Editor Justin Hall was inspired to put together the anthology after curating a show of LGBT comics at the Cartoon Art Museum for the San Francisco Pride in 2006. According to Hall, despite the prevalence of gay male erotica in the underground comics scene since the late 1950s, LGBT literary comics become a subgenre only after the 1969 Stonewall riots, when a "sense of community" emerged and the queer underground comix scene began to thrive in San Francisco. With this anthology, Hall wanted to document, preserve and celebrate the "hidden history" of queer comics.