Review: The Cavalcade of Boys #5, and other comics

Artist(s): Tim Fish.

From issue #5

Tim Fish is still working like a madman… In the last weeks, he’s published three new comics: a prequel to his The Cavalcade of Boys series, issue 5 of that series and finally an “all-ages” comic.

Issue 5 of CoB is Holidays-themed. Beginning with most of the cast at a costumed party for Halloween, it ends with, well, most of the cast at New Year’s Eve parties. No new character is introduced in this issue, but we follow the entwined lives of the more than 15 characters (a full color cast page is included at the end of the comic. Good idea). With more than 250 pages under his belt, Tim Fish continues to offer us an excellent blend of humor and realistic situations, all the while taking advantage of the variations on story structures and page layouts he often plays with, to the pleasure of the reader.

Tighe & Stan

The Cavalcade of Boys #1/2, a 16-page comic with a nicely designed cover, is a bridge between Meet me in Saint Louie, where we first met Tighe, a character who came out there, and Cavalcade of Boys #1, where Tighe is a bit older, already somewhat bitter about his failed relationships, and friends with Stan, a twink-chaser. In this issue, we see Tighe, who tends to go for built guys, first meet Stan and then Murphy, whom we know as the “perfect ex” in the following issues of CoB. With his usual expressive art and a nice use of duotone, Tim Fish gives us another piece of the puzzle that he’s slowly building with his very human, very fallible cast.


Never short on ideas, Tim Fish is also launching a new series, very different in tone from The Cavalcade of Boys. Wowie Zowie! is an all-ages comic, featuring in the first issue the improbably adventures of The Cupcakes, an all-gay, all-boy band. This is a kind of spin-off from strips published online in Young Bottoms in Love, the gay anthology created by Tim Fish for the PopImage site. Three stories were published there, introducing the characters in stories which more or less revolved around the love life of the band leader. And it was not all-ages at all.
But this comic is more of a comedy, with the boys finding themselves involved in the absurdly funny plots of James Bond-like (in a slightly camper way…) villains. It’s a refreshing, if light, reading.

These three comics are self-published by Tim Fish.

UP. 06/2010: these comics are out-of-print, but a collection of Cavalcade of Boys is available, for example at Amazon.

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