Entries for May 2005:
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Taschen, the very open-minded publisher of Beefcake and the Physique Pictorial collection, is going to publish a complete Tom of Finland comic collection in five volumes with a slipcase. This will be available in July from all bookstores, or on the publisher's site.
It's a great opportunity to get all the Tom of Finland comics (in chronological order) for a really reasonable price. I'm definitely going to buy it, even if the later works of Tom of Finland leave me cold.

In their attempt to print smut stories through the ages, Radio Comix seems to have also found an opportunity to get into ancient Egypt with Anubis,  an anthology of short stories by various artists where the characters are anthropomorphic animals, with the main one being a highly sexed-up version of the Egyptian god of the Dead. In this second issue, two of the six stories are gay, the rest being straight (and rather well drawn, I might add).
In the first gay shag, Frank Gembeck Jr tells the story of a modern-day young lion guy who has an arousing meeting with the god. His art is simple and effective, I'd like to see more of it (I'd only seen his illustrations until now).
In the second story, Terrie Smith brings her character Chester (from the series Havoc Inc.) to an Egyptian tomb. Chester being who he is, the jewels and other treasures of the tomb are not safe anymore, until Anubis shows up and decides to give Chester a good lesson. Although having sex with him will hardly seem like a punishment... It's been too long since the last issue of Havoc Inc. (the tenth issue, which had been announced, has been postponed), so it's really nice to see Chester again, as briefly as it is.
As I said before, the other stories are well-drawn, and I guess people of the straight persuasion will find them hot. And it's so rare to see comics mixing straight and gay stuff that comic seems like a good idea, if only for that reason.

This second issue of Dangerous, the Radio Comix-published Western-made yoai anthology, opens with a 12-page story which has nothing to do with yaoi, and shows no sex. Let's not complain: it's a story from Christina Hanson's excellent Liberty From Hell mini-series, with André and Sebastian facing death in an ambush... and showing tenderness toward each other. With her seemingly simple story, Hanson manages to question a lot of modern stereotypes about gay men, and her fantasy world is, in fact, probably truer to history than most non-fantasy stories, at least in the way it portrays other soldiers's attitude to the attachment between two men: there's no homophobia, same-sex love being part of everyday life, and the most important thing being how one behaves in battle, not whom one has sex with. The modern rejection of gay soldiers in some parts of the world is definitely a perversion which the Christian religion has brought.
As for the rest of the comic, it's mostly taken up with a Japanese-looking story of a man and his incubus, the man dreaming of having sex with the human-shaped creature, and not being able to stand his absence in the waking world. It's hot and rather moving.

The fifth and penultimate issue of Liberty from Hell shows André and Sebastian, Phalloide's human host, enter the city where André owns a house, where the technological wonders of the defunct Roman empire have long been forgotten (like public baths and heated houses). Nothing dramatic happens this issue, which allows for more character development, as Phalloide understands his free time on Earth draws short, and his entanglement in the lives of André and Melantha, the young slave girl, has to end. As in previous issues, Christina Hanson manages to blend the historical elements with the fantasy ones, and we grow more and more attached to her characters.

Another short story showcasing André and Sebastian can be found in the second issue of Radio Comix's yaoi series Dangerous, reviewed here. Both these comics can be bought from the publisher.
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Last issue reviewed here.