Sean Martin's long running LGBT comic strip, "Doc and Raider" (http://docandraider.com), will officially see thirty years of two Canadian gay guys trying to make their way through the minefield of pop culture, politics, and domesticity, on Monday, 8 August 2016.

The strip began as a single-panel, black and white comic whose initial appearance was in a Vancouver bar rag that went out of publication the very next issue. Yet the comic survived, with appearances in LGBT media across Canada, then to over 50 publications worldwide, with an estimated readership of seven million. The panel's attraction lay in its unique approach to paying-it-forward: rather than pay the artist for use of the comic, the media that ran were required to make a donation to a favoured charity. As such, the cartoon has underwritten everything from an AIDS hospice in New Zealand to a queer arts festival in Scotland to Toronto's Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. In addition, the strip's titular characters also served as goodwill ambassadors and educators for AIDS materials created through the late 80s and early 90s.

After a brief hiatus, the strip was revised and published on the internet, with the characters redesigned and the cast enlarged to include friends and family. Since its reintroduction, "Doc and Raider" has tackled extended storylines as varied as the gay marriage debates, cross-border relationships, adoptions, and infidelity — not to mention the all-time classics of alien adoption, grocery shopping, home redecorating, Broadway musicals, and the threat of world terrorism. "Doc and Raider" has been noted for its sometimes gentle, sometimes outlandish sense of humour, whose character base runs the gamut from construction workers to a transsexual waiter to the "fiftieth richest man in the world". The online version just passed its 3500th episode.

Doc and Raider's early run is archived in both the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa and the Pride Archives at the University of Western Ontario.