Review: Le Croisic & Dirty Drawings

Artist(s): Justin Hall.
From the weddding story

From the wedding story

From time to time, Justin Hall publishes mini-comics which I usually enjoy very much. These two are no exception.

In Le Croisic and other stories, Hall writes and draws three autobiographical stories which couldn’t be more different. It begins with A San Francisco Wedding, where Hall, a licensed marriage officiant, dressed as Green Lantern to marry a gay couple1. It sounds nutty, but it was during the short time when gay marriage was legal in California, and that certainly brings seriousness to the proceedings. The second story is Le Croisic: Our Night in a French Phone Booth, a very funny story where Hall, then in his late teens, spent some time with friends traveling in France. Their tendency to not pay attention to little things like train instructions leads to interesting ways to spend the night not in a bed. The third and shortest story is Straight to Hell, which depicts Hall’s first relationship when he was in high school and which, like a lot of such relationships, wasn’t smooth at all. His boyfriend, if he can be called that, was in denial, while young Hall, head over heels for the boy, let himself be mistreated. In only three pages, Hall manages to give us a full idea of the hardships of that relationship, with a strong ending that’s as unromantic as possible.

From Dirty Drawings

The second mini-comic is Dirty Drawings, a collection of, well, dirty drawings. Some of these from his work for Hard to Swallow, some new, some for various clients. It was interesting to see in black and white the color covers for the Hard to Swallow series, and understand how detailed and fully-realized these were even before color. The other drawings are either humorous or downright raunchy, or both. A fun journey through Hall’s mind gutter, full of hunky, bearish guys and sexual fantasies. And even a few women.

Those two mini-comics can be found at the author’s website.


Notes:
  1. That couple is Tony Breed and his husband, with Breed fictionalizing the event in his Finn and Charlie are hitched webcomic.

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