This past weekend’s Toronto Comics Art Festival had comics, comics and more comics, and also managed to slip in some manga industry news from attending publisher, Picture Box Inc. The company announced they’ll be releasing a new anthology of gay erotic manga called Massive: Gay Erotic Manga And The Men Who Make It. The book is planned for Spring 2014.
Currently the anthology is slated to have short stories and biographies on the following creators:
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Fumi Miyabi Gengoroh Tagame Go Fujimoto Guy Mizuki |
Inu Yoshi Jiraiya Kazuhide Ichikawa Kumada Poohsuke |
Noda Gaku Seizoh Ebisubashi Takeshi Matsu |
Chip Kidd, the art director for PictureBox’s recently released The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame, will be returning to work on this new project. As someone who was really impressed with the production values of that book, I have high hopes we’ll see treatment just as nice for Massive. Plus it means not only more Gengoroh Tagame in English, but other creators I like such as Takeshi Matsu as well. As with Gengoroh Tagame’s book, this will be a book for mature readers only.
“Massive goes beyond simply translating the artists’ work, offering an intimate, in-depth look at an essential (but criminally overlooked) queer culture that challenges and transcends stereotypes of gender and sexuality. In addition to comics and illustrations, Massive features some of the first photos of these artists; background information providing cultural and historical context; and first-person interviews about what it’s like to be a gay erotic artist in Japan.”
Gay erotic artwork created by men, for men is often referred to as bara and most easily distinguished by its depiction of larger, more masculine characters. This is different from boys’ love/yaoi which is predominantly created by women, for women.
Credit for the news details goes to AnimeNewsNetwork and The Comics Reporter.
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As for Bonds of Dreams, Bonds of Love, I can see why they might ban it – with disclaimer I don’t believe in banning artwork like this – but it’s still not a series I’d ever viewed as being an obvious trouble-maker. Of course I speak from the viewpoint of a seasoned manga reader who is used to the distinctions of age and art style. One of the leads in this series is a teenager who very forwardly pursues an older man whom he’s known since he was very young. Though the young one is the more aggressive of the two, it still follows a budding sexual relationship between an adult and a teenager and the age discrepancy is heavily emphasized in the way they’re drawn.
