"Esporádica": The North in the South, the South in the North

This paper places the underground comic Esporádica (published first in Mexico City, later in San Francisco, 1987-1995) into three historical contexts: first, as an exemplar of transnational support for Mexican feminist art and activism; second, as a Mexican appropriation of (mostly male, cisgender, and straight) US-based underground comics styles; third, as an ambiguously lesbian document of the struggles of daily life in Mexico City, in relationship with much more clearly identified Mexican queer graphic art of the era. Looking at this short-lived, low-circulation periodical in multiple contexts - national and transnational - will open up wider questions of how historians can interpret difficult queer visual sources, and what the limits of interpretation should be.