Adventures of a Joe Boy

After having worked in mainstream comics for several years, Joe Phillips decided to draw what he wanted to draw... that is, young, handsome men having fun together.

Adventures of a Joe Boy reprints a variety of short strips he did for gay magazines over the last years. The publisher did a good job on the book, which is printed on heavy pages, the line art and the colors leaping at the reader. Very thin on plot (mother and son shopping in a very gay mall, meeting the new buff roommate...), those strips are gorgeously drawn and look like a twinks' amateur's idea of heaven.
Joe Phillips is very good at body and face language, and I must admit I find totally irresistible the combination in his style of realistic anatomy with a dose of cartoony influences.
His men are intensely sexy, and most of those stories, which make no pretense of taking place in the real, still homophobic XXIst century, are a window on a freer, more joyous world where gay youth can enjoy life at its fullest.