Beck Kramer created a comic to submit for an anthology from LGBTQ writers and artists, yet her work was not accepted for publication.
But Kramer brought the characters to life in another form.
Kramer, 32, a lesbian who lives in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood and grew up in Elmwood Park, launched her comic, Relativity ( www.relativitycomic.com ), last May. It is an ongoing sci fi webcomic about an astronaut on the first lightspeed flight, her wife, and the affects her mission has on their marriage.
Relativity will be composed of three parts. Part one wrapped up in January, and part two kicks off in March. She expects the story to last about 100 pages, and then be turned into a book. Relativity will likely run into 2016, she confirmed.
Kramer attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which is where she first began making comics.
"Making Relativity has been fun, interesting," Kramer said. "I tried making a longer form comic almost two years ago, and I almost immediately bit off more than I could chew—and quickly had to shelve it. I learned a lot about how I needed to approach making art around my fulltime job and all of the other responsibilities that I had picked up."
Kramer admitted that both characters in Relativity, Irina Novak and her wife, Anne, have bits of herself in them. "The main thing being, how things are affected when two people are at different places in a relationship," she said.
The characters must deal with a long-distance relationship and "just being at different points in their lives during a relationship," Kramer said.
"And that's been a lot of fun," to develop.
Kramer also has a story in the sci-fi romance comics anthology, Speculative Relationships Vol. 2, due out this spring.
"I'm trying to work on some short works in addition to Relativity," she said.
Long-term, Kramer said she just wants "to keep making comics," especially since, "I have a lot of stories that I want to tell; I just have to figure out the best ways to tell them, get them out in front of people."
She also will be in POWER! An Anthology of Queer Creators, a comics anthology from Geeks OUT, an organization that tries to foster and maintain a queer presence at different conventions and events that center on geek culture, Kramer said.
"It's an exciting time if you are an LGBTQ person wanting to find comics that have yourself reflected in them," she said. "There are a lot of really great queer comics out right now, and every year there just seems to be more and more.
"When I was a teenager, you'd be lucky to even find subtext on a TV show that you could truly relate to. But now it's really awesome to see so many stories with so many different kinds of people in them—and being able to see yourself in them; that's really cool, it's an exciting time."
Kramer is engaged to Adelaide Lee, 29, a theatre director, and they are planning to marry on May 23. She also works as a web developer.
