Review: Frater Mine #5

Artist(s): Juan Romera, Sean McGrath.

A nice head shot of Matt

Sean McGrath and Juan Romera are back for the fifth issue of Frater Mine, a fantasy series where magic is real but presented in a down-to-earth manner, which includes a gay character among the main protagonists. Matt, the high school teacher, has used his magical powers to scare off a student who was attacking a colleague, and now has to face the consequences of his outburst: the institution doesn’t take kindly to teachers roughing up students, even when they have some reason to.
As in the previous issue, Matt being gay is never the point of him, but is mentioned casually and believably. That being said, the writer told me Matt would get a love interest in upcoming issues, so we’ll get to see Matt “being” gay. What is shown in this issue is that he’s not a very nice human being: he uses his powers to make life easier for himself, often in little ways (which, of course, is far more realistic than donning a skin-tight costume to battle bad guys), and spends time completely ignoring the problems of his family or friends.

Matt being a bastard

What could become a study in bastardness (if that was a word) is in fact a moving portrait of a man lost in his contradictions and stuck in a life he doesn’t particularly enjoy, thanks to McGrath’s never melodramatic writing. Juan Romera is in fine form, sculpting his characters’ faces and building a lot of atmosphere through a solid use of white and black space, with a style which now reminds me of good, evocative artists like Duncan Fegredo, Eduardo Risso or Dean Ormston.
This issue seems to be a prologue to the new story arc, with the mysterious disappearance of children around Matt and his friends. I’m eagerly waiting to see what McGrath and Romera have in store for their characters, but I have a feeling it won’t be pretty.
This comic, as the previous ones, can be bought from IndyPlanet.

Writer Sean McGrath has also teamed with artist Fernando Melek for a short comic titled Generic Goddess #1, where a woman with a mystical alter ego gets a call from an old friend, a call which will likely lead to trouble. McGrath proves (if need be) that he’s really gay, by writing a story whose protagonist, while unnamed, seems to be somewhere between Wonder Woman and Promethea, or maybe even closer to a certain Egyptian goddess who was a popular fiction star some time ago… Melek has a wonderful, realistic style that’s well suited to this quiet prologue. While there’s nothing gay in this story, I don’t see a straight guy writing it this way. But maybe I’m completely wrong.
You can also find this comic at IndyPlanet, with sample pages.

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