Tim Barela

Tim Barela (born 1954) is an American gay cartoonist who is best known for his creation of the comic strip Leonard & Larry. The Leonard & Larry strip first appeared in a 1984 issue of Gay Comix, then were later featured in The Advocate and Frontiers magazines. The comic series has been collected in four volumes published by Palliard Press, and a single volume by Rattling Good Yarns.

Career Born in 1954 in Los Angeles, California,

The Leonard & Larry collection Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead was a nominee for the Lambda Literary Award in the Humor category.

Personal life Barela became a fundamentalist Christian in high school, but began attending a Metropolitan Community Church congregation in 1980. avid motorcyclist. In all of the strips Barela has published, at least one character has appeared in Western garb. Additionally, he considers himself to be part of the Bear community as well as a fan of it.

Leonard and Larry The Leonard and Larry comic strip was first published in Gay Comix #5 in 1984, and would go on to be featured in Gay Comix #7 in 1986, Gay Comix #10 in 1987, and Gay Comics #14 in 1991, as well as its own special issue of Gay Comix in 1992.

Leonard and Larry has been praised for being comic strip which represents characters of different gender identities, sexual orientations, ages, and sexual preferences as a community. The characters in the comic strip also age over time, as illustrated through graying hair, expanding bald patches, and growing children,

Leonard & Larry has been noted for Barela's attention to detail, particularly in his renderings of hair and beards. According to Alison Bechdel, "No one renders facial hair like Tim Barela, I always say. He does the most fabulous beards—he seems to draw each individual strand of hair." Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall (2000), How Real Men Do It (2003),

In 2021 Rattling Good Yarns released a compilation of all of the Leonard And Larry strips in both hardback and softcover.

The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection (2021),