Batcat Is the Nonbinary Comic Book Hero Kids Need

Batcat is a pink and spherical creature who’s vaguely Kirby-like in both appetite and appearance, with a bat’s wings and a cat’s whiskers and pointy ears. In the first book of Meggie Ramm’s kids’ graphic novel series by that name, Batcat (they/them) floats around Spooky Isle gathering ingredients to cast a spell when they’re besieged by criticism on all sides: First, they run into some bats who say Batcat isn’t “bat enough,” Ramm explains. Then there’s a group of cats who don’t find them “cat enough.”

For the Michigan-based cartoonist, the story felt like the perfect metaphor for their own experience growing up as a nonbinary kid. “There were people who were like, ‘You’re not girly enough,’ or ‘You’re too much of a tomboy,’” they say.

According to Ramm, the first two books of the Batcat series were about pushing back on labels and being proud of one’s true self. The second book also lays out what it means to be nonbinary, for young readers (or their parents) who might not know.

Now, Ramm is celebrating the third installment, Batcat Cooking Contest!, with a book launch event at indie comics shop Silver Sprocket in San Francisco’s Mission District on Sunday, April 20. Ramm, who lived in Oakland in their twenties, at the start of their comics career, will be on hand to sign books and lead a drawing activity for kids — and, since it will be Easter Sunday, there’ll also be an Easter egg hunt featuring assorted comics-related stickers and merch.

In the new book, Batcat and their best friend Al — a friendly, also-nonbinary ghost who loves to cook— enter an eating contest and a cooking contest, respectively, at Spooky Isle’s annual fall festival. At its heart, it’s a story about community and what it means to be there to support your friends, as Al reconciles their desire to win the competition with the very real possibility that they won’t. And while the book’s pie-hoovering protagonist uses they/them pronouns throughout, their nonbinary-ness is otherwise completely unremarked upon — which almost feels even more radical.

Ramm says this third book was born out of their time in the Bay Area — quite literally, since the earliest Batcat stories were mini comics the artist made to exchange with their students when they taught at an after-school program in Oakland. But also, Ramm says, Batcat Cooking Contest! is “100% just an ode to the Bay Area food scene.” In Oakland, Ramm had lived in the Temescal neighborhood, and they still wax nostalgic about how they could get every imaginable kind of food delivered to their doorstep. Their favorites included Cholita Linda, Ramen Shop and the since-closed tiki bar Kon-Tiki — “I was a vegetarian until I smelled one of their burgers,” they recall.

In fact, there’s a scene in the book when the reader sees the range of different food vendors who’ve set up stalls at the festival — a taco truck run by skeleton mermaids, a mooncake cave operated by bats — that was directly inspired by Bay Area food truck events like Off the Grid.

The book is, among other things, about the “enjoyment of cooking a meal for someone and having a meal cooked for you by someone you love,” Ramm says. “I’m hoping that there’s a kid in the Midwest who hasn’t experienced curry or mooncakes who will see that in the book, and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re gonna have to give that a shot.’”

What isn’t lost on Ramm is the significance of releasing a book about a nonbinary character — even one as cute and pink and entirely fictional as Batcat — during this particular moment in American politics. After the presidential inauguration in January, the first thing Ramm saw when they turned on their phone was the Trump administration claiming that trans and nonbinary people don’t exist.

“I’m still here. I’m still existing,” Ramm says. “I feel like Trump wanted to say that and then I was going to do a Marty McFly disappearance in the photo from Back to the Future. But no matter what the administration says, nonbinary and trans people are going to exist.”

And even though they’ve already gotten hate mail from there’s-only-two-genders types, Ramm says they’re just happy to reinforce the existence of nonbinary people so that kids who read the book can know they’re not alone.

Indeed, Ramm says, the best part of writing the Batcat books is how many nonbinary kids all over the country it has allowed them to meet.

“​​They’re so amazing, and they’re so brave,” Ramm says. “And they just come right out and say what their pronouns are when they first meet me, which is something that I have a hard time with as an adult. I’m just really grateful to the book for that.”

Batcat Cooking Contest! will be available at booksellers everywhere on April 22. The book’s kid-friendly Bay Area launch event takes place Sunday, April 20, from 3–4 p.m., at Silver Sprocket (1018 Valencia St., San Francisco).