Review: Manly

There are storytelling tricks that get old very quickly. Are silent porn comics among them? That’s a question I’m sure all of you were wondering about…and I’ve got the answer. Or rather, Dale Lazarov does. The writer of the excellent Sticky is back with more tales of wordless sex among men, and confirms that, no, silent porn comics aren’t going to get old any time soon. There are just too many possibilities, and three of them are proposed in Manly¹, all drawn by artist Amy Colburn, who brings a wonderful playfulness and lightness to the stories included therein.

First, in Busted, a silver-haired cop pursuing a criminal gets his guy in more ways than one when a hunky, hairy passer-by intentionally trips up the fugitive. The two men hang around each other a while before having wild, wet sex.
Then, in Clinch, a young Latino boxer and an older Italian one find they have more in common than their love of the noble art. And it’s not the fact that the younger guy used to admire his elder’s technique when he was a teenager…
And last, in Hot Librarian, two older gay guys play the dance of seduction over a few nights in a bar, but nothing happens…until they meet again in an unexpected place.

In fact, there’s a lot more going in these comics than good, hot sex. The characters are given distinctive personalities, and that’s a proof of the artist’s talent for involving the reader in the character’s lives. Colburn is especially good at facial expressions, which of course is rather important in a silent comic. Her style, which is halfway between realistic and cartoony, enables her to blend the comical (I love the way she draws surprise, it’s very endearing) and the sensual–a lot of gay artists could wish to capture so well and so subtly what makes a man attractive. Another aspect where the artist shines is in the post-coital scenes, which are very tender. I found the awkwardness portrayed in the last sequence of the first story, with the two men looking a bit shyly at each other, not sure where they stand, to be as realistic as can be. And cute.
Something else is obvious throughout the whole book: the willingness to depict reciprocity in sex. I’ve always found a bit weird to show a character in only one “role”, so I enjoyed that.

For me, the feeling that dominated after I’d finished each story was that I’d have really liked to know what happened to the characters afterwards. Would they become fuck buddies, lovers, something else? Leaving a reader wanting for more is an excellent trick for an artist, and Lazarov and Colburn have certainly mastered that technique.