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The past decade has seen a steady increase in the representation of the LGBTQ+ community in popular media, especially within the medium of comic books and graphic novels. Thanks to the efforts of trailblazing writers and artists unafraid to challenge societal norms, LGBTQ+ characters and relationships have become an increasingly common sight in graphic novels, even making their way into genres that were once the very embodiment of heteronormativity.
Released just over a year apart from one another, Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms (by Crystal Frasier, Val Wise, and Oscar O. Jupiter) and The Avant-Guards (by Carly Usdin and Noah Hayes) are both sports-centric graphic novels aimed at young adults that all feature queer love stories. While their stories focus on drastically different sports, Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms and The Avant-Guards both star LGBTQ+ teenagers learning to be part of a team and discovering their identities with the help of a supportive group of friends
Published in 2021 by Boom! Studios, Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms follows the romance that blossoms between Annie, an antisocial straight A student who reluctantly joins her school's cheerleading squad to round out her college resume, and Beatrice, the school's popular and outgoing cheer captain and the team's first transgender cheerleader. Despite the initial tension caused by their conflicting personalities, Annie and Beatrice form a friendship as they juggle cheer practice, schoolwork, and respective personal issues, slowly realizing that their feelings for one another may be more than platonic.
Originally released by Boom! Comics as an issue-by-issue series before being condensed into a trilogy of graphic novels, The Avant-Guards tells the story of Charlie Bravo, a tomboyish former varsity basketball player who transferred to the Georgia O’Keefe College of Arts and Subtle Dramatics, an all-female art school where she feels horribly out-of-place. However, Charlie's fortunes shift when she's scouted by the school's eccentric but enthusiastic basketball team, who help her find learn how to her footing on campus and accept her burgeoning feelings for her teammate Olivia.
At the time of their respective releases, Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms and The Avant-Guards were meet with critical acclaim from critics and casual readers alike and received praise from GLAAD, a media monitoring organization that advocates positive representation of LGBTQ+ community in the media. Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms was even nominated for, and ultimately won, the Outstanding Graphic Novel/Anthology Award at the 33rd annual GLAAD Media Awards ceremony held earlier this year.
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Mimicking the pattern set by teen sports films like The Karate Kid, Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms and The Avant-Guards both follow teenagers as they struggle to master (or in Charlie's case, re-master) the basics of their sport of choice while managing their personal lives and learning valuable lessons. However, unlike many of their contemporaries, Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms and The Avant-Guards often allow their respective sports to take a backseat to the burgeoning relationship between their leads.
While Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms and The Avant-Guards each stand on their own as compelling coming-of-age stories, their differing approach to their similar plots and core themes makes them work surprisingly well as a back-to-back read. Both stories are centered around LGBTQ+ leads who gradually discover themselves thanks to the influence of a diverse and quirky ensemble cast who serve as both a source of wisdom and moral support.
In Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms, the relationship between Annie and Beatrice takes center stage, with their membership to the cheer team serving as a vehicle through which Annie and Beatrice help one another overcome their issues with social anxiety and transphobia, gradually building towards their inevitable admission of love. In contrast, The Avant-Guards focuses more on Charlie's efforts to help the titular team challenge their rivals and earn a name fo themselves and off campus, with the various team members LGBTQ+ relationships playing out as subplots.
Despite these differences, both Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms and The Avant-Guards also share many of the same strengths. Both feature engaging lead couples that share a strong chemistry that makes every scene their together enjoyable to read. Each is also written with a down-to-earth style that leaves room for both humor and drama while keeping the reader's attention on the engaging relationship between their leads. While they may reuse familiar tropes, Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms and The Avant-Guards are unique stories that capture the modern LGBTQ+ experience.