leads to a breaking point where he begins to have suicidal thoughts.

Background

Mike Curato began writing the script for Flamer in 2011. He worked on it as a side project for a few years, and in 2014 he worked full-time on Flamer and finished it. In 2015 he sold the publishing rights to the same editor responsible for his Little Elliot picture books. Afterward, Curato continued working on other projects until around 2018, when he returned to the graphic novel and began working on the illustrations in preparation for a release.

Aiden's experience includes being bullied for his effeminate voice and insinuations of being gay, which is based on Curato's own experiences as a closeted scout. Part of Curato's writing process involved looking at his old journals, sketchbooks, and photographs to relive old memories. He also had access to the letters he sent to his old pen pal, ranging from 1992 to the early 2000s. The same pen pal served as inspiration for Violet.

Curato lacked experience producing works similar to comic books. After sending the mockup for the novel to his agent, he had to add around thirty new pages to the final version for lack of space for the speech balloons. This alteration led to him expanding on the original story. Despite that, Curato was able to use his experience with picture books at other aspects of the creation process, such as "pacing, page turns, and compositional know-how." Graphic novels not being bound to the same limitations in page numbers as picture books also gave some additional freedom to the author when compared to his usual production.

The majority of the art in Flamer was made using black pencil and ink washes. For the pages where a fire was present, Curato utilized colored ink, which was then overlaid on top of the black and white art through Photoshop. Curato sought to use an art style he called "kind of rough", which was chosen to match the themes present in the book. This style differed from his usually polished one used for his children's picture books. While experimenting with this new style, Curato used other graphic novels as inspiration, including Stitches and The Kampung Boy.

Title of the book

Curato initially chose the word Flamer for the title of the novel due to its usage as a slur towards gay people, which was also used against him when he was a kid. The word is also integrated into the story both through its relation to fire, and also as an allegory to how certain words that used to be derogatory, such as queen, were eventually reclaimed by the LGBT community.