I don’t know what’s happening, but there’s a real dearth of gay-themed comics right now. Or maybe I’m missing something.
The good thing about that is that it has made me have a look at Yaoi Press, a publisher of non-Japanese yaoi I’d neglected the last months, who’d published a title I’d mostly enjoyed, Pinned!. A recent interview with publisher (and writer of Pinned!) Yamila Abraham states that, contrary to their other titles, Pinned! was designed to appeal to gay men as well as straight women (who are their target audience). But it seems that Pinned! sold poorly, the masculine appearance of the characters puttingoff the female audience. So, I guess that straight women and gay men really don’t have the same tastes.
Stallion certainly doesn’t make the same “mistake”. Written and drawn by the Spanish two-women Studio Kôsen, this Western tale of love and vengeance features young or slightly androgynous guys, and there’s nary a body hair in sight.
Josey is a young man chasing Bill Tempest, a man who’d left him for dead on a previous encounter. Stallion is a young Indian who’s also suffered abuse at the hands of Tempest, and wants to kill him. The two cross paths, and their life will never be the same. Okay, the story is kind of predictable, but it’s well-paced, the characters are engaging, and after all, it’s a romance comic, so melodrama is in order.
For me, the selling point is the art, which is beautiful. Very detailed, obviously researched, it also gives the characters a strong sensuality, and not only in the sex scenes (which are hot, but not explicit).
That story only fills the first half of the 192-page volume. Apart from a short making-of for Stallion, we find a short story by the same team, drawn in an earlier style, closer to what I’ve seen in Japanese yaoi. It shows a young man chasing a vampire who’s killed his dad, forcing him to take a hard decision. Not bad at all.
The last story in this volume is Cancellation of Darkness, written by Laila Reimoz and drawn by Amelia Woo. A cursed college boy around whom friendly people get easily hurt finds an unexpected ally in the person of a young faculty member, and tells him about his weird, childhood Teddy Bear who wants him all for itself. Demon and human will fight for the love (and the body!) of the young guy, with devastating results. Entertaining, but not light.
The rest of the book is taken with ads for other Yaoi Press books and a preview of one of them. You can find this book at the Yaoi Press online (here’s a preview) or at Amazon.
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