Zinezilla 2026 was a smash hit! Thank you to everyone who came, our wonderful artists, crew, volunteers, everybody, feeling very warm and grateful to be part of this incredible community 💛
Mereida ✸
@mereida.bsky.social
367 followers 158 following 126 posts
she/her. making comics and zines mereida.co.uk co-runner of Zinezilla Bristol instagram.com/zinezilla_bristol/
![Comic Page 3: Back at the sewing club, we see the instructor (older again) smiling with tears in his eyes as he looks at the jacket - confronted with both the bad and good memories it represents. The young man wearing the jacket notices a large tear in the shoulder seam.
Another older man wearing headphones sits across the room at a sewing machine, oblivious to the instructor and young man continuing to inspect the jacket behind him. We zoom into his face and notice a billboard on the opposite wall, which resolves into a closeup of a photo pinned to it - the young instructor at an AIDS protest surrounded by a diverse crowd.
TEXT:
It’s is also remembered as a time of…
[badges]: LOVE, COMMUNITY, SOLIDARITY
When the rest of the world turned away, the gay community turned to each other for support.
But there is a disconnect.
Young and older gay men have few spaces to come together and share their different experiences of HIV.
“There will always be that kind of gulf between the generations… lived experience that you can’t really relate to.” (Luke, 25yo, white, never tested)
“It just feels like very far away in the past.” (Sherif, 23yo, Asian, HIV neg)
“As a community, we've missed out on a whole generation of elders who had lives and were having fun, but then who weren't able to speak to us because they’re just not here anymore.” (Edward, 45yo, white, HIV neg)
Even within generations, there are also other gaps. How people experience HIV is shaped by race, migration, and inequality.
For some men in the UK, particularly from Black African communities, HIV comes with stigma, taboo, and isolation. A source of shame rather than solidarity.
“I don’t even trust my family and friends if I were to tell them [I lived with HIV]. The isolation comes from all perspectives, really. Friends will turn, families will turn stranger.” (Curtis, 30, Black African, HIV neg)
Without listening to and centering these experiences, our understanding of HIV is incomplete.
How we coll…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qi5vqvpv3oj3ycqac5ypxhw4/bafkreigv6625ds66mbz4zwhgpravzadvuuv3p7lfmbrrqbgdspxrkefqgu)
![Comic Page 4: A detailed panel of the noticeboard with the previous photo surrounded by various signage leftover from the COVID pandemic (e.g. social distancing, cancelled quilt making workshops). Below the noticeboard is a workstation with hand sanitiser and sewing machine stitching together a face mask, and materials for an NHS rainbow quilt patch. We next see "clap for the NHS" juxtaposed with a newspaper headline from 1985 "I'd shoot my son if he had AIDS, says vicar!" followed by an image of two men tenderly kissing in an AIDS ward hospital bed, juxtaposed with two men wearing facemasks hugging through a plastic sheet during COVID.
A montage of the instructor unpicking and reinforcing the stitching on the jacket, showing the young man how to make various repairs and make it his own, including a new Trans Rights badge. The two of them stand back to admire their finished creation.
The COVID Pandemic gave many younger gay men an unexpected point of reference for what the previous generation went through during the AIDS Crisis.
“It was so enlightening for showing the comparisons between HIV and COVID because we suddenly realised that this was a shared experience.” (Danny, 33yo, white, HIV neg on PrEP)
[posters etc]: HANDWASH STATION, SOCIAL DISTANCE 2M, “IT’S A SIN” WATCH PARTY, QUILT MAKING WORKSHOP CANCELLED, SANEX, MASK PATTERN
But in many ways the Pandemic threw into stark contrast the disparity in public sympathy between the gay community and wider society.
THANK YOU NHS
“I was conscious that the scale and the speed of responses to COVID…”
[newspaper:] I’D SHOOT MY SON IF HE HAD AIDS, SAYS VICAR!
“…was almost hurtfully ironic in contrast to the speed and responses to the HIV pandemic… made you realise the… the lack of care and empathy and attention paid during the time of HIV.” (Josh, 27yo, white, HIV neg on PrEP)
Similarly, for many who lived through the AIDS Crisis…
“[COVID] managed to resurrect those very dark moments in a very palpable way.” (Pa…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qi5vqvpv3oj3ycqac5ypxhw4/bafkreigyvsw2v2uvy7oqmbyf6thmcwkaroyz3bavo6zaq5pl42chiuxqoe)
![Comic Page 5: The young man stratches his chin - there's still something missing - then raises his finger in realisation as he turns toward the older man with headphones who is walking towards him with a badge. He places it on the jacket, covering the last remaining hole.
The young man approaches the same imposing hospital as before, which now has a nice new wing attached to it. This panel then cascades down into a quilt made of patches featuring the faces of different men, and ending in an overhead view of people viewing the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt laid out across a large field.
TEXT:
A virus may be biological, but it is also a social reality.
It affects – and is affected by - how people understand themselves, their relationships and communities.
HIV can help teach us how to deal with public health crises, because they highlight how pandemics deepen social inequalities.
Understanding what HIV means to each other is key to creating a future where HIV is not only treatable and preventable…
but also free from stigma. For everyone.
Despite these difference in experiences and memories between generations and groups, HIV can also bring continuity and connection between them.
“Next week I’m getting a PrEP appointment…”
“So… within the context of this virus…”
“…there is a lineage that connects me to the first queer people…”
“It’s present and it’s felt.” (Ben, 30yo, white, HIV neg)
[quilt]: FOR A FRIEND WITH LOVE
The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is a historical collection of 42 large panels, each containing individual squares stitched by the loved ones of those who died from AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. It commemorates 384 people, and was inspired by the US NAMES Project Quilt.
Special thanks to the comic funders, interview participants, and Rik Worth.
100% Human-Made](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qi5vqvpv3oj3ycqac5ypxhw4/bafkreihynbiw6md6uldsaccaryhbktlhyl35mroxnue4ylfy3jjb3phiw4)
![Comic Page 1: A young man accompanies his boyfriend in a clinic waiting room. His phone pings with a reminder for an upcoming Queer Sewing Club session. He kisses his boyfriend goodbye outside the clinic and arrives at the sewing club, holding a Vintage City bag and waving to the instructor. He pulls out an old denim jacket from the bag and and excitedly tries it on. It's covered in badges/patches and a bit tattered but still cool. He feels good in it, but the instructor notices and appears shocked with recognition.
TEXT:
Most gay men in the UK have been touched by HIV in the UK in some way, whether they live with the virus or not.
A central strand running… through the community… but unique to each person.
Today, people with HIV can live full and healthy lives. Although there is still no cure…
[background sign]: CLINIC
thanks to medication like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and effective anti-retroviral treatments, HIV is a preventable and manageable condition.
[phone message]: Reminder: Queer Sewing Club - 1hr
And people living with HIV can’t pass on the virus.
[building sign]: CLINIC ENTRANCE
For many young gay men who have grown up having these options, it’s the only reality they’ve known.
[handbag]: VINTAGE CITY
“When I first came out… coincided with PrEP becoming more available.” (Caleb, 30, white, HIV– on PrEP)
Clinic visits for testing, prevention and treatment are part of everyday life.
“The issues of sexual health […] lots of people in the queer community go through as a rite of passage” (Tyler, 35yo, HIV neg)
Seen as a matter of routine and responsibility.
But it wasn’t always this way.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qi5vqvpv3oj3ycqac5ypxhw4/bafkreifcbca2xsyihrfo523thmflhbjj27i7s54dzmkebkq6mm2nh6p6tm)
![Comic Page 2: A colourful 80s flashback of the instructor as a younger man wearing the same jacket... it was his! He looks up anxiously at an imposing hospital building and is ushered in through the back entrance by medical staff in PPE. He sits alone in the waiting room.
We next see him standing in the middle of a lively dancefloor surrounded by men dancing and chatting. He turns to his right and sees a man unravelling like a spool of thread, followed by a closeup of him stitching a badge onto his jacket with that same colour thread. He turns to his left to see another man in a different colour also unravelling, followed by another badge in the same colour. He is left holding several different coloured threads with a jacket covered in badges.
Now he is sitting at a table with a small group of other men who are happily painting some protest signs. Some chat, while one lovingly puts some paint on another's nose.
TEXT:
Far from it, when HIV was first identified in the early 80s…
[sign]: HOSPITAL
it was a matter of life and, very often, death.
[sign]: STAFF ONLY
[sign]: DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE
For many gay men who lived through the 80s and 90s, HIV represents fear, loss, grief – “The AIDS Crisis.”
“Literally loads of my mates died in the eighties… I was just going onto the scene at that time and the people that you would bump into…”
“…suddenly they just wouldn’t be there…”
“and no-one really talked about it.” (Brian, 56yo, white)
“It was a fear-filled time… But…”
“…there were still times when people showed incredible love to each other… I think it would be wrong to see the whole of the 80s and 90s in one big black cloak of doom and gloom. It wasn’t that.” (Paul, 64, white)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qi5vqvpv3oj3ycqac5ypxhw4/bafkreigwcb7d4d5qcepsddd2z7pnllma2pp3elb3k4put4bj63tktig4pu)
