There’s still time to pre-order a copy, or get some amazing prints or original art–you’ve got until Friday in fact! Head over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/765505753/little-heart-a-comic-anthology-for-marriage-equali?ref=live for details.

Meanwhile, I was just informed about another queer comics Kickstarter, though this one met its fundraising goal in just 48 hours! It’s for Alex Woolfson’s gay sci-fi series “Artifice”, and it looks like there will now be a graphic novel collection of that web series. I’ve attached the full PR under the cut below, but you can check out the Kickstarter at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexwoolfson/artifice-graphic-novel-print-drive.

While miles and miles has been written on Kickstarter and the like, I will throw in exactly 2 cents worth and say that that it’s pretty clear having a strong, dedicated following and a very public personality at the helm of your Kickstarter campaign yields very different results than not. I think the Little Heart book is an incredibly important project, but it “suffered” by not having a 25,000-readers-per-day lead-in (if one can suffer that), and it really did take the full month of non-stop promotion to get the word out about the project. I hope that other indy projects looking to use the service take note. A multi-creator book that supports marriage equality should, theoretically, have a much broader appeal for support than a dual-creator gay sci-fi graphic novel, but the web as a mass-funding medium is pretty darned unique.

(This also ties into my thoughts on why Kickstarter as a replacement for the NEA or governmental arts funding is abhorrent, but my two cents are up… for now.)

- Chris

GAY SCI-FI WEBCOMIC REACHES $7000 KICKSTARTER PRINT GOAL IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS

[March 11, 2011] Less than 48 hours after launching a Kickstarter project to raise $7000 to publish his gay science-fiction webcomic in book form, Artifice writer Alex Woolfson has reached his goal. Now, following the example of other successful Kickstarter projects, he’s “scrambling” to come up with additional goals and rewards for remaining 28 days his project will remain online.

“I wrote Artifice because I loved action and sci-fi stories as a kid,” Woolfson said. “But I never got to see what I really wanted to see and that’s kick-ass genre stories with heroes who just happened to like other guys. Artifice was my attempt to write the kind of story I always wanted to see. And now it’s going to be a book that I can hold in my hands and you’ll be able to find in your local library. This is dream-come-true stuff!”

With full-color art by Philadelphia-based artist Winona Nelson, Artifice is about Deacon, an android solider, fighting for love and survival against the powerful Corporation that made him. Artifice starts just after Deacon has failed a mission spectacularly. Not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he also attacked and killed those who were sent to retrieve him. Soon, both their lives are on the line as his corporate masters push for answers and look to tie up loose ends.

Artifice has been running as a webcomic for just less than a year and, at 83 pages, is nearing completion.

Woolfson continued: “Even though I’ve been releasing Artifice as a weekly webcomic, I actually wrote first it as a complete sci-fi graphic novel script. We’re in the last scene, so almost all the pages are now available to read online. I launched this Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a small print run because I’ve always wanted to have this story be something you could hold in your hand, read on the bus, give to friends. But coming up with $7000 to do that seemed like a huge amount of money to raise. More than I could afford on my own, actually. So, I’m just bowled over and deeply, deeply grateful for the response from our readers. They’ve just blown me away.”

Now that Woolfson has reached his initial goal of $7000, in the tradition of other successful Kickstarter projects, such as for the webcomics The Order of the Stick and Diesel Sweeties, he has decided to offer “bonus goals”.

“With this amazing response and 28 days more remaining in the project,” Woolfson said. “I’m scrambling to come up with more awesome things to create for my backers, to show how grateful I am and keep the momentum going. I’ve talked to Winona and she said she’d be up for creating additional art prints and short comics that fill in backstory and pick up with the characters after Artifice the webcomic ends. These bonus rewards would be available to all backers and would certainly include another ‘romantic scene’ with our heroes. They’d all be parts of the story that I’ve really wanted to tell, but since I pay all my artists out of my own pocket, I didn’t think I could afford to.

“Either way, though, I’m very happy and very grateful just to be able to print our webcomic as a book you can kick back and read on the couch. Printing is very expensive and it’s something I was afraid would never happen. And now in just two days after launching this Kickstarter campaign, our readers have made it into a reality. Amazing.”

“I mean, when I grew up, advertisers would flee if you showed one innocent kiss between two men on a TV show. And now thanks to crowdsourcing initiatives like Kickstarter, I don’t even need to ask publishers for permission to get an action comic with gay heroes (who do a lot more than that) into the hands of my readers with a full offset print run. It gives me hope that over the next ten years, I’m going to get a chance to see a lot more of the kind of stories I always wanted to see growing up, but never could find. This is a really great example of the democratization of media that the Internet has made possible. It’s awesome to be able to reach so many people with one of my stories and something I thought I’d never live to see.”

Readers who are interested in finding out more about the Artifice Graphic Novel Print Drive Kickstarter project can go here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexwoolfson/artifice-graphic-novel-print-drive

The Artifice webcomic can be read for free online here:

http://artificecomic.com/

Full Artifice webcomic synopsis:

“It was supposed to be a routine “clean-up” mission on the isolated colony Da Vinci Four, but Deacon, a prototype android soldier, has failed spectacularly. Not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he also attacked and killed those who were sent to help him. Now, the brilliant and uncompromising robopsychologist Clarice Maven has been summoned by the Corporation to determine why.

With Deacon at her absolute mercy, Maven will find out exactly what happened between the android and this boy—and she will use her terrible power to make sure Deacon never fails the Corporation ever again.”

Alex Woolfson is a gay male writer who creates action-adventure comics with gay characters for both women and men to enjoy under the playful banner Yaoi 911. Artifice is his first webcomic. He launched this Kickstarter project on Friday, March 9th at 10:00 P.M.

Winona Nelson grew up dreaming of making comics and painting fantasy and scifi book covers. She freelances in concept art and illustration and works on Magic: the Gathering cards and Warhammer novel covers. Winona lives and works in Philadelphia with artist Anthony Palumbo and their bad cat, Diego.

–

Introduction

I married my husband Andrew in 2006, shortly after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the gay marriages that had been performed by our provinces since 2001 (give or take) were in fact informed by Canadian values, not merely provincial ones. Despite a challenge or three from the Conservatives, the law… and my marriage… has remained on the books to this day.

Growing up as a gay kid, and then a gay teenager, and finally a gay adult, the notion that I could ever get married was simply not something that occurred to me. Perhaps it was just a failure of imagination on my part, but from what I knew and had experienced of gay culture, gay people could have just as loving, committed, and important relationships as heterosexual people could… but ‘marriage’ was just something that wasn’t for us. I can’t tell you how happy I was to be wrong about that, and I am forever in the debt of the brave gay and lesbian couples that fought the battles, and won them, that allow me to have rights that I quite frankly should’ve been born with. That gay kids today, and the gay teens and adults of tomorrow, will hopefully never have been without.

I met my husband in 2004, and I’ve spent the better part of our 8 years together indoctrinating him into the world of comics and graphic novels. I’m a comics guy; I’ve read written, drawn, lettered, published, talked about, and sold comics since I was 8 years old, and indoctrinating new readers is just what we do. Andrew didn’t really have comics growing up—I think he’d only ever read Spiegelman’s Maus for school when he met me. He’s an opera, symphony, perfect diction kinda fellow, and so when sharing my first comic with him I went the intellectual route and chose McCloud’s “comics textbook” Understanding Comics. Frankly I was/am so in love with Andrew he probably could’ve hated it and we’d still be together, but he loved it and we talked about it at length, and he was curious for more. Now I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure the very next comic I gave him was Maurice Vellekoop’s sadly out-of-print classic Vellevision, a repository of accumulated gay culture, gay wisdom, and gay folly. It’s was also quite the unique work at the time as, save for perhaps Howard Cruise’s excellent Stuck Rubber Baby, it was the only ‘gay graphic novel’ I was aware of that wasn’t intended solely as pornography (though, make no mistake, Vellevision’s got some pretty great scenes in it that address those particular interests…!). He loved that too, and when Vellekoop’s “A Nut At The Opera” came out it was the best of both worlds for both of us!

In 2011, it was very heavily rumoured (and somewhat supported) that if the Conservatives in Canada were elected with a majority government they’d reopen ‘the marriage debate’ and that future marriages between same-sex couples, and even already-conducted marriages between same-sex couples, could be stopped or annulled. I know, it seems crazy that something that’s been happening for 10 years (give or take) could, with a change in government, be stopped or rescinded, but looking at the rhetoric coming out of the Republican party right now, where they’re seeking to roll back women’s rights 50 or 60 years, well, it still doesn’t seem so far-fetched does it? I made a fairly impassioned plea to vote against the Conservative party because I didn’t want the nature of my relationship attacked or invalidated by a bunch of government thugs… and this is where Raighne Hogan, editor of this book, noticed what I was saying and decided I might be a good person to say a few words on its behalf.

And here we are.

Little Heart: A Comic Anthology for Marriage Equality is a fascinating document of a time and a place, of comics creators coming of varied sexualities and genders and backgrounds coming together to comment on the nature of marriage and the nature of love. Of course Maurice Vellekoop is here, and his journalistic piece on the realities of gay marriage in Canada 5-10 years later is just as melancholic and just as ironic and just as delightful as his work has ever been. Marinaomi’s wonderful piece about the trials and tribulations of getting married in a ‘non-traditional way’ certainly hit home, as did Noah Van Sciver’s thoughtful piece of comics journalism about miscegenation—last century’s marital ‘boogeyman.’

Probably the pieces in this book that ring truest to my experience are the ones by Jeremy Sorese, and Emily Carrol and Kate Craig. Sorese’s “Love Me Forever! Oh! Oh! Oh!” resonates deeply with me, because the incredibly talented Mr. Sorese, at 23, has all the same questions about life and relationships and especially gay marriage (“Who is walked down the aisle? Who wears white?”) that I did at 29 on my wedding day. My only advice to Mr. Sorese, 10 years my junior, might be that I found my answers to those questions by doing them, and if that’s what he wants I hope he gets the opportunity. Likewise for the talented Carrol and Craig, mine and my husband’s wedding rings are vintage (or perhaps ‘second hand’ if you’re feeling uncharitable), and I couldn’t help but wonder at the lives lived by the bearers of those rings before we wore them. Carrol and Craig in their ring neatly encapsulate the hopes of marriage, of commitment and anticipation, that I feel unite anyone who enters into the practice, while still making allowances for the unique relationships and agreements that define every union.

Even the pieces that don’t directly address marriage, but instead talk about queerness obscured, like “Roosterlegs” by Ed Choy and Sam Sharpe, or mediate on the complicated nature of young love, like Joseph Remnant’s “I Told You So,” speak to human experiences that touch all of us. Moreover every contributor to this book answered the call, “Help us support marriage equality in Minnesota,” by doing what they do best; creating comics—regardless of style, theme, or materials used. They’ve come down on the side of supporting the rights of all people to equality under the law and by picking up this book and supporting this fight you have too.

I was taught from an early age that equality needed to be fought for. I learned last year that what should be inexorable rights are not always so, and we must fight on. I learned from Jeremy Sorese that rights are worth fighting for even when they might not speak to us directly, from Marinaomi that celebrating what we have does not come at the expense of fighting on the behalf of others, from Noah Van Sciver and Emily Carrol and Kate Craig that love—and marriage—have always faced questions and obstacles, and from Maurice Vellekoop that even when marriage turns out not to be what you think it would, that the core concept of equality is still incredibly important. Finally, I learned from Raighne Hogan, 2d Comics, and the dozens of contributors to this fine volume that this is a battle that may need to be fought state by state, and even heart by heart, but that people regardless of background can come together and lend their voice. I’m happy to be lending mine and, by purchasing this book, thank you for lending yours.

-          Christopher Butcher, March, 2012.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/765505753/little-heart-a-comic-anthology-for-marriage-equali

I’ll be honest, it’s not near its fundraising goal but with just a little help it absolutely could be. This book features new comics by Maurice Vellekoop, Emily Carrol, Zak Sally, MariNaomi, Joseph Remnany, Jeremy Sorese, Noah Van Sciver, Michael DeForge, and over a dozen more amazing contributors. Also, I’m writing the introduction!

For $20 you can get a copy of the book, and all you need is to start a Kickstarter account (free, takes 2 minutes) and an Amazon account (everyone has one of these, right?). But the rewards for this comic are insane if you want to donate more! For $100 you could get the book and original drawings by Dustin Harbin or Noah Van Sciver! For $250 you could get a copy of the book and a “date with the artist” of one of the stories! For $400 you could get a copy of the book and an original comics page by Maurice Vellekoop (and as his art dealer I can tell you that’s a great deal!).

In short, this is a great cause, there are some truly excellent comics in this anthology, and I hope you will head over and sign up for a copy through Kickstarter because if you’re the sort of person reading this on this particular site, then you’re definitely the sort of person who will get more out of this than the money you put into it.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/765505753/little-heart-a-comic-anthology-for-marriage-equali

In the next post, I’m going to post the first draft of my introduction to this book, for a fuller picture of why this book, and the fight for marriage equality, are important to me.

- Chris

The World Of Gloria Badcock, coming this summer from Koyama Press.

Fabulous news! The incredibly talented cartoonist and illustrator Maurice Vellekoop has announced that he’s working on a brand new comic book, his first in many years! Fans of his work may remember the adventures of Ms. Gloria Badcock from the anthology collection of Maurice’s work, Vellevision, published many, many years ago by the good folks at Drawn & Quarterly. Perhaps if you’re of a certain age you might even remember her appearance from the Fabulous Babes comic book before that?

Well Maurice announced on his blog this weekend that he’d be bringing back Gloria Badcock in three sexy new adventures in a new 24 page comic book from Koyama Press this spring. For the bargain price of $5, you get a healthy dose of funny new comics, filled to the brim with the outrageous and erotic, all beautifully illustrated to boot.

I’d really been hoping that the book would be ready to debut at TCAF, but alas, it will not. I’m still incredibly excited about it though, and while Maurice will still be exhibiting at TCAF, we’re just going to need to throw another big party for this book when it arrives this summer. Clear your social calendars now…

Oh, and I was talking to Maurice the other day and he’d mentioned that he hadn’t gotten a lot of feedback on his blog since he launched it. With the advent of RSS feeds and Twitter taking up most of the conversation now, I said it was likely that lots of people were reading and enjoying and just silent in his comments section… But if you’ve been lurking and would like to offer a kind word or two I’m sure he’d appreciate it. He even has a great new illustration of “The 8 Circles Of Gay Hell!” for you to enjoy! http://www.mauricevellekoop.com/blog/

- Christopher

A fellow named Mysh e-mailed me out of the blue to let me know about his Queer Haiku Comics, being released online under the name “Imaginary Encounters.” Unabashedly gay/queer haiku poetry that he’s written, and is adapting into single-page comics. He’s got a really lovely art style that is exactly appropriate to his poetry, and it possesses just that right mix of playful and erotic that had me go through his entire archive when I should’ve been busy with other work.

Head over to http://www.queerhaiku.com/ to see his work to date, or grab a sneak-peak at the whole project on Facebook. I’ve put up a couple of examples of his work at the end of this post, under the cut as they’re a touch NSFW ;).

- Chris

Image from Avengers: The Children's Crusade #1, by Allan Heinberg and Olivier Coipel. Stolen from http://blog.project76.tv/2010/07/13478/

GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Aliance Against Defamation, have announced the nominees for their 2010 Media Awards. The awards recognize positive portrayals of gays and lesbians in the media, and for 10+ years “In the media” has also meant “comic books,” which is nice. Their nominations for the top gay-positive comics of 2010?

Outstanding Comic Book
Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Scott Allie, Brad Meltzer, Joss Whedon (Dark Horse Comics)
Fogtown by Andersen Gabrych (Vertigo/DC Comics)
Veronica by Dan Parent (Archie Comics)
X-Factor by Peter David (Marvel Comics)
Young Avengers: Children’s Crusade by Allan Heinberg (Marvel)

Every year I agonize over these awards because they specifically reward the ‘straightest’ material that happens to be nice to gays, rather than doing anything to recognize the work of actual gay cartoonists. I’m trying hard not to do this, this year, because hey, at least they’ve nominated gay writers Allan Heinberg and Andersen Gabrych. And I don’t want to minimize the support or work of vocally queer-friendly creators like David, Meltzer, or Whedon.

I just look at this list every year and think “If they had just nominated Ed Luce for Wuvable Oaf the resulting interest and sales could pay that creator’s’ rent for three months,” and it’s a bit depressing to me. Comics aren’t quite the powerhouse that film or theatre are, but if they can do “Wide-Release” and “Limited Release” categories for film, and “Broadway/Off-Broadway” and “Off-Off-Broadway” categories for Theatre (and that’s just New York), is it too much to hope for an area to recognize independently published queer comics work?

Also is it weird that they don’t list the artists? No? And they got the title wrong and it’s just Avengers: The Children’s Crusade and not Young Avengers: Children’s Crusade? Anyway.

I do wish sincere congratulations to the nominees and I hope that the resulting attention from the queer community means good things for them and their work.

EDIT: So, somehow, I completely missed the fact that the film SCOTT PILGRIM was nominated for OUTSTANDING FILM: WIDE RELEASE, which is excellent. I’d like to congratulate Bryan, Edgar, and Kieran for a bang up job. I’d also like to be a total bitch and point out that the outstanding comic book series upon which this nominated film is based has never been similarly nominated in its category, this year included, and wonder why that is in a very leading way. Hmmm…!

- Christopher

It occurs to me, this being a comic-book website, that not all of my readers may be familiar with club flyers, and may think them to be a mysterious gay-Japanese invention. Let me assure you–clubs all over the world advertise themselves and upcoming events with bright, colourful flyers. But the Japanese ones tend to use manga-style illustrations as a primary attention-getting tool in a way most North American clubs don’t, and that’s awesome.

What we have here is a big (8.5×11″ or so) flyer for an upcoming party at the gay club Arch, a surprisingly big club space in a Tokyo district where most bars comfortably fit 6, and max out at 12. You know it’s a big deal because I was there the first week of November, and they already had the glitz-and-glam advertisements out for a party happening December 11th…!

This is a party for “Gachi-muchi”, or chubby-muscly, a sort of Japanese-only gay subculture that’s kinda like bears but kinda not, too. It’s the type or look typified by the characters in Jiraya manga or in G-Men Magazine, and occasionally by notable names like Genoroh Tagame. The reverse of this flyer features all kinds of photographs–real life versions of the idealized figure shown here. But since there are no illustrations I left it alone. After all, some of those gents might want their privacy.

For more, check out http://www.clubarch.net/schedule/index.html.

Speaking of which, one of the sponsors of the Gachi-Muchi disco party is BIG GYM, a gay bookstore chain (!) specializing in gachi-muchi, bears, and manly men. As such, their stores aren’t generally found in the Shinjuku gay district, but out and about around Tokyo. This here is a free pamphlet they were giving away illustrating the proper way to tie and wear Fundoshi, or traditional Japanese underwear. Check out Big Gym online at http://www.biggym.co.jp/, they’re an awesome, awesome store.

This flyer was picked up from a tourist-friendly shop in Shinjuku ni-chome, and it talks about Rokushaku, a specific type of Fundoshi, and with English instructions…! Interestingly, while a chubby guy is shown here this shop was very ‘twink’ oriented (look it up if you don’t know), I dunno if they’d ever seen anyone this size walk through the door… heh. Until we showed up anyway.

Ah, I totally loved this flyer. This is for a bar in Okinawa called “clutch”, with accounts for the Pacific-islander theming. Basically just a great big fun party scene with all different kinds of guys, letting you know that everyone’s welcome. That’s the bartender, or master/mama, in the center there. I learned that owners of similar bars across the continent will send each other packages of flyers to display and distribute. It’s kind of confusing when you don’t speak the language and see an ad for a bar that you’ve never heard of before, and find out its a thousand km away. Still, it’s only ever a thousand km away…!

Here’s a picture of the flyer that Andrew took, hanging up at a bar. I think this was in a washroom, so… uh. This photo could be worse? :)

Finally, here’s a very cool thing. This is a free-giveaway from Big Gym (mentioned above) of an illustration by Gengoroh Tagame. They did this neat thing last year, where every month they gave away a free calendar with an original illustration by a famous gay manga-ka. It encouraged people to come back at least once a month, and hey, free calendar!

Totally gonna steal that idea.

Alright, that’s everything I grabbed on the last trip. Hope you enjoyed, folks!

Best,

- Christopher

Cover Detail from the September 2010 issue of Japanese Gay Men's Magazine "Badi", a special spotlight issue on Gengoroh Tagame. Art by Gengoroh Tagame.

"Deiri" illustration by Gengoroh Tagame. ©2010.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised this week to discover that the insanely talented gay manga artist Gengoroh Tagame has a blog, and one in English at that! You can find it online at http://www.tagame.org/enews/. This is pretty great as it’s a rare thing for a mangaka to have an English language blog, and Tagame is one of the most talented and easily the most famous mangaka producing gay-themed work (real gay, as opposed to yaoi-gay).

For those of you who not in the know, Tagame is best recognized for the muscular physique he gives his characters, which echoes the North American “Bear” gay subculture and the Japanese “Gachi Muchi” gay subculture, and is generally referred to as “Bara”. The majority of Tagame’s work is marked by strong themes of B&D and S&M, even leading into some verrrrry extreme situations. I heartily recommend checking out his website at http://www.tagame.org/frame_new.html and for the strong-willed and strong-stomached, check out his galleries.

Tagame is a bit of a trailblazer in that his web-presence has been English-friendly for years and years now, much moreso than any other gay manga artist (or almost any manga artist in general). While one of these days I’m really going to have to learn Japanese, for now I’m very happy that Tagame-san has made himself more accessible to his English-speaking fans.

Page from "Virtus" by Gengoroh Tagame. ©2010.

On that note, one of the most interesting posts about his accessibility came a few months back on his English-language blog, entitled “The Groundless Rumour About Publishing of English version of my comics:”

A little while ago, my friend told me the groundless rumor about me and my works.
It was a big surprise for me, so I think that I must correct them officially.

[the rumor]
Tagame does not want to publish his works in English.
In fact, he had refused the offer to publish his book from Tom of Finland foundation.

[the truth]
The rumor is false. I’ve been always wanting that my comics will be translated into English and will be published on magazines or books.And I’ve never been proposed such publishing program directory from Tom of Finland foundation.

Then, why my books have not been published in English? The reason is simple. If a proven publisher offers to me to publish my books in English, I welcome it. In fact, until now, French, Italian and Spanish publishers had contacted to me to publish my comic book in their language. I welcomed them, so my books in these three languages are being published now. But I’ve never been contacted from American, UK’s and Canadian publishers who want to publish my book in English. That is an only reason of why my comic books in English have been never published before.

For your more questions about that, I open the comment form of this post.
(But please write with very plain and easy English! I’m not so good at your language!)

- Gengoroh Tagame [link]

So there you go folks. Which one of you forward-thinking publishers is going to step up to the plate?

- Chris

May 24th: Zan Christiensen posts a great article about possible censorship concerns against gay-centric graphic novels at Apple’s App Store, for the iPad and iPhone.
http://prismcomics.org/display.php?id=1858

June 13th: The New York Times covers the case of ULYSSES SEEN, a graphic novel adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses that had non-sexual nudity edited out after demands by the appstore people. Rage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/technology/14ulysses.html

June 14th, 1:40am: I post a link to Zan’s article at Prism, add a little bit of commentary and additional thinking, call for comment. I feel bad for being behind the times…

June 14th, 10:40am: Tech blog Gizmodo picks up on the story of ULYSSES SEEN and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST censorship.
http://gizmodo.com/5562802/the-latest-examples-of-apples-stupid-editorial-censorship

June 14th, 12:30pm: Awesome Gay Blog JoeMyGod publishes a story on the same issue, based on a reader tip.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/06/apple-censors-gay-graphic-novels-but.html

June 14th, 4pm: Gizmodo updates that Apple has apparently reversed its decision and has asked the creators of both ULYSSES SEEN and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST to resubmit the unedited works for approval.

While it shouldn’t have taken a public, multi-site shaming to get Apple’s act together, I’m quite pleased that both sets of creators will get their work to be presented in the format they’d originally intended, and hopefully get a nice little sales boost from all of the attention. I’m glad that whatever small part I played in bringing the story to people’s attention helped resolve the situation, and kudos again to Zan for writing a great article and highlighting an obvious injustice. I hope the Yaoi Press people aren’t similarly left behind…

Which brings us to another issue, as mentioned by my friend Andrew Wheeler this morning:

@Wheeler: Given Apple’s censorship, shouldn’t intelligent liberals adamantly reject it as a publishing platform? Where’d our ethics go? I refer in part to the censorship of comic adaptations of Wilde http://tinyurl.com/37j3q3b and Joyce http://nyti.ms/9HzgFE

Too racy for Apple? Apparently so... The Importance of Being Ernest, by Tom Bouden.

While I was on my little hiatus, one of the things I did make a point to read was Zan Christiensen’s excellent and lengthy essay on the difficulties that queer creators and queer-themed comics works have had getting accepted into Apple’s iPad app store. I recommend that you go and read it for yourself over at The Prism Comics website, a thriving c0mmunity for queer comics and comics-fans.

In case you don’t make it over there I’ll sum it up for you: There’s a very definite class-system at work in the app-store, and it’s looking very much like queer comics are at the bottom of the heap. The panel to the right there, from Tom Bouden’s adaptation of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest (featuring, naturally, an all-male cast!), was considered too sexy for an 18+ app, and is one of 6 or 7 panels in the book that got it denied from the app-store, all similarly tame (a bare bum, an embrace).

There are lots of examples, plenty of pictures to show just how ‘edgy’ the banned material is (not very much at all), and plenty of the standard Apple denials and non-denials (The Sports Illustrated quote is particularly telling).

The pragmatist in me believes that this isn’t a free speech issue, that this is simply a business making business decisions for itself that I don’t happen to like. But if gay-themed material is being held to a different standard than straight material, particularly if it’s systematic, then it’s both unfair discrimination and quite happily illegal (in most of the world anyway). Looking at the situation, I’d be inclined to start leaning towards the latter. I don’t know why a business would set themselves up as a censor, but if they’re going to, they better start being more transparent and accountable… or it’ll only be a matter of time before they find themselves in a great deal of legal trouble.

Edit: As a brief aside, I would love to hear from publishers if the approval process is the same (or easier) when it comes to getting your comic/graphic novel published through iBooks (Apple’s online bookstore) as getting a stand-alone app published…

- Chris

Dragon Age is a story-based RPG which features gay characters and gives players the option of playing a gay or bisexual hero if they wish to. Because this is the sort of thing gay video game players like, the game has received a mostly positive reception from the gay media.
IDW decided that the best person to write a comic in this setting is Orson Scott Card, a man so homophobic he has advocated treason in the event that gay marriage becomes the law of the land.
So, basically the good people at IDW can just go fuck themselves.

- Dorian Wright, Postmodern Barney

I don’t know if I’d go so far as Dorian in my condemnation of the publisher–I like a couple of the folks at IDW quite a bit–but sincerely, fuck Orson Scott Card, and fuck that book, and what were you thinking in hiring him, for that book in particular.

I mean, if nothing else, as soon as either gay or videogame media gets a hold of this there’s going to be a total shitstorm. Which I, for one, welcome with open arms. And I mean by “if nothing else” that we disregard all of the basic reasons of human dignity not to give that proselytizing jack-ass any more money to fund his vicious hate-speech. Which in the comics industry we are all expected to do, all the time, for some stupid fucking reason.

- Chris

7. Antique Bakery Volume 1, by Fumi Yoshinaga. Published by Digital Manga Publishing, July 2005.

Much like Cardcaptor Sakura wasn’t the first shoujo title published in North America, nor the most popular, neither was Fumi Yoshinaga’s lovely, attractively-drawn episodic comedy/drama Antique Bakery the first yaoi title to make it to our shores or make it big. Actually, a very good case could be made by hardcore fans that, despite being created by an author known for her immensely popular yaoi titles and having come up through the doujinshi circuit and having gotten her start in yaoi, Yoshinaga’s Antique Bakery isn’t yaoi at all; just a male-centric shoujo romance story with a couple of gay characters. These people are, for my purposes, entirely wrong. Because however tightly you want to focus labels like yaoi, BL, ML, whatever, Antique Bakery was at the forefront of the then-exploding yaoi manga scene in 2005-2006, and Yoshinaga’s was the first book to cross over into mainstream comics and manga readership, and that makes it more notable and important than any series that could be considered a more authentic example of the genre. Antique Bakery made everyone sit up and take notice.

So lets get some terminology out of the way. I’m just going to copy the first couple of paragraphs of the definition from Wikipedia in here, because that way if anyone’s got a problem with the definition they can head over and edit it there, instead of bothering me about it:

Yaoi (???^?)^{[nb 1]} (aka Boys’ Love) is a popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by female authors. Originally referring to a specific type of d?jinshi (self-published works) parody of mainstream anime and manga works, yaoi came to be used as a generic term for female-oriented manga, anime, dating sims, novels and d?jinshi featuring idealized homosexual male relationships. The main characters in yaoi usually conform to the formula of the seme (literally: attacker) who pursues the uke (literally: receiver).

In Japan, the term has largely been replaced by the rubric Boys’ Love (?????? B?izu Rabu^?), which subsumes both parodies and original works, and commercial as well as d?jinshi works. Although the genre is called Boys’ Love (commonly abbreviated as “BL“), the males featured are pubescent or older. Works featuring prepubescent boys are labeled shotacon, and seen as a distinct genre. Yaoi (as it continues to be known among English-speaking fans) has spread beyond Japan: both translated and original yaoi is now available in many countries and languages.

Yaoi began in the d?jinshi markets of Japan in the late 1970s/early 1980s as an outgrowth of sh?nen-ai (???^?) (also known as “Juné” or “tanbi”), but whereas sh?nen-ai (both commercial and d?jinshi) were original works, yaoi were parodies of popular “straight” sh?nen anime and manga, such as Captain Tsubasa and Saint Seiya.

Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi

So there you go. Yaoi, “Boy’s Love” (or BL for short), or shonen-ai. It all means about the same thing these days.

You may notice a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the definitions of yaoi, BL, shonen-ai, and what is or isn’t a representative of these genres, and that’s because the fans of these works tend to be the most intense and zealous out of any subgroup of fandom that I’ve ever personally run across. Yaoi is explicitly a fan-created culture, coming up out of the amateur-comics networks and meetings in the 1980s and in a very male-dominated society, and producers and proponents of this genre had to fight very hard to get taken seriously and treated fairly. I respect that, it’s hard not to, but considering its 2010 and the battles of yaoi and BL have been fought and won, here’s hoping that all involved can let their hair down a little.

One of the earliest manga to be released in North America that featured overt themes of same-sex attraction between male characters was the afformentioned Cardcaptor Sakura. The series featured several characters of near-deity status, and regular humans spending time with these deities would feel strange around them, a “tickle in their stomach” that was never explicitly refered to as romantic affection, but through context it was clear that characters would be in the initial stages of falling in love, and that happened a few times between male characters. The attraction was explained away (and of course those sorts of scenes were cut entirely from the anime release) and was never explicit, but it was quite surprising for fans at the time and it die-hard fans were wondering, from the moment it was announced as being licensed for North America in manga and anime format, if the homosexual overtones would be kept in. Tokyopop did, mostly. Nelvana didn’t, at all.

As near as I can tell, the first yaoi titles published in North America actually came courtesy of ComicsOne all the way back in 2000. As part of their massive launch of titles, ComicsOne broke ground by not only offering the first real yaoi/BL/shonen-ai titles in English, but also by offering digital downloads of their work in Adobe E-Book format. They did that for all of their print manga, and also produced numerous titles that were download-only, including the yaoi titles, Lucky Star by Shimoi Kouhara, and Horizon Line by Ikue Ishida [2]. Personally, as a gay guy down on the availability of gay or even gay-themed comics in North America, and having heard the occasional rumour about Japan’s plethora of “gay” comics, coming across these unpromoted, strange-format (e-book only) books on the ComicsOne website was a little like finding gold in them-thar hills. Explicit gay romance comics, where unlike the works available at the time with gay themes like Banana Fish or X/1999 from Viz, no one was the victim of terrible violence or child molestation! Win-win! Of course, not having a credit card (nor trusting ebooks, really) I never got to read those works. But knowing that they were out there was enough, for me, at the time.

According to an article published by Marc McClelland, yaoi started to be licensed and published in North America in 2003, but he doesn’t cite any publishers or titles. Off the top of my head, I’m going to go ahead and say Tokyopop’s Fake, a buddy-cop drama with a frustratingly vague gay edge was first out of the gate. A quick Amazon search shows 4 volumes of Fake published in 2003, with the first out in May. Tokyopop would later release the other mega-popular fan-demanded yaoi hit Gravitation in August of that year, and between those two series would rule-the-roost, until 2004 when DMP would begin releasing their Yaoi Books line with Desire, Selfish Love, and my favourite Only The Ring Finger Knows, and CPM/BeBeautiful would explore the darker, S/M side of yaoi and BL releases with Golden Cain and Kizuna. From there, it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to Tokyopop’s dedicated yaoi line Blu, DMP’s dedicated “mature” line 801 and a rebranding of their titles to more closely associate themselves with the Japanese publishers, with the line switching from “Yaoi Manga” to “June Manga” (after the famous Japanese BL anthology). The success of yaoi in the marketplace, an honest-to-goodness phenomenon in a decade full of them (GAY PORN COMICS FOR WOMEN!) inspired a huge rush of publishers eager to make some money in this new market. Best of all, most Japanese yaoi publishers were smaller organizations, and much more independent, so while you could have industry leaders like Libre (who licensed to CPM) or June (who licensed to DMP), fledgling English-language manga publishers like DramaQueen, the Boysenberry Books arm of Broccoli Books, or the yaoi-arm of an established publisher like Media Blasters could still find great licenses to release. And that’s before you even scratched the surface of doujinshi.

By the time Antique Bakery was published by mid 2005, there were likely about 100 yaoi releases already. By the time Antique Bakery finished its 4-volume run in 2006, there were more than 200. That release schedule ballooned to, at it’s height, more than 20 yaoi releases in a month, every month. That segment of the industry was growing by leaps and bounds, and I’m gonna be honest, as alien as manga in general and the Toykopop revolution in particular may have seemed to most retailers, it didn’t have a patch on how out there even the idea of yaoi seemed, let alone the contents which were often out-and-out pornographic. (As an interesting side-note, there’s never been a controversy or freak-out over the contents of yaoi titles, despite some pretty explicit and questionable publications… I honestly expected one to come up by now.) But the most important thing was, yaoi sold. It sold like gangbusters. But with so much of it coming out, and so many of the series only a volume or two long (with almost no-effort on the part of the publishers to build a following for individual authors), most retailers, even bookstore buyers, had no idea how to buy the stuff past “give me everything” and putting it out on the shelves. Much like the first part of the manga boom though, that strategy only works when “everything” isn’t dozens and dozens of new titles each month.

What makes Antique Bakery important is that it’s a gateway book, and one that broke out of and above the crowd. It’s a gateway into yaoi, sure, but also into shoujo manga, and into manga in general. It’s about food and it’s about love, two very universal subjects that can hook even the most reluctant or unlikely of readers, and it did. It’s also a book that ended up, and I can’t figure out how, with the author at the forefront of the promotion. It may be that “Fumi Yoshinaga” is an easier name for North Americans to parse and remember, or it might’ve been the fan community that, through illicit scans and distribution, knew that Yoshinaga had a huge body of work and big career ahead of her, of which Antique Bakery was only the beginning. Or it might just be that it’s a great series, and her name is worth remembering for that alone. At any rate, when Antique Bakery was solicited somehow I’d been made aware that the author was Kind Of A Big Deal, and it seemed like DMP was doing a lot to push the series. For example, it was the first comic book since Ren & Stimpy #1 more than 10 years earlier, to feature a scratch-and-sniff cover. Each volume would have a new scratch-and-sniff, strawberries, chocolate, all meant to entice you into the baking world within. No manga publisher had done something that clever, to that point. It was pretty cool, and got people talking.

It occurs to me I haven’t described the series in much detail. Simply, it’s about a bakery run by an attractive, scruffy jerk who knows everything about pastries and cakes, and owns a bakery. The lead chef has been in love with him for 15 years, but the owner brutally turned him down. Throw in a reformed street-tough learning about baking, and a clumsy childhood bodyguard trained to become a waiter, and you’ve got a series of highly episodic chapters that extole the virtues of love, friendship, and delicious food. It’s light material (until the surprisingly intense final volume), a comedy-of-errors with romantic tension (gay and straight), shocking twists, and page after page of delicious-sounding and gorgeously drawn cakes and pastries. In short, it’s a fluffy, guiltly-pleasure of a book, incredibly easy and comforting to read, with genuinely deep characters and relationships. It’s like a network dramedy, crossed with a Food-Network special. It’s fun stuff.

From its description I can imagine many of you who haven’t read it (or any yaoi/BL/shoujo for that matter) couldn’t imagine how this could be good, or important. Well the pedigree of the book might convince you. The series won the 2002 Kodansha Manga Award for shoujo manga upon its original release, and the English edition of Antique Bakery was nominated for a 2007 Eisner Award for “Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Japan,” the award’s inaugural year. This book connected with people, and as the Eisner nom evidences, not just the small, vocal yaoi fanbase. It’s a highly-crafted work that received tons of reviews and great word-of-mouth attention online and in the fan press. The last three volumes of the series were short-listed for the inaugural 2007 list of Great Graphic Novels For Teens, put together by the Young-Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). The books received multiple printings, though unfortunately later editions were no longer Scratch ‘n’ Sniff. Almost from the month it was released, Antique Bakery became the poster-book for the Yaoi boom in bookstores and forward-looking comic shops across North America. It was a book you could hold up and say “This is yaoi! And it’s GREAT!” and not have anyone who flipped through it after you said that call you a liar and/or blush. Sure, in the end it might not be 100% accurate, it might not fall under the very stringent ‘rules’ of what constitutes a ‘yaoi’ or ‘BL’ title, but it acted as many readers’ first exposure to the genre, it got wide acclaim, and its really really good. It’s important to have gateway books, particularly for audiences that had been completely ignored by comic publishing for more than 30 years–women and gay men. I know more than a couple of each who hold Antique Bakery amongst the favourite comics of all time, and in the big picture I think that’s a lot more important than labels.

Since Antique Bakery, DMP have published a number of additional books by Yoshinaga including Solfege, Ichigenme… The First Class Is Civil Law Volume 1 & 2, Garden Dreams, Flower of Life Volumes 1, 2, 3, & 4, The Moon and Sandals Volume 1 & 2, and Don’t Say Anymore Darling, with All My Darling Daughters scheduled to arrive in 2010 Edit: AMDD will be coming from Viz, not DMP. Tokyopop added Yoshinaga to their roster via their BLU yaoi line, with her series Gerard and Jacques Volumes 1 & 2 and the short story collections Truly Kindly and Lovers in the Night. Yoshinaga’s highest-profile release in North America came late in 2009, with the release of Ooku: The Inner Chambers Volumes 1 & 2 published by Viz. Ooku is an alternate-history series about early Japan, where women become the ruling class after a plague wipes out most men. The series is Yoshinaga’s most popular and best-received to date, winning numerous prizes including the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for manga, 2007, shared with Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life. FWIW my favourite of Yoshinaga’s works so far is Ichigenme…, a sexy series that really rings true as both a yaoi series and contemporary gay fiction. It’s filthy, too.

Images Top-to-Bottom: Antique Bakery Volumes 1-4, by Fumi Yoshinaga, published by Digital Manga Publishing.

-o+O+o-

- Chris

Today marks the beginning of Gay Pride Week here in Toronto! Sadly because I’m out and about right now, I had to reuse this image, but I’ll try and get some all-new imagery to be proud of all week long…! Yay! This illustration comes courtesy of Maurice Vellekoop, and his book Vellevision.

- Chris

“In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature. – Amazon.com”

Which is annoying nanny-state garbage that disinclines me to use their site, but fine. However, it seems that some patrons of Amazon have noticed differences in the way this policy is applied, and that it tends to classify many books with gay and lesbian themes that aren’t necessarily explicit as “adult”, while keeping many heterosexual explicit works in the public eye…including a graphic novel:

We would like to hear the rationalisation for allowing sales ratings for explicit books with a heterosexual focus such as:

–Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
–Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love” (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Bertrice Smal’s Skye o’Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
–and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)

Yet the following books, which have a gay or lesbian focus, have been classed as “adult books” and stripped of their sales ratings:

–Radclyffe Hill’s classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
–Mark R Probst’s YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he’s gay (gay romance, no sex);
–Charlie Cochrane’s Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);
–The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);
–and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).

Please tell us, Amazon, why the explicit books with a heterosexual focus are allowed to keep their sales ratings while the non-explicit romances, the histories and the biographies that deal with LGBTQ issues are not. - Petition against Amazon’s policy

I like Lost Girls as much as the next guy, but how is that not an “adult” work when a non-fiction history of Homophobia is? Maybe it’d classify if adult if someone told Amazon about all the hot lady-on-lady or man-on-man action?

This is pretty gross. I realize the world is filled opportunity for outrage these days, but if you could muster some against a policy which will very, very likely be changed with enough attention, I’d appreciate it. Head over to:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

and sign up.

EDIT: If you’re looking for more on this story, Jezebel has a great write-up, more examples of books stripped of their standing, and what it all means. Check it out at: http://jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-lesbian-books

- Christopher

OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK
The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames (Vertigo/DC Comics)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb and Joss Whedon (Dark Horse Comics)
Final Crisis: Revelations by Greg Rucka (DC Comics)
Secret Six by Gail Simone (DC Comics)
Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction (Marvel Comics)

The awards are handed out to media and media-makers who provide compelling, honest, and visible portrayals of GLBT people.

I’ve often felt that the intended aims of the media awards were awkward, giving a pat on the back to straight people who are good to gays rather than recognizing the achievements of… you know… actual gay people who also inspire and create great work and are visible and honest and etc.  But since I haven’t read 4 of the 5 books on my list up there I’ll hold my tongue until I get through them… if I ever get through them.

(Maybe Scott Pilgrim will finally get nominated next year when the movie comes out, eh?)

- Chris

“ We picked up our marriage license yesterday and we will get legally married before November 4th. For this and for the following, I want to apologize. I want to apologize to my family because you can’t be here for this. There’s no time to get my mother and Matt’s parents here for the legal ceremony. I am sorry that in order to live the American dream, we are forced to elope.” - Ed Matthews, PopImage.com

Hey, there’s a U.S. Election in a few weeks. You may be aware. If you’re voting In California, you’ve also got a chance to vote to ensure people like my friends Ed & Matt can get married, and stay married. They’re good guys, and they’ve been together for something like 10 years. I want them to be happy.
Ed put me and Mal up in his living room for 2 or 3 days the first time I visited New York, which was easily the most amazing time I visited New York. Ed took over PopImage for me when I went on “break”, a break that has lasted about 5 years at this point. Ed’s even put his money where his mouth is, and published a few comics I really enjoyed, like the full-colour Young Bottoms In Love anthology collection from a few years back.

This week Ed is back at PopImage, and has written an editorial about his life–his desire to get married to the man he loves, the fact that he had to uproot his life and move from New York to California to do it, and how he wants other couples like him to have that same opportunity.

I will have been married for two years next week, to a pretty wonderful guy. My life has improved immeasurably since I met him… Hell, any of you who’ve followed my writing for a few years will notice that right around 2004 I stopped screaming at people all the time. He made me a happier guy, and while I still rail at the injustices of the comics world, I’ve managed to keep it to once or twice a month, rather than once or twice per day. I want Ed & Matt to have what I have, because it’s great, and it’s the right thing to do.

Ed is imploring all of you who live in California to Vote No on Proposition 8, a proposition which would amend the state constitution to ban marriage between Homosexuals. Further, he’s hoping that you can spare a little money and donate to the Vote No on 8 campaign. I can’t, unfortunately, because I’m not a U.S. Citizen. But I can blog about it, and hopefully send a few people from here their way.

California courts have already decided that equality is a right enshrined in the state constitution, and a bunch of people that don’t believe gay folks are equal to straight folks are trying to change that constitution. Being happy, being married to the person you love, it isn’t a special right. Everyone deserves a chance at happiness. I hope that, those of you reading this, can do a little bit to ensure that that’s true.

SPX 2002: The Big Gay Dinner, featuring (l to r): Dave, Aman Chaudhary, Tim Fish,
Jay Laird, Ed Mathews, David Frankel, Christopher Butcher.

http://www.noonprop8.com/
http://www.popimage.com/content/viewnews.cgi?newsid1224622428,65514,

- Chris

I am still in New York, and the nice folks at NPR’s The Bryant Park Project morning show have asked me on to their show to talk about the con, my experiences, and etc. I’ll be on sometime around 8am tomorrow morning, and I’m looking forward to it. If you can’t make it up that early in the evening, it looks like the show is archived on their website.

Meanwhile! I contributed a little sidebar piece to New York gay mag Next Magazine‘s most-recent issue about comics, just in time for the convention. I found a copy while I was here and they blew it up onto a full page with art and everything, which is fab. It’s a quick-and-dirty little piece called 6 Essential Gay Graphic Novels.

So it’s been a pretty good weekend :)

- Chris

This past Friday, February 8th, Brave New World Comics in Newhall, California held their first ever Singles Night, encouraging ladies and gents to head to the shop and maybe meet the nerd of their dreams. As you might expect, just dumping a bunch of folks that would describe themselves as ‘socially awkward’ into a room is not, necessarily, the best idea for a good time. It’s to the credit of Brave New World owners Atom! and Portlyn Freeman that things went so smoothly, as they shored up the event with live bands, food, and booze. To be honest, I think the idea of getting a bunch of nerds drunk is kind of amazing, but probably for different reasons than the organizers intended… still, by all accounts the evening was a huge success.

I got a chance to talk to Atom! Freeman (his real name) about the event.

“My goal with most in-store events is to break-even, get an opportunity to say the store’s name in public and see new faces,” said Atom! “[For Comic Book Singles Night] we doubled our break-even number … our event got mentioned by 5 local radio stations including an interview on a highly rated morning program and we got a half-page write-up on the front page of the local newspaper!

“Business-wise it exceeded all of my expectations.”

And how about romantically? Anyone hook up at the event? “I hope so,” said Atom! “Because the point of this was to find our friends someone they could enjoy being with. Turns out, more then just our friends responded. I know a lot of numbers were exchanged.”

According to Atom! more than 100 singles showed up to the event, with a 60/40 gender split weighed towards the guys… a hell of a lot better than I, for one, was expecting. Personally I’d worry about setting up too many of my existing customers with each other… what if they decided that they only needed one copy of a given comic that they could share? I know it’s blasphemy, but apparently when two comics nerds get married they actually start mixing their respective comics collections! Heresy! Apparently the key to events like this is involving the larger community and bringing new faces into the comic book store to pair off with your shoppers. Of course, I think the fact that Atom! referred to his customers as his friends says a lot about the very genuine community-driven motivation behind the event, but he also figured out the key to getting a whole bunch of potential customers to see all that Brave New World had to offer: Local Bands.

“[My biggest surprise was] what a draw local live bands are,” said Atom! “At one point in the evening, just looking over the crowd I guesstimated that it was 50% fans of the band who just came for the music. While we didn’t do huge sales numbers that night, the weekend was huge because for the next couple days, people came back to buy things they had seen that night.

“I’m now looking into what it will take to have a live music night every 6 weeks.”

What struck me most about this event, and what made me want to write about Comic Book Singles Night in the first place, is that the language used to describe the event in the press was very open-ended regarding gender and sexuality. Brave New World made it pretty clear that whether you were a guy or a girl looking for a guy or a girl, you’d be welcome to come and try your luck at the comic book store.

“This was one of the first factors that we felt needed resolution before we went ahead with the event,” said Atom! “Our intention was never to exclude anybody. The only way that we even made it gender specific was the raffle and even that was “put your ticket in this box if you want to be paired with a boy, in this box if you want to be paired with a girl.”

“I see a major part of my job as a retailer is creating a community. To create a place where people with similar interests can gather and interact. I don’t see gender or orientation as major components in that job. Our store is located in a Victorian-styled strip mall with a bridal shop, hair salon, yoga studio, and antiques boutique. If we wanted to focus on the single white straight male comics fan, we could be much more profitable in the industrial center with a roll-up door that only went up 4 times a week. Our goal is to reach as many people as possible and expose them to art, culture, and entertainment that they wouldn’t normally run across.”

In the past I know that Eisner Award-winning comic shop Zeus Comics in Dallas, Texas has done social ‘mixers’ for their clientele, including a specifically queer-themed mixer in late 2005. My experience with the comics industry is that it’s no more or less homophobic than the general public (and those that disagree should hang out on X-Box Live some time to see what fandom-oriented homophobes really sound like…), but that doesn’t change the fact that the comic store is generally a very heteronormative environment. Superhero comics in particular (the bread and butter of most comics shops) are notorious for this. Check out my Afraid Of Cock post for more. Many queer customers still don’t feel safe being ‘out’, so any actions that are taken to really include and engage gay comics fans I feel are worth noting. Would BNW ever sponsor a Gay Singles Night? “I would need more convincing that there would be a need for a more queer specific event,” says Atom! “But, a lot of our single queer customers and friends were here and some met each other for the first time, so who knows?”

That leads into the most pressing question of all, will there be more Singles Nights for the friends of Brave New World? “Without question… We’ll probably try it again in 6 months to see if it still draws and then quarterly and so on. [It was] easily one of the best events we’ve ever had.”

- Christopher Butcher
Images stolen from: http://www.keef.net/, http://www.comics.org/, http://thatsmyskull.blogspot.com/, and http://www.scottsaavedra.com.

What struck me when rewriting it (and I think it only shares maybe 1 or 2 paragraphs with the original) was how much the yaoi segment of the manga market has changed in just a few years. Where once upon a time there was only Be Beautiful, DMP, and those guys that did Skyscrapers of Oz, there are now so many different publishers and imprints and sub-imprints producing more than 20 volumes a month! What was once an emerging category is now full-blown, and it was a real treat writing an introduction to the genre/phenomena for a gay male audience.

Even better? The story ended up as the cover-feature of the print version of the magazine! My name, finally in lights. My friend Eric Kim, illustrator of Love as a Foreign Language for Oni Press (amongst other comics work) was comissioned to do the cover illustration, and you can see it up on the right there. He did a great job (thanks Eric!) and the paper really pops in the newspaper boxes. You can click on the image to see a larger version.
So, yeah. I’m a paid journalist now, which means I’m Completely Entitled! I get _paid_ for these opinions of mine, which makes me fabulous and insufferable! Bwahahaha!

Love,

- Christopher

“Fan Fiction is an Internet site where fans can speculate, converse and write on books, movies, shows, etc.
“One branch of the site is dedicated to Harry Potter, and explicit scenes with Dumbledore already appear there.”
- Christian Broadcasting Network News

Thanks to Mike for the link, we find that J.K. Rowling outted Dumbledore in a reading last week and that this move will likely have Christians more upset. As usual, they’ve made sure to get their facts straight before rushing to the internet. Oh, Christians, you’re the worst part about Christianity.

+ Meanwhile, the comics journalism debate was ended this week way before I threw Beaudelaire at it, by Tom Spurgeon. A rumour reverberated throughout the industry about long-running indy comics show APE, The Alternative Press Expo, moving from it’s “first show of the year” placement to pretty-close to the last show of the year in November. What would this mean? Why would they do this? Why didn’t anyone pick up the phone and actually just call and find out what was going on? Congrats to Tom Spurgeon who actually put the effort in to find out the how and why instead of just the ‘what’, in this interview with David Glanzer from Comic Con International (the folks behind APE as well as well as the big show in San Diego). If the blogosphere had put as much effort into actually doing comics journalism in the past few weeks as they’ve put into talking about why no one does comics journalism, the question itself would cease to be.

+ At MisterKitty.org, Dave uncovered a ‘plot’ by Archie to try and whitewash the actual creators out of their creative history. Archie comics re-uses stories from throughout their publishing history all the time, making small updates to the art or dialogue to try and make them more contemporary for today’s youth (although how they get away with those fashions is beyond me… I guess with the electro revival a few years back all their 80s reprints would’ve been cutting edge for a little while there).

Anyhow, one of the more recent reprints does a lot more than alter a pop-culture reference like ”Burt Bobain” to “Bernard Bay” to make it relevant, it changes a breaking-the-fourth-wall moment with Betty acknowledging top-notch artist Dan DeCarlo as the creator of the story she’s in, to a general “The Archie Comics Staff”. I think that I can take it for granted that you, my audience, find this as gross as I do, but let’s talk about the reason why. Dan DeCarlo created the characters/properties of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats, and aside from not acknowledging DeCarlo with any finanicial consideration considering the other-media successes of both properties, Archie Comics has steadfastly maintained that DeCarlo was just the artist, and that an employee of the company (and not a freelancer) really came up with the ideas when all evidence points at that as being a load of bull.

Poor guy got fucked over by a major corporation even WITHOUT signing a contract that effectively says “I didn’t create this thing I’m creating, AOL/Time-Warner did, or possibly Stu Levy.” Wait until they erase this generation’s names off of their own work in ten or fifteen years…

Anyway, if there’s a bright-side to all of this, it’s that when they re-lettered Betty’s word balloon they did it in what looks to be a computer-generated ‘lettering’ font without changing any of the other lovely hand-lettering, so the whole thing has the air of a creepy, computerized “Mis-terrr Ann-derrr-son…” voiceover. Maybe today’s young Betty & Veronica readers will see through Archie Comics’ attempts at erasing the human hands that built their empire? One can hope, until then, we can all linkblog the hell out of it.

- Christopher

Shannon Gerard at TCAF 2007. Picture by Blake Bell.

Visitors to the 2007 Toronto Comic Arts Festival may be familiar with the works of cartoonists Shannon Gerard and Stef Lenk. In addition to both cartoonists (multi-disciplinary artists, actually) launching brand new comics as part of the lead-up to the festival, they also had one of the most interesting displays at the event. Comprised of a life-sized sculpture implying the classic board-game OPERATION and knitted and crocheted pairs of boobs and a penis’ & testicles (alongside promotional images shown here), these pieces (and the brand new books that accompanied them) sat amongst all of their other comics work, and the cartoonists themselves were set-up across from Top Shelf and at an all-ages event with nary a peep of trouble. I did a double-take myself when I saw the handsomely-produced member hanging on the wall at the show, but then I’ve already dealt with my own fear of cock… I thought it was a great display.

Apparently at York University in the North of Toronto? That cock-stuff don’t fly.

According to BlogTO.com, after a complaint by an anonymous YorkU professor a window display featuring the work of Gerard and Lenk was removed from the York University Bookstore. The display was promoting both the works themselves and a gallery display of art from both Lenk’s and Gerard’s projects, and while the work is certainly provocative, I don’t think anyone expected this reaction.

Although it’s not mentioned at BlogTO, Shannon Gerard is actually a YorkU alum and may even have taught there, I know that she sat on the TCAF 2005 Comics Academia panel alongside folks like Bart Beaty and Phoebe Gloeckner. I think it’s important that this material not be characterized as the work of a University student still ‘finding’ themselves, particularly because Gerard’s work is quite accomplished and even popular here in town. Also interesting? A version of the display featuring all of the same components hung in the window of bookstore Pages, right downtown on Toronto’s busiest street (and at one of our busiest intersections) for weeks without any notable incident.

I don’t mean to keep stealing all of the good bits from the BlogTO article, but let’s tie the whole thesis together, shall we:

“Although no one knows if it was the nudity or the crocheted Boobs and Dinks, Chhangur suspects, “it was the piercing on the crocheted penis on the cut out male figure and the open discussion about testicular cancer. Breast cancer seems socially accepted as is the depiction, (real or crocheted) of breasts but not penis’ or testicular cancer. Most of the complaints came from grown, white, heterosexual, men.”"
- BlogTo.com

Huh, how about that? Where have I heard about ostensibly straight white dudes having a problem with artistic depictions of male genitalia before?

Where… where could that be?

Anyway, let’s keep it positive. Why don’t you go and check out Shannon Gerard’s site at http://www.shannongerard.org/, and Stef Lenk’s site at http://steflenk.com/. Both are solid artists with excellent comics projects, and it’s nice to have an excuse…despite the unfortunate nature of said excuse…to link them.

- Chris

Ware’s introduction to the book is interesting, as he writes about visual literacy and invention in the context of his own work and in the work of the artists he has assembled here. Of course (and in typical self-depreciating fashion) he throws the idea that this is the ‘best’ work in comics right out the window in the first paragraph: No matter how much you criticize Chris Ware, you can be sure that he has already beaten you to the punch in doing so. Instead he talks about the work in terms of “telling the truth,” which he states to be the primary attribute in comics stories that he personally enjoys. This shouldn’t be mistaken for an elevation of non-fiction over fiction or any other such fallacy, but instead Ware seems to best respond to works that seek to understand, explain, and celebrate the human condition, and that’s evident in the book. More than half of the books’ stories are outright biography or autobiography; the only real concession to the fantastic seems to be in Ware’s appreciation of C.F.’s Blond Atchen And The Bumble Boys and Paper Rad’s Kramer’s Ergot; the hypercolour cute-brut works descended from the Fort Thunder collective and, in Ware’s estimation, the work Gary Panter (Panter also included here via an excerpt from his Jimbo In Purgatory). If “Fiction,”as Mr. Ware has posited elsewhere, “allows details and doubts about actual events to be bypassed and the remembered essence of a person to suddenly ‘come alive’ again,” then it seems very much like that fiction oughtta stay as close to plausible as possible, if the choices here are anything to go by.

The collection isn’t a bad one, and seeing as it is produced and marketed for a ‘general public’ graphic novel reader it’s a lot harder to fault it for being picked from a fairly small (though very deep pool). I’d have a hard time arguing against any of the included works as being undeserving of the “Best Comics” tag, and I probably wouldn’t bother either because that kind of behaviour is kinda dickish. But even the briefest page-through of the book will show that while it is a coherent and considered opinion on comics, it also isn’t representative of the North American comics publishing industry as a whole. Luckily Ware has already forestalled such criticism (told ya!) but it’s still a little aggrivating that, for example, anything with a whif of genre about it is seemingly disqualified, despite its ability to get to get at “truth” in it’s own way. Further absent are any comics that don’t mark print as their primary medium. I wonder what kind of view of the industry this presents to the ‘general public’?

Next year (and for the foreseeable future) the Best American Comics collections will feature new, permanent Editors in the tag-team power couple of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. I feel fairly confident in saying that their vision of the Best Comics will look substantially different from Ware’s, just as my own ideas about the best comics released this year do. Will that make for a better, more coherent or thorough anthology though? Will those opinions be any more or less correct? I quite honestly have no idea, but there’s a much better chance I won’t own previously released versions of 80% of what’s in the book, and that’s pretty exciting to me at least!

So my recommendation? Check out the table of contents for this one over at The Publisher’s Website and see how many of the works–or creators–are new to you. If you haven’t purchased much of this work already I’d strongly recommend you do so through this volume… but maybe keep the other eye open and on the rest of the graphic novel rack too.

Meanwhile, Chris, What Did You Think Were The Best Graphic Novels of 2006?

Well I’m glad you asked. Now that literally every award for graphic novels published in 2006 has been given out, AND they made a book out of it, here’s what I thought were the best comics in 2006. I’m not limiting myself to works by North American creators as Mr. Ware is, but I am requiring English-language publication in 2006. I’ve included my (whopping) 28 choices behind the cut below. Let me know what you think:

Abandon The Old In Tokyo, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
Tatsumi was putting together sophisticated, humanistic, visually advanced stories at a time when those types of comics simply did not exist in North America. That his work, upon translation, is still as vital and unique more than 40 years after the fact is nothing short of remarkable and a testament to its strength.

Achewood, by Chris Onstad. Published at http://www.achewood.com.
A good comic strip, in my estimation, has a hint of the sublime to it. Achewood is drenched in it. Achewood was a compulsion for me in 2006, needing to find out what happens next throughout the Great Outdoor Fight, refreshing every hour on the hour waiting for a new installment. Inspired stuff.

Acme Novelty Library 17, by Chris Ware. Published by Chris Ware and distributed by Drawn & Quarterly.
I guess I can understand how Ware, as the consumate shy artist, would not include his own work in a book he edited called THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2007. But… come on. Someone should have just slipped in his work on Acme Novelty Library (or even his serialised Building Stories work) without telling him or something. The Rusty Brown narrative in Acme Novelty Library just destroys me every time I read it.

All Star Superman (Series), by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Published by DC Comics.
Probably the point at which many of my audience quit reading this list, but this series is a shining example that even within the strict confines of mainstream comics, a work can be produced that is humanistic, both reverential and irreverant, and genuinely ambitious in both narrative and storytelling. That it’s largely successful earns it a place on this list.

American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang. Published by First Second Books.
At one point this was my favourite graphic novel of 2006, following a lengthy wait for its completion that began several years prior when this webcomic stopped updating one day. I found the ending challenging and thought-provoking, which, once I had reconciled it with the rest of the book, made me enjoy the story even more. But I still feel that this is a flawed work, and it’s something that I hadn’t really thought about until a friend of mine pointed it out to me: The Monkey King of Chinese legend goes off to meet and pay tribute to the baby Jesus… which the more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Yang’s relationship with God is his own, but introducing Christian mythology into a book that was until that point solely about Asian-American identity is off-putting, and clumsily handled. Still, nearly every other panel in the book is well-drawn and well-told, contributing to an over-all excellent graphic novel.

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, edited by Ivan Brunetti. Published by Yale University Press.
It’s probably cheating to include a ‘best of’ anthology that spans more than 3 decades in your “Best of 2006″ list, but as far as I’m concerned this massive, exhaustive tome takes-the-cake for anthologies of its type, and is a book that is phenomenally accessible and easy to recommend, even while the work it contains can be challenging or oblique. It is so Rich, dense, and diverse that there is literaly something for everyone in these pages. I’m glad to hear that there’s a second volume on the way.

Casanova (series), by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba. Published by Image Comics.
While my commentary here at comics212.net may have lost steam due to a profoundly affecting editorial in the back of the seventh issue, my enthusiasm for the series remained high throughout 2006. While it is neither creator’s “first work” in comics, so to speak, it certainly feels like it at times with a boundless enthusiasm and energy on every page. It’s rare to see a series that is so smart, funny, and self-assured hit the stands, bending genres to fit its needs. While it’s true that as a reader and critic I tend to place a high priority on ambition, and though Casanova ultimately did not wholely accomplish everything it attempted, it’s still a remarkably strong effort by all involved and earns it’s spot on the list.

Castle Waiting HC, by Linda Medley. Published by Fantagraphics Books.
Having gone through a number of publishers (including a lengthy stint self-publishing) and multiple formats, it’s interesting to see that Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting didn’t hit a critical or sales ‘breakthrough’ until after it was published by Fantagraphics Books in their 2006 collection of more-or-less all of the material to date. I think it’s because the series was an ill-fit for the world of floppy comics pamphlets and run-of-the-mill trade paperback collections. The lavish hardcover production and tome-like weight of Fantagraphics’ collection added a much-needed gravitas to the proceedings, and encouraged readers to view the work in a different, and obviously more favourable light. While the last third of the graphic novel is definitely hurt by the constraints of the original serialisation of the work, the package as a whole holds up remarkably well, and has quite obviously spurred Medley to start writing for collection in her new series; a welcome change.

Death Note (series), by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Published by Viz Communications, LLC.
Everyone I met in 2006 refered to this as the Crack-Cocaine of manga. Relentlessly plotted, beautifully illustrated, maddeningly compelling stuff. Volumes 1-7 of this series are a near-perfectly told suspense thriller, using the serialization/collection format to its utmost.  

Deogratias, by J.P. Stassen. Published by First Second Books.
Deogratias was the only graphic novel to move me to tears last year. It’s a devestating portrayal of Rwandan genocide, and the level of artistry and sophistication in the storytelling makes it all the more affecting. When it came time to review this book I choked, I couldn’t do it. Mostly because this book should be experienced, and I didn’t feel anything I could say would have any bearing on it at all.

DC: The New Frontier: Absolute Edition, by Darwyn Cooke. Published by DC Comics.
Though it was originally published in 2004, Darwyn Cooke’s epic period superhero piece didn’t get the collection it deserved until the end of 2006, when the whole series was finally collected under one cover and expanded to include new key scenes. I know it seems a little strange, the way this list sandwiches a tale of Rwandan Genocide between a supernatural thriller and a brightly-coloured superhero epic, but books like The New Frontier help to remind me of the positive potential of mankind. I know that sounds kinda corny, but what are characters like Superman and Wonder Woman meant to be if not grand, inspiring icons? That’s exactly what Cooke delivers here, and it’s beautiful.

Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North. Published at http://qwantz.com.
A secret joy I have in reading Dinosaur Comics is seeing Ryan North take the high-art snob argument AGAINST artistic craft to the Nth degree, every day of the week. Artistic Craft is so unimportant that he can just use the same stock-art every day for years and still tell funny, compelling little narratives with it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Frank Cho! Heh, seriously though, this is some pretty sublime stuff here, with a rythym and reward all its own.

Dork #11, by Evan Dorkin. Published by Slave Labor Graphics.
I’m kind of shocked that, not only did I not see this on many best-of lists, I didn’t hear much about it at all after it had been released. The possibility exists that I was the only one who thought that this was the absolute funniest comic released to print last year, but that would be crazy. Dorkin reminds me a little bit of the lawyer in Chicago, he just gets up on stage and taps as hard as as fast as he can sustaining it to a crescendo in which the murderess goes free. Except Dorkin didn’t walk away with the prize this time, which I find really, really wierd. All I can think of to explain it is a lack of overall visibility, and that sucks.

Dragon Head (series), by Minetaro Mochizuki. Published by Tokyopop.
Easily one of the best manga series being released in English, Dragon Head suffers from having consciously ugly (though exceptionally well-drawn) art and a dark and unsettling plot. It also got knocked out of the public discussion at the end of the year by the appearance of an earlier survival/horror manga, Drifting Classroom by horror master Kazuo Umezu. It’s too bad because I do prefer Dragon Head and it’s slow-reveal mystery plot to Umezu’s Jenga of fuck-uppery, but with the release schedule slowing down dramatically, I’ll still be able to talk about the last few volumes of this series on next year’s best of list too. And the year after that.

Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Volume 4, by various. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
Last year I had a bit of a crisis of conscience where I felt Sammy Harkham’s short story in Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Volume 3, entitled “Somersaulting,” was a truly exceptional piece of work, in an anthology that was otherwise enjoyable but inessential. This year I got over myself and am happy to count this as among the best works of the year, thanks to a short-story by Gabrielle Bell which I consider to be the best of her career (I liked this a lot more than the diary comics that Ware chose for BAC2007) and a surprising short biography by emerging cartoonist Dan Zettwoch (which actually WAS included in the Ware antho). The other contribution, a short by Martin Cendreda (whose work I enjoy) was also solid, making for an all-around winner of an anthology. I was disappointed not to see a volume 5 of this series in 2007.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel. Published by Houghton-Mifflin.
What can I say about this one that Time Magazine didn’t when they named in the best book of the year in 2006? Not best comic, by the way. Best book. Granted, that issue with the stupid mirror cover was obnoxious as hell, but if it means that a talented, hard-working cartoonist like Bechdel can break through to the mainstream with a 1) gay 2) graphic novel 3) from a mainstream book publisher, then they can put as much foil on their covers as they like for all I care.

Get a Life and Maybe Later, by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
A supreme effort by two genuinely nice fellows that I had the pleasure to meet last year, Get A Life collects several albums worth of stories from the French series Mr. Jean. These are fictions of course, but they’re also stories of every day life. Love, loss, friendship, loneliness, it’s wonderful and moving and tres francais. Beautiful art and colour, too. Then you get to read the story behind the stories in Maybe Later, a more sparingly drawn black and white autobiography by the two cartoonists and featuring the events that inspire and are inspired by the ‘fictional’ adventures of Mr. Jean (pronounced, by the way, as the French version of “John”, as in Jean Valjean from Les Mis.). Both of these books failed to capture the public imagination upon their release, and I can only hope that those of you reading this will seek them out–they’re utterly fantastic.

Huizenga, Kevin: Works of 2006. Published by Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics Books, Centre for Cartoon Studies, self-published, etc.
Independent Cartoonist Kevin Huizenga had a banner year in 2006, as his early short stories were collected in the Curses hardcover from D+Q, and Fantagraphics Books released his Ganges #1 as part of the international Ignatz publishing effort. Kevin’s work is narratively inventive and obsessed with the various ways that comics can conveny information; whether that’s statistics, religion, emotion, or anything else for that matter. Huizenga continued to innovate in his ongoing series Or Else also from D+Q, in various self-published mini-comics, and even in a promotional brochure for the Centre for Cartoon Studies art-school entitled How to Think About Learning to Draw Comics.

Japan: As Viewed by 17 Creators, by Various. Published by Fanfare/Ponent Mon.
I’ve written extensively about this anthology already, but let me just say a collection of some of my favourite French and Japanese comics artists, paired with some wonderfully talented emerging cartoonists from those two countries, all creating comics on a subject of great personal interest… it’s an obvious winner. The best manga release of the year (yes, even edging out Tezuka), and probably my favourite overall book of 2006.

Kramer’s Ergot 6, by Various. Published by Buenaventura Press.
I like the Kramer’s Ergot anthologies for the quality of work by known-commodities therin (Sammy Harkham’s story was a highlight, this year), but also because they force me to stop and really consider the work I’m reading how I feel about it, something I rarely encounter in comics. Not the anthology I would come up with, and I’m quite happy with it because of that.

Mome (series), by Various. Published by Fantagraphics.
A frustrating anthology series that took several volumes to find it’s feet, it was nevertheless filled with some fantastic comics shorts in 2006. The 2007 volumes on the whole though have been much more satisfying, with a heady mix of emerging talent and talented eurocomix creators.

Ode to Kirihito, by Osamu Tezuka. Published by Vertical, Inc.
Even after having read the 2007 release Apollo’s Song by the author, a ‘mature’ work about sex and sexuality, Kirihito still feels like a more maturely-aimed and successful work. Genuinely surprising at times (the human tempura!?) and still marked by Tezuka’s trademark melodrama, this is a handsomely produced book that sits quite nicely alongside the translated Japanese fiction that Vertical specialises in, and is a great example of the power and range of Tezuka’s work.

Perry Bible Fellowship, by Nicholas Gurewitch. Published at http://pbfcomics.com/.
There’s that ‘sublime’ again. PBF is a visualy ambitious and clever comic strip with a unique storytelling cadence. Really trying to sit down and write a “PBF-style” comic will show you exactly how difficult it is, and the high-degree of visual alacrity and twisted sense of humour combine into something that is unlike anything else being produced today, on a semi-regular basis even!

Phoenix (Series), by Osamu Tezuka. Published by Viz Communications, LLC.
As I mentioned a couple entries ago, Tezuka’s works, however high their aspirations, are marked with a melodrama and humour that seek to make them as accessible as possible to the general public, but may undermine them in the eyes of more discerning and older readers here in North America. Phoenix is Tezuka’s (unfinished) masterwork, and it brings all of his tics and strengths to the forefront of every volume. The cartooniness and the descent into fourth-wall-breaking slapstick, the marvelous background illustrations, the deeply-felt personal convictions that inform every story. Phoenix is the essence of Tezuka’s manga creation, and every volume is a new window into his idea of what manga should, or could be. If that isn’t worth reading, despite any hang-ups about ‘cartooniness’, I don’t know what is.

Schizo #4, by Ivan Brunetti. Published by Fantagraphics Books.
Brunetti’s journey through life and cartooning continued into Schizo #4, a collection of short strips primarily concerned with biography and autobiography. Brunetti is actively simplifying his cartooning style here and combining spare pen-and-ink with computer colouring for a bold, graphic effect that contrasts mightily with the strips that are partly or completely unfinished as the issue progresses. Schizo excels not only because of the material within, but also because of the picture it paints of it’s own creator, beseiged by loathing and doubt.

Scott Pilgrim 3: Scott Pilgrim and The Infinite Sadness, by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Published by Oni Press.
Both the strongest and weakest of the series to date, Scott Pilgrim Volume 3 was nevertheless a little ray of sunshine for me in 2006. Despite working around comics 300+ days a year, it’s rare to have a series come along that connects with people so deeply, that brings such utter and unmitigated joy to its readers. I read these with a giant goofy grin on my face from start to finish, and I imagine that’s what everyone else who loves this series does as well.

Seven Soldiers (Series), by Grant Morrison and Various Artists. Published by DC Comics.
I said earlier that I value ambition highly… perhaps too highly… and nothing more ambitious has been published in superhero comics in at least the last 10 years as the Seven Soldiers series. Simultaneously a treatise on the nature of superheroes, the nature of storytelling, the reader’s role in the story, and a rollicking adventure yarn, Seven Soldiers sought to explain the nature of the universes (both DC’s and our own) in a whopping 30 semi-concurrently-released comics. Of course it failed, but it certainly did go out with a bang in one of the most satisfying and frustrating single-issue comics of the year, Seven Soldiers #1. As long as you’d read the first 29 parts, of course. The kind of comic that you can get lost for days in, and enjoyably so.

The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. Publshed by Image Comics.
You know, everyone talks about how Soap Opera is a bad thing, but this horror-themed extended character study is a strong piece of writing, perfectly served by its art. While the larger commentary it’s making on society and the human condition is kind of nebulous at best (the “WE ARE THE WALKING DEAD!” speech in issue #24 was pretty damned cheesy), as a sustained narrative that explores ‘real’ people in a crisis sitution, it’s a consistantly enjoyable read. Just don’t tell the zombie fans that they’re secretly reading a soap opera, it’d ruin everything.

We Are On Our Own, by Miriam Katin. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
The last entry on this list but one of my top-five picks of the year, easily. Katin’s first graphic novel on her and her mother’s escape from the nazi occupation of Hungary during the second world war brings a fresh angle to the stories of hardship and peril that have come out of World War II, and her animated pencil renderings bring a lush, storybook quality pleasantly at odds with the harshness of the narrative (and occasionally changed-up to great effect). This is a graphic novel I’ve been waiting years for, ever since seeing the original art in Drawn & Quarterly’s offices a long time ago. The finished piece is exactly what I’d hoped for, and I’ve spent a good year and a half now recommending this work to anyone who would listen.

–

So that’s it, that’s my favourite comics from 2006. I think it’s pretty obvious where my taste differs with the esteemed Mr. Ware’s, and where the boundaries of the BEST AMERICAN series butt-up against the realities of the North American comics publishing industry (hint: manga and euro comics), but all in all I’d put my list up against anyone’s. But feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments section. :D

Tomorrow I’ll scrounge up a list of honorable mentions that include worthy works like The Fate of The Artist, Vampire Loves, and more.

- Christopher

Over at Precocious Curmudgeon, David Welsh reminds me that I’d been meaning to post a little something about Perry Moore’s new superhero-populated Young Adult novel Hero, released by Hyperion Books this fall. Hero is about a young man named Thom Creed who, nearing the end of his high-school career must deal with coming out as both a gay teenager and as a superhero.

The thing that strikes me most strongly about the work is the tone. Hero is… dark. Really dark. As a character, Thom doesn’t have a friend in the world–no refuge from a strongly (and often violently) homophobic society and family. I think all gay teenagers can feel that they’re alone, and that the whole world is against them, but there was definitely a heightened sense of those feelings at work in Hero that matched the heightened senses and abilities of the superheroes that populated the book. The novel felt to me like the notion of The X-Men’s “Protecting a world that hates and fears them!” but to the Nth degree–at least the X-Men are a team, the gay kid here is a hated outcast even among outcasts. I was a gay teenager once upon a time, and as hopeless and shitty as the world can seem at that age (and it can and does), there’s always something or somewhere to turn. Whether it’s that one friend who ‘knows’, or the internet, or hell, ‘Kids Help Phone’ there’s something out there for gay teenagers… and something that Hero‘s gay teenager is never afforded. And then aside from having no friends, no family, and nowhere to turn, even Thom’s first sexual experience ends up being profoundly damaging, ending with his being outed and scandalized in the international media. For a novel that wants to put forward a positive message about being a gay kid, it’s deeply sex-negative in punishing the lead character, his father, his friends, and superheroism in general for acting on his gay desires. Like I said… DARK.
On the one hand, I think that makes the tone really successful in a lot of ways: the story is written from the perspective of a kid in distress and the novel is genuinely menacing throughout. I can’t tell you the dread I felt at Thom coming home to his father’s house a couple of times towards the end of the book. On the other hand, even though the kid completes the hero’s journey in the end and the novel aims to be a positive statement about coming of age as a homosexual in American society, I’d kind of be afraid to give this to an at-risk gay teenager because it’s so incredibly bleak, right through the ending of the book during which the superhero establishment still can’t… or won’t… cut the kid a break specifically because he’s gay. Sure, I’m a fan of happy endings, but I’m also a fan of balance, and I found the tone really unbalanced in an off-putting way.

That realization was a tough one for me, because the book is genuinely well-written otherwise. Author Moore has a fantastic grasp of writing action scenes that are detailed and especially illustrative, a high compliment for a book that owes so much of its soul to comic books (and superhero comics in particular). My memories of the book are entirely visual, scenes and dialogue playing out in a near-comic format and stopping short of word-balloons popping up in my mind’s-eye. There are no confusing or poorly-written passages in the story, all of the author’s intent comes across perfectly clearly. Granted, there are several large plot problems and the afformentioned pervading darkness, but the book moves along so crisply that you probably won’t notice the former until you’ve set it down with a happy sigh. The latter…?

Another strength of the narrative is the characterization, primarily of Thom but also in his relationships with several key characters including a fiery red-headed teammate, a straight-talking old southern woman, and an emotionally distant and troubled father. Read that again and you’ll see how all three of those character types are archetypes that border on cliché, and it’s to Moore’s credit that they avoid that fate. He manages to imbue each character with a good measure of humanity, mostly due to cribbing directly from conversations and relationships in his own life, according to this interview at AfterElton.com. It’s a good example of how to turn personal experience into a narrative with broad appeal. Thom as a character both coming to terms with his homosexuality and his place in the world (a shitty, oppressively dark world…) was easy to relate to as someone who’s done the same; Thom as a character coming to terms with his superpowers was easy to relate to as someone who’s read as many superhero comics as the author obviously has. Superhero fans–gay or straight–will find a lot that is both familiar and enjoyable in this novel.

But as I said, this is all at odds with a general bleakness that makes the book very hard for me to recommend to its target audience. I think I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Moore, being a gay man of a previous generation or two didn’t have a confidant, the internet, or telephone help lines for queer and questioning youth. In that way the author’s experiences directly reflect his character’s and I feel that it’s to the characters’ detriment–as well as that of a teenaged reader. As someone who is a great fan of seemingly timeless gay-themed young adult novels like James Howes’ The Misfits and David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy, I personally prefered the way that the characters could be challenged without a situation being necessarily undertaken alone, and without an air of hopelessness. Even Frodo got to have Sam on the trip up Mount Doom, y’know? But reading the numerous positive reviews around the internet (and helpfully catalogued at the author’s website) it seems that mine and David Welsh’s interpretations are in the minority–that the world really is that dark for queer and questioning youth and that this is the book for them.

Hero is most likely going to be enjoyed by comics fans who enjoy work like Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, comics that draw on the iconic power and history of superheroes to tell smaller, more personal and human stories (with the requisite occasional huge battle). I haven’t read the recent superhero/novel hit Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, but Hero seems, in focusing on a voice not often heard in the straight-white-boys-club of contemporary comics, likely to appeal to the wide swath of readers who enjoyed that tale (it even has a smart, layered, and ballsy female character to get behind as well!). But for readers either in the target audience or a few years outside of it, I’d much rather slap Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy into their hands than Hero.

But then Boy Meets Boy doesn’t feature a bitch’n fight scene between Batman and Wolverine, so it really is a tough call.

- Christopher

This review is based upon an uncorrected advance proof provided by the publisher.

I am in the newspaper. The GAY newspaper. The fine folks at XTRA magazine (publishing in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and even on the internet) comissioned me to write a little overview of what’s hot in gay graphic novels, and I turned it into a sort of fun, on-its-ear SUMMER READING LIST. It saw print on my birthday (yay!), and it went online earlier this week when I wasn’t looking:

Porky #1 & Pornomicon #1 by Logan. Published by Class Comics. 32 pages; $9.95 each.

In the past year Class Comics has begun publishing gay comics from around the world and these two comics from France’s Logan (so hot he only needs one name) are downright dirty, in all the right ways. Featuring worlds seemingly comprised entirely of hot’n'hairy muscle bears with impossible proportions, anyone searching for something a little more hirsute in their smutty summer reading will have it made in the shade. A word of warning: If guys with PIG tattooed on their tummies and sex with the Octopus-faced baddie from Pirates Of The Caribbean (and all that entails) make you squeamish, Logan’s work is definitely not for you.
- Review by Me.

It includes everything on the spectrum from the suggestive to the smutty, and all points in between. It was a lot of fun to write too, and even more interesting? I WAS EDITED! Usually I just rail on and on here at the blog, but I got to work with an editor who actually made the piece stronger and tighter overall! Suck on that, Internet!

For those of you that need a reason to click through the link, here’s what I reviewed: Stripped: The Illustrated Male, Porky #1, The Pornomicon #1, Fun Home SC, Aya HC, All-Star Superman, Casanova: Luxuria, PRISM: Your Guide to LGBT Comics, Shirtlifter #2, and Young Bottoms In Love. There really wasn’t much point in picking stuff just to rag on it, so I’ll spoil the surprise and say that I generally liked all of the books in the review.

They even let me plug The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which was really rather nice of them. I’ve got another article for them almost completed which has a decidedly Eastern bent. I’m sure you can figure it out…

I hope my friend at Fab doesn’t get mad that I wrote an article for Xtra. DRAMA. :D

- Christopher
Image from this year’s PRISM Guide, which you should all go buy to support a worthwhile organisation.

 

http://comicsnthings.blogspot.com/2007/07/citizen-steel-and-power-girl-cosmetic.html

you’ll see what happened when the afformentioned Citizen Steele image from my much-beloved AFRAID OF COCK post finally hit shelves this past Wednesday. You’ll need Adboe Flash to view it.

What does this mean? DC’s really only interested in shying away from controversy when the mood suits them, I guess. Or, you know, COCK. Apparently the reason given for deflating Power Girl’s boobs (see that same link) was that they needed to fit another character on the cover, not that they were too big in and of themselves… The reason why the cock had to get shrunk down? I’m all in favour of rampant speculation. Go to town, really.

I’m not too broken-up over Citizen Steele’s dehancement, just that the thinking behind it is ripe for disection, and it’s somehow the same thinking that’s behind decisions like this:

 

 

On the left there, that’s the solicitation cover for SHOWCASE: BATGIRL, the first of DC’s cheap reprint volumes to feature a female lead character. On the right? That’s the cover it shipped with. Spot the difference.

Do we all know what kind of industry we have now? Are we all aware so I can stop getting death-threats from retards when I dare to suggest a comic book cover is mysogynist? No? I’m just a humourless jerk who hates everything you love? Okay then. Just as long as the dissonance is cognative, I guess that’s alright?

- Christopher

AFFAIR, by Shioku Kano. 200 pages, $15.95, ISBN: 9781934129050
AFFAIR has the dubious honour of provoking the following question from me, 20 pages in: “Is this translation just incredibly bad, or is it nearly-unreadable in the original with excellent translation?” A collection of various yaoi cliches, the dialogue is punctuated with a series of statements that border on non-sequitors through each story. A convoluted mess, saved from the trash by some thoroughly dirty artwork. It can’t be good if I have to force myself to finish the pornography.

BOND(Z), by Toko Kawai. 192 pages, $15.95, ISBN: 9781934129005
The first story in this single-creator anthology, about two straight best friends who end up fucking in a restroom while their girlfriends are back at the table in a restaurant, is both surprisingly hot and really well drawn. BOND(Z) is actually a collection of short stories so it isn’t JUST straight dudes in a washroom (they like to fuck lots of places), but that is the lead (and longest) story, and it’s really, really well put together. The other shorts are surprisingly strong as well, and if you like the yaoi for either the dirty bits or the romance, this one is an essential purchase. Bonus: Surprisingly strong depiction of homosexual desire.

ICHIGENME VOL 1: The First Class Is Civil Law…, by Fumi Yoshinaga. 240 pages, $15.95, ISBN: 9781934129012
I’d really been looking forward to this one, another “dirty” yaoi title from 801 Media but created by ANTIQUE BAKERY’s Fumi Yoshinaga. I really loved Bakery, which isn’t yaoi (or even dirty for that matter), and the idea of Yoshinaga doing something more ‘explicitly’ gay was really appealing. My expectations were surpassed by the deft handling of this ‘coming out’ story, set in a Japanese law school. The art and storytelling remain as strong as ever, though part of the charm of Bakery is the maniacal attention to detail in the depiction of the food, something the author is robbed of doing in this story. But I actually came away feeling like I’d learned something about Japanese law school, showing that Yoshinaga knows just how much information to include to keep the setting feeling real, while not obscuring the characters at all. These reluctant lovers, following their dreams and denying their urges… It’s a great little romance novel. There’s nothing particularly graphic though, at least nothing that you wouldn’t see in much tamer yaoi releases, I can only assume it heats up in later volumes. Fans of Bakery and FAKE will enjoy the will-they, won’t-they relationship. I’m looking forward to volume two.

–

Just for fairness’ sake, I’ll try and review some filthy hentai for Simon Jones soon too. Although “Wow, she really fucked her brother good this time around!” is probably going to bring the wrong sort of hits to my site.

- Christopher

(It’s Jett Vector! Jett appears courtesy of J. Bone and his blog, http://bonesmen.blogspot.com/.)

 

(Oh, The Family Guy. Appears courtesy of Fox, sadly, but I will give a tip of my cap to my friend Aman Cahudhary for bringing it to my attention at his blog, http://aman-about-town.blogspot.com/. )

- Christopher

(How To Be A Fabulous Fag Hag, by Ellen Forney. From PRISM COMICS: YOUR GUIDE TO LGBT COMICS 2007, and I LOVE LED ZEPPLIN, published by Prism Comics and Fantagraphics Books respectively. Both are quite worth your time and money. Click on the image to see the full strip!)

Edit: It looks like Ellen Forney has a lovely full-colour version of this strip up at her site, http://ellenforney.com/jpegs/faghag.jpg.

- Chris (A little late today)

(Cartoon by Maurice Vellekoop, from the book Vellevision, published by Drawn & Quarterly.)

- Chris

(Cartoon by Tom Bouden, excerpted from Stripped: The Illustrated Male, published by Bruno Gmünder.)

I almost typed “Happy Pride Week!” up top there, but I figured that too many people would confuse it for the nearly-naked-dudes-wrasslin’ league. Actually, your average Pride fight looks and sounds an awful lot like Mr. Bouden’s comic strip up there, doesn’t it? But I digress. Hopefully wherever you are you’re feeling proud and safe and happy this week, and every day of the year. Comic strips continue all week.

- Chris

It’s J. Bone’s Jett Vector, a sexy intergalactic policeman in a leather pouch and spacefaring go-go boots. Now, this was before the Citizen Steele cocktastrophe, let alone slutty statues and tentacle porn, and hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but here’s the story of my own personal fear of cock.

J. Bone is an amazingly talented gay comics artist who’s worked on series including Jingle Belle, DC The New Frontier, and The Spirit. He contributed an awesome one page strip to our first Comics Festival in 2005 (and if you click here you can read it!), and so when 2007 rolled around, I knew I wanted him in the book and he was invited (albeit through his buddy and co-artist on The Spirit Darwyn Cooke) to participate. He turned around a two-page strip in no-time flat, and it was… is… great. You can actually check it out at J.’s blog, Bonesmen. He submitted it to me with a bit of a caveat; having shown the strip to his friends they wondered if it was maybe a little racy for an all-ages book, and what did I think? So I looked at it, and liked it, and then sat and thought about it. Which was a mistake.

Some background: Free Comic Book Day? WROUGHT WITH CONTROVERSY. I’ve no idea why the act of giving comic books away for free has caused so much fucking turmoil, but it totally has, and as the editor of a book being distributed on FCBD, I was very much aware of that…

2004: A child is distributed a mature-readers comic at a Georgia comic book store. It features non-sexual nudity (an excerpt from the recently-released “The Salon” by Nick Bertozzi) and the child’s parent, who apparently has a history of this sort of behaviour, freaks out and calls the cops/the D.A./anyone who’ll listen. This is now known as “The Gordon Lee Case” and the CBLDF is fighting it in court right now. You can help out at http://cbldf.org.

2005: We release our first Comics Festival, and two weeks later get an angry phone call charging me, Peter, the store, and TCAF with being Anti-Semites. Seriously. The reasoning is that we printed Leslie Stein’s comic strip in Comics Festival, wherin the author (Jewish) discusses her physical appearance (see strip here). We thought we’d get flak for Darwyn Cooke having Superman knock-off a local television personality in that issue, not for an autobio comic. Nevertheless, we hold our ground defending Lauren’s right to comment on her apperance and heritage, and nothing major comes of it, but being shouted at and called an anti-semite on the phone? Stays with you.

2005: In a book marked all-ages, a charming “Paul” short story by Michel Rabagliati features a young boy’s first encounter with a naked-lady calendar in a restroom. He is depicted peeing and being embarrassed by the calendar. You really don’t see anything, but retailers screamed bloody murder at the ‘all ages’ tag on something that wasn’t all-ages in… well, Georgia I guess.

2006: There was some cocktastrophe last year too, I can’t remember what it was. I know that the “all-ages” book BLUFF featured an advertisement with bare-breasts in it (that made retailers v. unhappy)… But yeah. Sorry. Anyway.

So, going into publishing the book for 2007? I was a little cockshy about the strip. We’d solicited the book as 13+, made the contents as widely-known as possible, and generally tried to be honest about everything. But I honestly wasn’t sure if the strip skirted into mature-readers territory by virtue of the costume and context of the story… or not. So, and I’m not proud of this, I asked J. if he wanted to cover-up Jett a little more. Maybe a pair of bicycle shorts, or a less-prominent bulge? “If not, I understand, and we’ll run the strip as is and hope for the best,” said I. But I did ask him to change his work. J. said that he’d rather not run the strip if it meant altering it, and I started to feel shittier and shittier about the whole thing… until the book’s designer Chip Zdarsky had a brilliant idea.

“Let Diamond handle it.”

2007 is the first year that Diamond made participating Free Comic Book Day publishers submit their books, in PDF form, ahead of time. I’m honestly not sure why… they don’t seem to have done much with them. But Chip had a good idea. Submit the strip, and if Diamond didn’t say anything about it being ‘inappopriate’ in an ‘all ages’ book (really “Teen” but…) then we’re good to go! J. thought this was a good idea too, and I felt much better knowing that I wasn’t forced to censor or silence a gay creator out of fear of overreaction from the fan and retail community. Did I mention all of this made me sick to my stomach? It did. Anyway. We submitted the book. Heard nothing back. Sent it to press. Diamond got copies. Retailers got copies. No one said anything… until!

CONTROVERSY OVER PHALLUSES AND VAGINAS IN FREE COMIC BOOK DAY BOOKS!

Luckily though, it wasn’t our book. :)

Apparently, Image Comics’ Wolfman by Robert Kirkman featured a back-up story with another Kirkman character named “Brit” and the end of the story features a panel with a bunch of dildoes in it. And then? If you flip the back cover of the book upside-down, and squint, and think dirty thoughts, a picture of a vagina might appear. Seriously. This happened and it sent people into a rage. It was fucking stupid, but then so is the idea that seeing an illustration of a flacid penis might seriously damage a little boy forever, and that one’s in court. So yeah, there was tons and tons of controversy this year… Rich Johnston covered a bunch of it in his Lying in the Gutters column, go check it out.

But not our book. I mean, sure, Diamond sent out a warning to retailers that stated that Comics Festival! 2007 (among 20 other titles or so) had material some retailers might not want to distribute to kids, but they didn’t say why. Then, when Kevin Melrose at Blog @ Newsarama linked to the Jett Vector story at J. Bone’s blog, the first comment on the piece was from a “Christian Illustrator” who described the two page story as being inspired by “gay porn”. But he’s a prick, so who cares?

In the end, we had one of the highest-selling “Silver” level free comic book day books, made tens of thousands of comic fans new and old happy, and everything went off without a hitch. It’s now just-about a month after the event, and no one said shit, apparently too distracted by the cocks, tits, and tentacles present elsewhere on the internet. Which means that my own fear of cock was ultimately unfounded.

If you go check the original “Afraid of Cock” post, you can see Darwyn Cooke in the comments section giving me shit about railing on Don MacPherson when I had come very close to censoring an artist for similar reasons. Why was I giving Don shit? Well, mostly for the yaoi comment actually, and for not knowing what an erect penis in spandex looks like… but I digress. I was giving all the “men” who were “creeped out” by the original image shit because I’d been there, if to a lesser degree. I had 20 other artists in Comics Festival, 1000 retailers who ordered the book, and 25,000 fans who might take objection, and under that pressure I strove for a compromise rather than standing 100% behind an artist who I had personally invited to participate. Put simply: I totally fucked up, and looking back, I see that. All I can say is I’m a convert… for cock. If people are gonna see it even when it isn’t there, then by fuck, lets put it out there in future.

I’ve already apologised to J. in private and we’re cool, more or less, but I did want to take the opportunity here to apologise again to J. for not standing up for a strip I enjoyed, by a fabulously talented artist. If anything, I’ve posted this here not only to air out the skeletons in my own closet, but also to try and draw some attention to J.’s work, to Jett Vector in particular, and maybe let prospective publishers know that there really isn’t anything wrong with this material. It’s sexy, yeah, but it ain’t slutty (see: Marvel Comics, DC Comics). It can be tough dealing with a property that skirts the line, particularly the scary male sexuality line, but it can be done and I’d hope that anyone reading there would trust J. Bone to be the guy to know the difference. I didn’t at first, but believe me, I’ve seen the light. Hopefully some smart editor out there will too, and we’ll all get more Jett Vector in future.
- Christopher

]]> http://comics212.net/2007/05/29/my-thoughts-on-the-mary-jane-statue/feed/ 0 http://comics212.net/2007/05/09/canadian-steve-macisaac-gets-a-xeric-grant/ http://comics212.net/2007/05/09/canadian-steve-macisaac-gets-a-xeric-grant/#comments Wed, 09 May 2007 21:25:04 +0000 Chris http://comics212.net/2007/05/09/canadian-steve-macisaac-gets-a-xeric-grant/ Congratulations to Canadian Steve MacIsaac and his comic Shirtlifter, they managed to snag a Xeric Grant! Steve is, I believe, unofficially debuting the second issue at TCAF this summer, and I rather liked the first issue. You can check out my review of the first issue here. To find out more about Canada’s Steve MacIsaac (and read a bunch of his comics for free), check out his website at http://www.stevemacisaac.com/.

The rest of the Xeric Nominees for this year have been covered quite nicely by Heidi MacDonald at The Publishers Weekly Blog. Congrats to all of them too, but someone’s gotta give props to the Queer Canadian artists. :)

- Christopher

ITEM: My friends at UDON have been pretty busy lately, with everything except new Street Fighter II comic books (by the way, the Image to the right is by Long Vo of Udon, and features two fairly recognizable characters duking it out for Wizard magazine, copyright their respective whatsits).

Now, you may be asking yourself “Why is it that there aren’t any new Street Fighter Comics on the stands?” (Actually, chances are you probably weren’t, as I don’t think my readership crosses over with Udon’s so much, but indulge me for a second). Well, it was announced a week-or-two back that Udon has been tapped to do all of the art for the new 20th Anniversary edition of the Street Fighter II video game. Basically, they’re taking the fan-favourite (and best, honestly) version of SF2, called Super Street Fighter II Turbo and creating a “remix” called “HD Remaster“.

What’s different exactly? Well for starters, it’s going to be downloadable onto your X-Box 360 (only, at this point), and today’s home consoles make the arcade machines of our youth all look like PONG, they’re so much more advanced. The big difference is the level of detail in the art. Whereas the Street Fighter characters of our youth were a hundred pixels high or so, these new ones will be massive, and be better-able to capture expressions, details, every little fold of cloth… well, see for yourself:

So, it’s essentially going to be like the current Udon Comics series, but playable. The primary art and style is actually by Alvin Lee of Udon, who, according to his Facebook profile is hard at work on the series, alongside the rest of the Udon team. It’s pretty rare that a licensor of Japanese material is then asked to go and work on the property for the owners, particularly in Japan. I get the sense that licensed books are sort of “Free Money” and it’s really not best to think about them too hard (which would explain some of the many, many atrocious licensed books). But yeah, doing an adaptation so good that it ends up being the basis for an anniversary edition worldwide? AND it’s a video game license that’s up there with Mario, Pac-Man, and Sonic? Kudos, gents. (Screenshot from Gamekult.com, Click for larger.)

ITEM: ZOMBIES! In honour of The Walking Dead Volume 6 finally shambling it’s way on to store shelves this week (yeah, no kidding there aren’t any fast zombies in TWD), may I present to you two chances for you to take on your own metaphor for consumerism/racism/society as a whole? These flash-based zombie killin’ games will get you all pumped up until you die, and realise that when the Zombiepocalypse comes, it’s gonna be about our brains, one way or another…

1. BOXHEAD: ROOMS and MORE ROOMS: Okay, so you’re in a room, and you have to defeat neverending legions of the undead using a myriad of weapons. You only last until you run out of ammo. The End. Despite this, it’s incredibly addictive and mildly depressing. Did I mention that Satan is in the game too? Lots of Satans? Yeah. There’s also the BOXHEAD: HALOWEEN SPECIAL, in which you as lone-gun-toting-hero must lead groups of ‘civilians’ to safety. But we all know that in the world of the undead, there’s no such thing as safety. http://www.kongregate.com/games/SeanCooper/boxhead-more-rooms
2. THE LAST STAND: Okay, so you’re behind a barrier, and you need to defeat neverending legions of the undead using a myriad of weapons. Sound familiar? Actually, it’s fairly different from BOXHEAD (more detailed/realistic for one), with a focus on dividing up your daylight hours between searching for survivors, weaponry, and rebuilding the only thing between you and the teeming legions of zombie hordes. Lots of fun zombie-movie in-jokes amongst the wide array of shambling (and occasionally running) corpses that you must destroy. I really like the hunting rifle, myself. http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/the-last-stand/

ITEM: Somehow I missed this, but a week ago it looks like GayGamer.net, a homocentric (heh) video game news/commentary site started up their own comics division. Cleverly entitled http://gaygamer.net/comics/, it’s going to cover the queer goings-on in the comics world. Somehow it missed my Cockphobia post. Perhaps it was beneath their notice. At any rate, posting at the blog has been a little spotty since it launched, but they just added a new blogger and it’s always good to have more queer-positive content out there.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!

- Christopher

It all started with Don MacPherson, talking about the images below:

“One has to give DC Comics credit, though, for sexualizing characters of both genders in its newest solicitations. Just check out the Alex Ross-painted cover image for Justice Society of America #7, slated for release in July. It depicts the newest member of the title team, Citizen Steel, a young man carrying on his family’s heroic tradition after he was altered by liquid metal excreted by a Nazi super-villain.

“That strange steel elixir has transformed him into an invulnerable super-hero, a man of steel. And if one looks closely, it’s not just his fists and flesh that are hard as a rock. Perhaps his red, white and blue costume has led him to believe he’s a postal carrier, because he’s looking down at a package… one he seems more than ready to deliver.

“Groovy… it’s a special delivery… for the ladies. Or perhaps this is DC’s subtle attempt to test of the waters in the yaoi fanbase.”
- Don Macpherson

Oh Don, you’re right, because whyever would a dude wanna look at another dude’s package? I mean, that’s solely the domain of ladies and yaoi fans, who are also mostly ladies.

So what starts off as a pretty ignorant comment in a well-meaning article by Don about the sexification of Catwoman et al. snowballs into Brian Cronin making a jack-ass of himself over at the CBR blogs. Take it away, Brian:

“So, just when I was about to expand DC Comic cover snark this month to include a discussion of two horrible horrible horrible horrible statues that DC solicited this week, Don MacPherson had to alert me to a piece he wrote on those two statues at his neat site… Don also made a catch that, admittedly, I do not think I would have noticed, regarding the JSA cover solicited for July…

“Notice anything creepily unusual? Look closer (as Don so ably does for us).

“How freaking creepy is THAT? My pal Jake said to me, “I think there are two equally creepy options – 1. Ross intentionally, on his own accord, drew a big bulge in the guy’s pants or 2. The model Ross had for Citizen Steel had a big bulge, and Ross decided to paint it in.”

“Pretty darn creepy.”
- Brian Cronin

Where do I start with that? First and foremost, there’s a reason that “Comics Should Be Good” isn’t linked from my site, and the above is a good indicator of why. Second, that’s what “Queer Fear” is, in case you were wondering. Brian and his ‘buddy’ Jake are ‘creeped out’ by a bulge in another guy’s pants (artistic or otherwise). The idea that an artist chose to give a character an impressively-rendered package is actually frightening to these fellas, and the idea that his model might’ve had a good-sized package in real life? And Alex Ross decided NOT to neuter him for some insane reason? Equally as creepy.

The best, best part, is the comments section at Cronin’s post. Wherin a bunch of fanboys come to Brian Cronin’s defense over finding cock terrifying. My favourite bit is where “Jake” says:

“What weirded me out about it wasn’t that a bulge existed, but what must have been Ross’s thought process. It was his clear devotion to accurately reproducing what an erect penis would look like in a superhero costume. Either he planned on giving Citizen Steel a boner, or whoever his model that he painted from had one, and he made damn sure he captured a good likeness.”

Jake, buddy, on behalf of all of us who have made hobby out of studying the bulges in guys’ pants, let me state—for the record—that that is not what a good-sized cock looks like when it is erect, in form-fitting material. It isn’t even an artistic approximation therof. That’s just a good-sized soft cock looks like. I’m… I’m very sorry that you can’t tell the difference between the two. I’m afraid I’m going to have to recommend some remedial work for you in this subject. I recommend starting with the underwear section of InternationalMale.com for an hour a day until you can tell the difference.

While Brian Cronin appears to have decided his post doesn’t need defending (I’d submit that it’s, instead, indefensible) Don Macpherson is not one to take criticism lightly, and his defence of his original column continues in the comments section at Comics Should Be Good, and even spills over into the comments section at the Newsarama Blog. In response to a critic, Don offers up “You make it sound as though Ross has no choice but to include a bulge just because there’s one apparent on the model.” Did I mention that said critic is irate homosexual Dorian Wright from PomoBarney? No? It is:

“So, Don, is it the very idea of a bulge that you’re objecting to, then? Because, yes, if Ross is accurately attempting to portray the model, and say what you will about his art, he does appear to be meticulous in attempting to make it as realistic as possible, than he probably should show a bit of package if the model is. But most importantly, SO WHAT? It’s not as if Ross has lovingly detailed the outline of the shaft through the clothing. All he’s done is paint the shadows and highlights in such a way as to suggest that his model wasn’t a Ken doll. Honestly, from some of these reactions, you’d think comic fans were uncomfortable with the suggestion that men have genitals.”
- Dorian Wright

It’s always fun to see Dorian be bitchy, and here he’s fully justified. He’s playing politic here too, and not just out and out claiming that lots and lots of comics fans are entirely uncomfortable with the suggestion that men have genitals. They are. To be fair, it’s not just comics fans, lots of dudes are completely and utterly uncomfortable with their sexuality, but Comic Fans are pretty special in that regard, and comics characters have long been so artisticly dickless as to be concave where their genitals should be it’s not surprising that they’re a little on edge. As a commenter at Newsarama points out, the artistic focus of the piece is clearly the face and chest of the character, not the cock, but certain posters just seem mesmerised by Citizen Steele’s package (that’s his real name, by the way). Why is that, do we think? I’m sure the folks who have a problem with it—the commenters that find it ‘creepy’ or scary—would argue that you simply can’t avoid looking at it, it’s so prominent! I’d like to offer another theory.

Go check out this out. It’s a report on a study about “eyetracking” or seeing how people interact with the internet. It uses a set of goggles to measure where the eye is fixating on a page, and then turns that into visual data. It ranges from bright red, where the eye lingers for a longer period of time, to blue, where the eye barely scans. But yeah, let’s skip to the relevant part. Here’s me quoting a big chunk from the site.

–>Quoted from http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070312ruel/

When photos do contain people related to the task at hand, or the content users are exploring, they do get fixations. However, gender makes a distinct difference on what parts of the photo are stared at the longest. Take a look at the hotspot below.

Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed.

This image of George Brett was part of a larger page with his biographical information. All users tested looked the image, but there was a distinct difference in focus between men and women.

Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

<--End Quote. (Bolded emphasis above is mine)

It’s not Alex Ross’ fault, gentlemen. You just can’t help staring at the cock. Even when you’re afraid of it.

- Christopher
Note: I’m sorry that this had to be my first post of substance in days.
Edited to add: Pictures of dudes with big packages, for ‘comparisson’.

- Hollywood.com has David Duchovney confirming a new X-Files movie is in the works. According to Duchovney, “This week, they’re starting some kind of road towards doing it (the film). Gillian and I both want to be in it now. We’re happy to do it.” How about that eh? Time heals all wounds, as does a pretty thoroughly unspectacular post-X-Files career… On a related note, my employer has a ton of original X-Files art for sale by X-Files comics adaptation artist Sean Scoffield. There’s also art from the Queer as Folk TV Show, the movie eXistenZ, and the recent Underworld mini-series from Marvel Comics. Just Saying.

 

- Video Game website “Gameasutra” has an article up on being out and LGBT in the video gaming industry. The answers are very, very similar to what I hear from gays in the comics industry, so in lieu of any such articles on comics, I figured it was worth pointing out to the industry-watchers who watch this blog. Here’s a good quote from the opening:

Jeb Havens, probably one of the most visible and vocal LGBT developers, says, “It’s not like there’s only a handful” of gay people making games, “but there’s no presence or community. There’s no ‘gay’ face to it.”

I’d love to write a similar article about LGBT creators and industry folk in comics, particularly within the larger realm of blogging, but with no time to spare it’s not gonna happen. C’est la vie, but go read this one: it’s really well done. Thanks to GayGamer.net for the link.

 

- The best part about my job is selling good comics to people. There’s a special kind of magic to selling someone the first volume of The Invisibles, or giving them Scott Pilgrim for the first time. It honestly makes all of the other stuff, like selling Civil War, totally worthwhile. I was reminded of this by Matt Forsythe back in the comments to my Taiyo Matsumoto post, as it looks like just went out and dropped a bunch of coin on Matsumoto books. Nice! This is why I was so pleased to see this nostaligic remembrance of comics retail from Richard Bruton at the blog Fictions, about his time at Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham:

“The rarest of prizes though, the really fun one was when a customer would come in and tell you that they’d read everything they wanted and could you suggest anything to read. That always made for a fun 10 minutes or so of chat and selling.

“I always sold the books to people with the promise that if they didn’t like them all they had to do was bring it back in and we’d refund the money, no questions asked. To me it seemed the only fair thing to do. After all, this wonderful customer is putting down good money for a book just because I’m telling them it’s wonderful. I’ve spent a little time asking all the pertinent questions to gauge exactly what sort of thing they’re after, but I could always misjudge their comic character and sell them something they hate.

“I’m very proud of the fact that in all my years of doing this, not a single copy has ever been returned. Not one.” – Richard Bruton, Fictions Blog

I don’t have that kind of track record, sadly, but I occasionally let what I think people should be reading get in the way of what they might enjoy reading. I’m doing my best :) Tip of the hat to the Forbidden Planet Blog for the link.

 

I think that’s all for now. The contest details for the Garage Band contest are finished. They’re awesome. Posted later today.

- Christopher

I went on about this a few years back, but essentially GLAAD is the “Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defimation” and every year they hand out awards for positive portrayal of queers in the media. Films, TV Series, News Programmes, whatever. Comic Books too, actually, and it’s the comic book section that really pisses me off. Why? GLAAD’s mandate pushes ‘mainstream’ or ‘visible’ material over quality material. So if something is really great and really queer, but say published by Oni Press, wheras something is mediocre on every level (including queer representation) but is published by DC Comics? DC gets the award. For Example:

Past Winners:
2006: Young Avengers, Marvel Comics
2005: Luba, Fantagraphics
2004: Catwoman, DC Comics
2003: Green Lantern, DC Comics
2002: Green Lantern, DC Comics
2001: Supergirl, DC Comics
2000: Supergirl, DC Comics

Yeah, congrats to Gilbert Hernandez and Luba, but that’s pretty odd and uninspiring company Gilbert finds himself in.

This year’s nominees for Best Comics are:

OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK
52 by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid (DC Comics)
American Virgin by Steven T. Seagle (Vertigo/DC Comics)
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin)
Manhunter by Marc Andreyko (DC Comics)
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn (Vertigo/DC Comics)

Which… With two queer authors and an actual book about queer issues, fills me with a hope that will almost certainly be dashed against the rocks when Y: The Last Man wins, but something like 52 even being nominated makes me more than a little queesy. I even like Greg Rucka and the Montoya character, but that series is neither of their finest hours.

But to get to the point of this post? It looks like the gay media is sick of supporting these awards, when the gay media are completely unlikely to get anything out of them. From the Queerty blog:

“Gay cable network here! isn’t having GLAAD‘s straight-washing of their Media Awards. Despite describing itself as dedicated to “promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of [LGBT] people and events in the media”, the watchdog group refuses to include gay programming in their nominations. To protest this queer contradiction, here! has yanked their support of the annual event.”

There are a lot of apologists for GLAAD’s mission statement and the awards themselves, but honestly? I’m glad a gay organisation finally stood up and against the awards as they stand. They’re effectively celebrating portrayals of gay people as either stereotypes or cartoons, and their celebrity worship at the expense of shining a spotlight onto smaller, more deserving works ranks pretty high on my own social injustice meter. In this specific instance, shutting out queer programming by queers in favour of truly dreadful crap like, oh, Brothers & Sisters is just… blaaaaaaaaaah.

I think a connected, political, entertainment-oriented organisation for Queers is important, and even telling Kevin Smith that he’s being a jack-ass at the risk of looking out-of-touch doesn’t bother me. But (to mangle a metaphor) they’ve got a huge voice and a big pulpit, and instead of Proselytizing to the masses they’re preaching to the choir.

- Christopher
P.S.: No manga? What the hell?
P.P.S.: Thanks to Dorian for the tip.