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June 19, 2010: I've launched a new version of this website as a Wordpress blog. This version won't be updated anymore.
If you don't see the images of a review, it means that I've transferred it to the new site.
   
 

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On this page:

Devlin Waugh: Swimming in Blood
True Travel Tales #4: 'Seven Balloons'
Justin Hall's Only In San Francisco
Sticky #2

 

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Entries for April 2005:
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Saturday, April 30, 2005
Blog review
If you don't see the images of a review, it means that I've transferred it to the new site.

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Devlin Waugh: Swimming in Blood

Category: fantasy, gay-friendly.
Author(s): John Smith, Sean Phillips, Siku, Michael Gaydos.


Here's a weird book, collecting stories published in the 90's by a companion magazine to 2000AD, the British anthology home to Judge Dredd. Created by John Smith and Sean Phillips, who also created the series New Statesmen (also gay-friendly), this is the story of the eponymous character Devlin Waugh, a paranormal investigator for the Vatican -but a future Vatican, set in the Dredd world.
As often with 2000AD series, it's quite violent, in a way almost no American superhero comic is. It's not optimistic and moral, and the title character is in no way a "hero". But he's extremely interesting. As Smith described him, he's "Noel Coward as played by Arnold Schwarzenegger". Or if you prefer, he's a steroid freak, an occultist with a big gun, and he's a flaming queen, obsessed with decadent beauty and boys. The wonderful thing is the way the rather grisly story (the first one is that of a submarine jail invaded by vampires, and it goes rather badly for Waugh) is blended with Waugh's detachement, ennui and very camp humor (or, what if La Cage Aux Folles had been mixed with The Terminator?). Don't expect any gay sex (or any other kind of sex, for that matter), but Wildian banter aplenty.
Art is by three artists, with Sean Phillips doing most of it. It's painted, as with a lot of 2000AD series, and looks extremely different from most American comics, in style as well as in ambiance.
All that makes for a very entertaining (and thick!) book. I do look forward to reading the second collection, Red Tide, which has just been published.
You can find those books, published by DC/2000AD, in all comic stores, and they're available in bookstores. Or you can order them online at Mars Import, for example.


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Sunday, April 10, 2005
Blog review
If you don't see the images of a review, it means that I've transferred it to the new site.

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True Travel Tales #4: 'Seven Balloons'

Category: slice-of-life.
Author(s): Justin Hall.


panels from the storyIn the fourth and last issue of Justin Hall's True Travel Tales series, we get a new batch of, well, true travel stories related by the people who lived them. Even though, as in the previous issues, all the stories are interesting and varied, I'd like to tell you a few words about one of the stories which has gay protagonists: an American gay man goes to Lima, Peru without speaking any Spanish and begins asking around for coke. Large amount of coke. He gets lucky and meets a Peruvian gay guy through whom he'll be able to buy the coke and smuggle it by ingesting little plastic bags full of the stuff. But things won't go that easily...
As usual, Justin Hall doesn't present stories to judge his "characters", but only shows what's happening to them, and let them tell their own story without interference. He obviously like to hear people talking about their lives, and that shows in the art, which has refined itself since his debut with the Sacred Text comic.
Although that will be the last issue of the present series, I'm sure we'll have the pleasure of reading more comics by Hall.


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Blog review
If you don't see the images of a review, it means that I've transferred it to the new site.

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Justin Hall's Only In San Francisco

Category: erotica, slice-of-life.
Author(s): Justin Hall.


an excerptJustin Hall, creator of A Sacred Text, has done a mini-comic about a sexual encounter he had in San Francisco, and it's a lot of fun.
A threesome between Hall and two strangers show that a dog really is man's best friend, and maybe even more. Hall's down-to-earth art works really well and doesn't glamorize the characters or the surroundings (a gay bar and one of the men's flat).
Rounding out the comic are several one-pagers showcasing Glamazonia, Hall's high-powered and very not all-ages drag-queen, whoses stories are serialized on the Gay League site.
Get a copy of this comic on the author's site while you can, I doubt it will be available for ever.


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Saturday, April 02, 2005
Review update
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Sticky #2


Author(s): Dale Lazarov, Steve MacIsaac.


coverThe second issue of Dale Lazarov and Steve MacIsaac's series Sticky has been published, and will be available very soon from Eros Comix, the publisher.
excerpt of the first storyThis new issue is as entertaining and well-made as the first one. Both stories included are wordless, which doesn't mean there's no story. "Talk show queers", the first one, is about a security man at a talk show where, in front of the audience, a gay guy loses his lover who's decided to go straight. The security man sees the man flee the set, and goes after him to make sure he's alright. He'll end consoling him in the best way possible. The second, shorter story is entitled "Too drunk" and will leave a lot of readers frustrated, but I thought it was extremely funny to publish such a story in an erotic comic, where readers expect one and only thing. MacIsaac' art is still very good, and as the design of the comic, has an elegance and cleanliness which makes the whole comic a pleasure to read, besides its stroke value, which will obviously depend on the reader's tastes in men, since those in Sticky are generally of the manly, hairy variety.
A third issue will be published in June or July, and if you preorder your comics, you can do so this month.


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