The Best Gay Erotica Comic Ever!

Manly -- the comic you should read

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So I was asked to review Manly, a book of illustrated gay erotica by Dale Lazarov & Amy Colburn (and colors/inks by Dominic Cordoba) and I seriously considered writing just one sentence. Something like: Holy crap, that was the sexiest comic I’ve ever seen! But how would that make me look clever? Why should someone else’s truly extraordinary work show me up?

 But before we go forward, let me warn you that this review might be a little too much information about my sexual proclivities for you so you might want to avert your eyes now!

All right now that the sissies, prudes, and haters are gone, let’s talk porn for a second. There is a shocking decline in the quality of sexually explicit material out there. Oh, there’s a lot more of it. You can’t shake a hard penis without hitting some, but most of it so pathetically amateurish that you won’t have a hard penis to start with. It seems like anyone with a laptop and lap is videotaping said lap and uploading his load onto the internet. I have nothing against Xtube and its ilk, but do that many guys really think every instance of them jerking off is an audience-worthy event? I suspect they’re stroking their egos more than they are their cocks. Which is why I was so pleased with Manly. All aspects of it are professionally done. Real thought and effort were put into every panel.

I’ve been a fan of erotic comics since the first time I saw a Tom of Finland drawing. I obsessed over those for a while and tried to get my underage hands on all of the Kake adventures with little success. No internet back then, damn it. It’s hard to say for sure because the sexual response is generated in a deep irrational section of the brain, but I believe that part of what I liked about those erotic comics was that they could exaggerate. The problem with exaggeration is that, ironically, needs to be used sparingly. Exaggerated amounts of exaggeration can push an erotic work out of the realm of sexiness and into the realm of freakishness. Generally speaking, we lust after humans, so to be sexy, the image has to look human. It can be super human, but if it goes too far beyond human, it is no longer sexy. The Washington Monument might be phallic, but it isn’t sexy. Tom uses a bit of a balancing act between nearly photorealistic images and unrealistic proportions on the bodies of his men. If the details of a Tom of Finland drawing weren’t rendered with such precision, I don’t think his overblown (and frequently blown) guys would be as erotic as they are and his art would not have had the impact that has on the entire gay community. Artists like the Hun I don’t think were as successful in part because his art is not as realistic.

Similarly, Manly uses a fairly realistic style. A bit cartoony in its simplicity of line, but it keeps exaggeration to a minimum. There is no doubt that you are looking at a drawing, but the proportions of the bodies are pretty much realistic. Everyone is perfect, or at least, a perfect example of his type, it is still a human perfection. All the guys are remarkably hung, but none of them has a dick as big at that guy you saw on that video where you feared for the life of the bottom guy. You know, the one where you spent most of the time gasping and cringing instead of coming. None of the Manly guys are nearly as hung as Tom’s guys. And I think that makes the guys in Manly sexier than the guys in the works of Tom or even that dangerously hung guy you saw in video. Sure, we’re all pretty much size queens, but there is point where sexy ends and mere novelty begins. Manly is well aware of that border.

In the final analysis, what really makes Manly sexy is the sex. And it’s as hot as anything I’ve seen. As you might expect from the title, the guys in it are mainly masculine archetypes. There’s a cop, a pair of boxers (as in two fighters, not underpants), and some leathermen, but where you could predict exactly where the story was going with a Tom of Finland comic, Manly plays with your expectations with plots driven by the characters’ personalies, personalities that are more complex than being simply horny. There are interesting moments of shyness and back stories of lust.

And all this is done without dialogue or captions. It is really astonishing. Manly is both as hot as anything you've seen and still a work of art. I highly recommend it.