Review: Associated Student Bodies

What do you get when you cross furry animals comics with gay characters? A really good series about the life of a group of university students, most of them gay.
The main character, Daniel, is a freshman who’s not out yet when the series begins, as he arrives at the university. But with the other guys (well, when I say “guys”, maybe I should say “lions”, “wolves”…) whose dorm he’s going to share, his coming out is only a question of time.

The whole cast, from issue #1

Associated Student Bodies¹ is an interesting combination of fantasy - the furry animals, the whole-gay dorm - and realism - most of the situations the characters find themselves in. In the course of the series, which lasts for a whole university year, we follow the development of Daniel, who goes from a teenager to a young man, makes choices about his life, and finds friends and lovers among the other young men.

Daniel and his lover, from issue #7

The art also evolves greatly over the 8 issues of the series. McKinley was a college student when he began drawing ASB, and he improved on a lot of aspects, including face expression and body language.

This is a series that’d deserve to be collected in a good-looking paperback and sold everywhere. For now, you’ll have to content yourselves with the comics… and the erotic portfolios drawn by McKinley and other artists, which you can also find at the Rabbit Valley site.

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UP. June 2004: a hardcover collection has been published, you can find it at Rabbit Valley or Amazon.