Entries for October 2008:
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Drawn & Quarterly is a publisher who's always done gay-inclusive anthologies, right from the Drawn & Quarterly magazine which, launching in 1990, featured Maurice Vellekoop's art and introduced me to his work when I was still closeted--I never recovered. Vellekoop's work even graced the very funny and sexy cover of the Best Of published in 1993. But I digress again.
The latest and fifth issue of their current anthology, Drawn & Quarterly Showcase, includes Inland, a 35-page story by Anneli Furmark, a Swedish artist I didn't know.
David and Jakob are two thirty-year-old lovers spending a few days in David's small town, to meet his parents who don't know about their son being gay. The story is composed of small scenes told in two panels per page, giving it a slow and realistic rythm. Nothing special happens here, only two men trying to make sense of each other's lives. David is still in the closet and hopes that meeting Jakob, whom he introduces as a friend, will help his parents understand their real relationship when he tells them the truth (that definitely struck a chord with me), while Jakob wrestles with having to behave in an untruthful way.
Furmark's art is the kind which doesn't look stylish or impressive, but in fact draws the reader in the story, with her knack for drawing real people and real settings, and her subdued colors complementing her quiet depiction of inner turmoil.
Inland is not a story for readers who are looking for bigger than life characters and plots, but rather for those who can enjoy a well-crafted and thoughtful story.
Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #5 can be found at Amazon.

Jörg Meyer-Bothling's Micki is back in this new book, self-published by the author. At the end of the first volume, Micki: Sighs in the Desert, the title character was stranded in the desert, although in the company of a charming and horny black guy.
In this follow-up, the perpetually undressed title character--whose physique reminds me of the line from the Queer as Folk tv show saying that sex with a muscled man is "like being let loose on a bouncy castle"-- keeps on trucking, or rather tricking, throughout a desert populated by Turkish Döner sellers, Spanish ex-consuls, Italian race car drivers, and other specimen of fine manhood (including a Japanese samurai, who's really far from home). It seems that Micki's desert is busier than Canal Street on a Saturday evening, if I may use one more QaF reference. In fact, I'm beginning to think that the Micki series is a reductio ad absurdum of gay erotic tropes: a man meets a man, has sex, then meets another man, and repeat until the rinse cycle is over. Or something like that. Think of it: Where would you least expect to meet so many willing guys? All right, there's Antarctica, the Moon, and the Vatican. Although when I think of those cute Swiss Guards...But I digress.  
I'll only add that Micki will meet again his lost Tuareg love, in a sequence that's as hot as funny. Because Meyer-Bothling keeps on giving us generous portions of humor to supplement the sex.
So, in short, I can assure you that if you enjoyed the first book, you'll enjoy this one (but the "story" is not so complicated as to prevent enjoyment for someone who hasn't seen the previous instalment). You can buy the book from Lulu.com.