This first chapter, eponymously called “Tough”, introduces our characters and is about some bad boys, some bad choices and the impact that one out-of-control night has on the lives of everyone involved.

Our story starts with 15-year-old Filipino-American Mike Castro being dragged along by his friend, Larry, on a trash-can kicking spree with some older, wilder boys from their school. Mike knows these older boys are looking for trouble, but his loyalty to his friend encourages him to play along. It’s only after they take him and Larry around the corner from a Gay Youth Group Center and hand each of them a baseball bat that he realizes exactly how much trouble he’s gotten himself into.

Here are the first 12 pages — just penciled for now by our skilled penciler Vitto, with no word balloons added yet. Just click on the first one to activate our LightBox viewer. (Once the viewer is activated, you can use your arrow keys to go to each next page and the ESC key to quit.)

Page 1 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 2 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 3 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 4 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 5 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 6 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 7 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 8 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 9 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 10 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 11 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Page 12 of "Tough".
Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these pencils. We’re right now working hard on getting them colored and I’ll post some of those colored pages up here as soon as we’re finished. (And, as I said last time, the first chapters of this series will be available free to Yaoi 911™ News and Downloads subscribers. Look for the first chapter of Tough to be ready for download in the first quarter of 2009.)

We had a lot of fun making these pages. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

Want to make sure you get the free download links to this comic when it’s ready? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comic page and the links will be sent right to you!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911™ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the first comic we finished (and that we’re giving away for free)? Then read all about our boys and sorcery story, “A Shot in the Dark”!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

But the problem with a 90-page comic — particularly when you’re perfectionists like Winona and I are — is that it takes a good long while to finish and have something to show. I just know you’re going to love it when we’re done — it’s got the sweet, it’s got the sexy, it’s got the smart — but for the moment, you kinda got to take my word for it. And it’s driving me a bit batty that for the time being, I can only show you previews — previews without any of my brilliant dialogue, mind you! Oh, the humanity!

So, in the meantime, while we’re finishing “Artifice” and the 70-page full-color yaoi comic “Quest”, I’ve decided to work on another book written with smaller, individual chapters so I can share finished work with you on a more regular schedule. That book is called Tough — it consists of seven chapters over two volumes — and I’ll be giving out the first volume for free to the subscribers of our Yaoi 911™ News and Downloads list.

The first chapter of the yaoi series Tough, shockingly called “Tough”, is about some bad boys, some bad choices and the impact that one out-of-control night has on the lives of everyone involved. It introduces our characters — both the heroes and the villains — and sets the stage for our action-romance. And to start giving you an idea what it’s about, I’m going to share with you some of the character designs our skilled penciler Vitto has come up with. (At this point, we’re almost complete with the Thumbnail Stage of this first chapter — once we have some Finished Pencils to show, I’ll post some of them up here as well…)

Mike

Mike Full Shot. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Mike Close-Up. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Our story starts with 15-year-old Filipino-American Mike Castro being dragged along by his friend, Larry, on a trash-can kicking spree with some older, wilder boys from their school.

He knows these older boys are looking for trouble, but his loyalty to his friend encourages him to play along. It’s only after they take him and Larry around the corner from a Gay Youth Group Center and hand each of them a baseball bat that he realizes exactly how much trouble he’s gotten himself into.

Kevin

Kevin Full Shot. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Kevin Close-Up. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Kevin is the darkly brilliant leader of the wild boys — and the mastermind behind their planned attack of a gay kid. Rich, handsome and so very bored, he can manipulate anyone into doing anything — and nothing would give him greater pleasure than to get a good boy like Mike Castro to do a very bad thing.

And doesn’t he just look like a yaoi villain?

Bruce

Bruce Full Shot. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Bruce Close-Up. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Bruce is Kevin’s second-in-command, best friend and partner-in-crime. Out of all the boys, he has the greatest hate for homosexuals — and the greatest desire to take their little game to the most deadly extreme.

Strong, angry and brutal, he values loyalty over everything else. If Kevin gives an order, he expects you to follow it, no matter what.

Chuck

Chuck Full Shot. Pencils by Vitto.
©2008 Alex Woolfson.

Chuck Close-Up. Pencils by Vitto.
©2008 Alex Woolfson.

Chuck is the most friendly and jocular of the wild boys and the one most willing to cut Mike some slack. He assures Mike that what they’re planning on doing to this gay kid is “just a laugh”, implying that no one is really going to get hurt.

But if everything is just a laugh to Chuck, how much is he really going to care if things get out of hand?

Larry

Larry Full Shot. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Larry Close-Up. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Larry is Mike’s best friend and the only other boy he really knows in this gang. Larry has always dreamed of being able to run with a cooler, older crowd and, by being invited along on this night’s adventure, those dreams are finally coming true.

Mike knows how important it is to Larry to be able to impress these older boys, but when Larry is handed a bat and smiles, Mike is forced to decide exactly how far he is willing to go to support his best friend in his pursuit of being cool — and consider what will happen to both of them if he doesn’t.

Rob

Rob Full Shot. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Rob Close-Up. Pencils by Vitto.
© 2008 Alex Woolfson.

Rob is the target of Kevin’s plan — the fag he wants to bash. Kevin doesn’t know him — Rob’s just a member of the town’s Gay Youth Group who decided to take a short-cut home. Happy to have had a great night with his friends, Rob rounds a corner of the street with a smile on his face and finds his life changed forever.

Smart, funny, stylish and cool under pressure, Rob has always been able to handle whatever life has thrown at him. But now he faces five sneering teenagers with bats. There is no way he is going to talk his way out of this kind of trouble — and if he tries to fight all of them, he’ll surely be killed. Sometimes life just sucks that way.

“Chapter 1: Tough” Coming Soon

Will Kevin and his crew follow through on their plans to beat up a fag? Is what they’re doing “just a laugh” or something much more dangerous? Will Mike be forced to join in on this fag bashing? And if he does, it’ll be five guys with baseball bats against one unarmed dude — what are the chances that Rob will even survive? And how can this possibly be the start of a romance?

The first chapters of this series will be available free to Yaoi 911™ News and Downloads subscribers. Look for the first chapter of Tough to be ready for download in the first quarter of 2009.

Want to make sure you get the free download links to this comic when it’s ready? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comic page and the links will be sent right to you!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911™ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the first comic we finished (and that we’re giving away for free)? Then read all about our boys and sorcery story, “A Shot in the Dark”!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Bara Art from Kowmeiism
© 2008 Kowmeiism

Like any blogger, I keep an eye on my Web site’s stats and visitors and I’ve discovered that a significant number of readers come here though search engines looking for “bara” — that is, Japanese gay male romance manga written by gay men for gay men (referred to by some as “muscle yaoi” due to the fact that the character design often is fairly muscular — particularly compared to traditional yaoi-style bishonen.)

As I’ve mentioned before, discussions of bara in English — let alone English translations — have been hard to come by. But this looks like this might be starting to change. As a service to my readers, I will use this post to provide links for English-speakers to explore Bara manga. I will update it as I discover more sites (and if you have any other suggestions, please include them in the comments!)

(Needless to say, the links I’m including below are ALL Not Safe For Work [or for looking at in front of Grandma, etc.] — you’ve been warned [or encouraged, depending... ])

Bara is hot

First off, let me get this off my chest — I find bara quite hot, more so than many (but not all) of the yaoi works I’ve read and certainly much more than traditional Western gay male comics.

It’s fairly easy for me to put my finger on what it is about bara that beats out the majority of what gets published in Western gay male comics (such as what you might find at, say, Class Comics) — it’s the character design. Bara guys tend to be fairly muscular, which is not so different than what you’d find in Western gay comics. What does seem different is the obsession with monstrous proportions we seem to have in the west.

Take for example the work of LOGAN. This is a gay male comics artist whose artwork I find absolutely superb — he’s got serious chops in terms of linework, colors, composition, you name it. But his men leave me icy cold. Their muscles have muscles and the penises appear easily as large as my forearm. I understand that this sort of thing is hot for some (just like I’m aware that monstrous-sized breasts are appealing to certain straight boys), but for me, looking at this artwork doesn’t turn me on — I just want to buy these poor fellows a back-brace or something. (For a particularly freaky understanding of this, step into the uncanny valley with me and check out some of LOGAN’s Poser artwork.)

Now, I’m sure that serious bara fans would be able to provide me with links to Bara Of Unusual Size, but my point is that this sort of design seems to be the norm with Western gay comics and not so much with the Japanese ones. Likewise, and this is done less often (as there is a fair amount of “twink” art), this “super-sizing” also seems to apply to depictions of hypermasculinity in Western gay comics’ design — making all the guys super-furry, tough-looking and ideally wrapped up in a whole lotta leather. (Ultimately, I suppose we can thank the influence of Tom of Finland for much of this.) It just feels to me like it’s trying way too hard, protesting too much, so while Your Mileage May Vary, for me it’s a big meh. I’m just not much for extremes, in real life or in comic art, so there we are.

And now that I think of it, one reason why bara might often be hotter for me than much of yaoi probably has to do with avoiding another extreme — the hyperfeminization you often find in the design of male characters. Not surprisingly, as a gay man I like my guys to look like guys. Now of course, some yaoi artists like that too — and their art I often will find erotic — but for those who don’t, well I can appreciate the romance in those books, but it won’t get my motor running.

So bara carves out a bit of a happy medium for me in terms of how the guys look — and that makes its artwork especially appealing for me.

(And to be perfectly honest, I’ve found that there is some technical understanding of how gay sex usually works in real life that the bara creators seem to get a bit better. While there does seem to be a fair amount of the inevitable anal intercourse consummation that you find in yaoi works, there also seems to be a deeper awareness that oral sex and mutual masturbation are also considered equally valid and fulfilling ways for two guys to make love — and that anal sex isn’t necessarily something first-timers would be down for. I find this understanding makes the sex more believable for me and thus, ultimately, hotter. Again, I’m sure we could find yaoi/bara examples that disprove the rule, but speaking generally, this is a distinction I’ve found appealing.)

A Good Place to Start

So hopefully I’ll be able to add a number of links to this post, but I found that good place to start for a nice sample of bara in English is at

Baralover

At this site you will find bara manga from a good-sized variety of creators all translated into English. Now, be warned, these are scanlations — meaning that the original creators have NOT been compensated for the work you are downloading. There is a complicated (and sometimes ignored) system of ethics that scanlators follow in order to respect the artists they admire that mostly boils down to “We will only make available works that you cannot already buy in English — and as soon as English-language versions are published, we will remove our scanlations and encourage you to buy the for-pay books.”

As a creator myself (with limited financial resources), I have mixed feelings about scanlations. On the one hand, I do believe that increasing the exposure of niche works can ultimately benefit creators and publishers commercially (which is why I am making and will continue to make available free downloads of some of our comics.) But, on the other hand, no one has asked any of these creators for their permission to post these works — and I certainly wouldn’t be happy to have that decision taken out of my hands. And no matter how you frame it, it is piracy — and at least according to a panel discussion I heard at YaoiCon, this sort of online piracy has devastated the manhwa market in Korea.

EDIT (last update 1/4/09) : Here are some other sites that I (and others!) have found:

Gabe’s Yaoi Corner
- Another great listing of scanlated Bara in English, a “must-visit”
SoupGoblin’s Stash
- A variety of bara-themed posts and images (includes some photos, some furry, but lots of bara art), definitely worth your time
stupidgit.net
Daphira Scans
Yaoi/Bara Art Download Site
- Lots of bara scans at Yaoi/Bara Art with some furry and a few Western comics
The baralovers community at LiveJournal
AnonIB Bara Forum
- WARNING: Explicit heterosexual porn ad banners above the AnonIB Forum. Not exactly targeted marketing…
the baragumi at ning.com - Social Network for Bara Artists and their Admirers
Bara Blogger — very new, but off to a good start

Buying Bara E-Books

That said, as far as I know, there isn’t any bara being published in English (yet!). And it’s hard to get enthusiastic about (and ultimately want to support) work you can’t read. So, I will continue to look at Bara scanlations. But after sampling a bara author’s work through a scanlation, I try to do the right thing — I look for ways to get the creator money. This is both to balance out the free-work I have enjoyed and also to offer the creator support so they can create future work to enjoy. How do I compensate these creators? I buy their Japanese-language works. And there are actually a couple ways you can easily do this.

First off, some Japanese manga creators offer for-pay downloads of their work — and this work is often more recent stuff that hasn’t been scanlated yet.

Let’s say you’ve become quite taken with Kowmeiism’s comic “Judo Boy” (the opening image in this post [of that guy with the sword] is also by the same creator). A Google search brings you to his Web site and there you find a Download link page with some of his for-pay e-books. You click on one of the DiGiket download links and — after clicking through the “Yes I Am 18″ button [the first blue one on the left] — are brought to the DiGiket online manga marketplace page to download one of his manga.

At this point you might feel stymied — everything’s in Japanese, you see, and it’s not intuitively obvious how you’d pay for his work, let alone download it. Luckily, there is a simply excellent English-language walkthrough for how to download manga through DiGiket in a journal post over at elee0228’s DeviantArt page. Follow the instructions over at that page and it’s easy as pie to download DRM-free and very high-quality manga art.

(The payment method recommended by elee0228 is WebMoney — a Japanese form of electronic cash that uses special alphanumeric codes that you enter on payment Web sites. It’s very easy to use and it ensures your buying choices will be completely anonymous. In order to get myself some WebMoney to spend, I used kanetrade.com which provided me the WebMoney codes nearly instantaneously and whom, based on that experience, I feel comfortable recommending. They sell WebMoney codes in 1000 point increments and Digiket is smart enough to prompt you for a 2nd WebMoney code for the balance remaining if your first code doesn’t have enough to cover the cost of the manga download, so there is no need to sweat not having exact Yen amounts for the codes you buy.)

Buying Physical Bara Books

But what if a creator doesn’t have an e-book available over at DiGiket (or you can’t find it)?

A great place to get hardcopy Bara books is over at Rainbow Shoppers. They have a wide assortment of bara works that you can order including works by creators you’ll find on the Baralover page such as Takeshi Matsu and Tsukasa Matsuzaki. Just click on the “Comic” link in the left sidebar over at Rainbow Shoppers and work your way through the links it provides. They accept VISA and Mastercard and will ship to any location worldwide.

(Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I actually have not yet ordered from Rainbow Shoppers, but I know those who have and they’ve had good experiences. Of course, all the books are still in Japanese. But the artwork is still gorgeous — and if you really appreciate a creator’s work, don’t you want to do the right thing and help make sure they can afford to keep making it? I thought you did. )

I’ll Keep Updating This List — with your help!

So I hope you found this post a useful introduction to getting your hands on some of that bara art that we’ve all been hearing rumblings about for some time. If you know of any other links that should be included in this post, please let me know in the comments!

(UPDATE: Tina Anderson has a nice listing of Japanese language sites and sources for bara at her blog — which is especially handy as it includes direct links to creators’ Web sites, including noting who sells at DiGiket. She also turned me on to the Top Ten List of Gay Comics over at Rainbow Shoppers.)

Hey! Want links to full-color yaoi/bara comics sent to you — for free? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link to our first comic right away!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911™ emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the first comic we finished for Yaoi 911™: Firsts (and that we’re giving away for free)? Then read all about our boys and sorcery story, “A Shot in the Dark”!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Hoping to see more guys in their underwear from Yaoi 911™? Then wait no longer! The pencils for the second comic — the 90-page sci-fi action-romance “Artifice” from our upcoming book Yaoi 911™: Firsts — are finally complete. So we can now give everyone a taste of what’s to come — something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time!

(Oh, and I should say that one of these preview pages is even without the underwear — so read no further unless you are over 18, please!)

First off, a description of what this comic is about:

It was supposed to be a routine search-and-kill mission but Deacon, a prototype android assassin, has failed spectacularly — not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he attacked and killed those who were sent to help him. Now, the brilliant and uncompromising robopsychologist Clarice Maven has been summoned by the Corporation to determine why.

Of course, it’s a yaoi story so perhaps you can guess at least one potential reason he let the boy live. But there is much more than meets the eye in this corporate-ruled dystopian future where every motive is suspect and everyone has dark secrets. With Deacon at her absolute mercy, Dr. Maven will not rest until she has all the answers — and has made sure that this malfunctioning robot will never fail the Corporation ever again!

A Work In Progress

So, there are several stages in making a full-color comic: character designs, thumbnails, pencils, inks, coloring and then, finally, lettering. But it’s at the pencils stage that you can really begin to get a feel for what the final comic will look like — and, in my humble opinion, artist Winona Nelson has done an amazing job with the pencils for “Artifice”.

They’ll, of course, be refined a great deal before the linework is finished, but by sharing a few right now, I can begin to give you an idea of what to expect from the final, full-color and super-sized comic.

On the surface, the story is about solving a mystery — what exactly happened on the renegade colony of Da Vinci 4 that caused this corporate killing machine to disobey orders and turn against his masters? But finding out the answer to that question is far from simple: because Deacon is so advanced, they can’t simply download the information from his CPU — subtler tools are required. Thus, they have brought in the brilliant Dr. Maven, a psychologist specializing in artificial intelligence, to probe the defiant android’s subconscious and, ideally, convince him to come clean so they can fix him.

(Click on the image for a larger, clearer preview. You can then scroll through the images using your arrow keys. Hit ESC to quit.)

Dr. Maven begins with a simple debriefing:

Robopsychologist Dr. Clarice Maven begins debriefing Deacon

But, of course, even the subtle tool of psychotherapy can occasionally get a little intense:

Of course, even the subtle tool of psychotherapy can occasionally get a little intense...

And sometimes even very intense!

...and sometimes even *very* intense!

Now, one of the big questions she needs to answer is why, out of the over one hundred colonists on Da Vinci 4 he did kill, did Deacon choose to let this particular boy live?

She knows, at first, he was working to complete his mission on budget and on schedule:

Dr. Maven knows that, at first, Deacon was working to complete his mission on budget and on schedule...

But somehow this boy got to him, made him change his mind:

...but somehow this boy got to him...

...made him change his mind...

And soon Deacon was acting well outside the parameters of his programming:

...and soon Deacon was acting well outside the parameters of his programming.

...

...

...

Of course there’s a lot more to this story than just answering that question.

More action…

More action...

…and a lot more romance:

...and more romance.

But I don’t want to give away the whole store…

(Unless, of course, you’re a Yaoi 911™ News subscriber, in which case you already got emailed the link to a bunch of pages that were just too gosh darn spicy to be put up here on our public blog… Hope you’re enjoying them!)

I do hope this gives you a sense of the fun that’s in store once this comic is complete — it’s going to be a good one, I promise. And as always, please leave your feedback in the comments below — we’d love to hear what you think!

Oh, and what if you want to see the extra spicy pages, too? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comic page and the link will be sent right to you!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911™ emailed right to you!

Learn More!

• Curious about the first comic we finished for this book (and that we’re giving away for free)? Then read all about our boys and sorcery story, “A Shot in the Dark”!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Sadly, not the actual book that we are in -- Amazon doesn't offer it...

So late last year, I was chatting with my buddy and colleague, Tommy Roddy — he’s the creator of Pride High, a series of comics about gay teen superheroes in high school… (C’mon, y’know you’re curious — click it! ;-)) — and he turned me on to this guide that comes out once a year which offers readers excerpts from a bunch of gay comics. It’s created by the folks at Prism Comics and serves as a kind of a who’s who and what’s what for the gays in both mainstream and independent Western comics.

Anyway, I reached out to them, one thing led to another and now there’s an excerpt from “A Shot in the Dark” in the current issue! Just picked it up from my Local Comic Book Store twenty minutes ago and everything. How cool is that!

Of course, there’s also a bunch of other gay comics in there (including an excerpt from “Roulette” by yaoi creator Tina Anderson) — so if you like the guy-on-guy action (and can handle a little girl-on-girl action) it’s definitely worth a look.

You can read more about it here:

Prism Comics: Your LGBT Guide to Comics 2008 in Comic Shops Now!

Oh, and if you’re a Prism reader who’s looking to read the complete, full-color version of “A Shot in the Dark”, just fill out the form on the Free Comic page — a download link will be emailed to you right away.

(UPDATE: THERE’S A NEW, MORE USER-FRIENDLY WAY TO GET THE COMIC THAN REGISTERING. SEE BELOW OR JUST FILL OUT THE FORM OVER ON THE FREE COMIC PAGE.)

So let me tell you, we’ve been awful busy lately putting together the book — super busy, crazy busy, so busy, in fact, that I haven’t had a chance to mention yet that the first story in the book. “A Shot in the Dark,” is completely finished and ready for public consumption. Well, all that is going to change right now. I’ll be posting its final pages up here (like I’ve done with its in-production pages ) sometime soon, but in the meantime, I’d like to give out a preview PDF of this complete full-color yaoi comic to those readers who’ve registered their email address with this blog. Just as a special treat.

Now, like I said, I’m going to post it up here anyway — so if you’re squeamish about registering, don’t sweat it, you’ll be able to read it here soon enough — but I promised to offer special promotions to registered members and until I have something to sell, giving members first dibs at a free yaoi comic seems like a nice way to say “thank you.”

UPDATE (8/5/07): So I’ve now sent out the download link to all registered members of this blog. I had to use a new email address — yaoi911@gmail.com at gmail — because my web provider has a very strict anti-spam policy and wouldn’t let me send out more than a few emails at a time. This, I suppose, is a good thing — and I support them in their anti-spamming goals. And it got me thinking that sending emails out to my registered users probably isn’t the best policy.

Even though I’d like to be able to communicate (and give free comics!) to the community of Registered Members, seeing as we are living in the Age of Spam, the last thing I want to do is send email to folks who don’t want it. Instead, if you want the link to the comic, you should sign up for the Announce List which you can see over there in the right sidebar (”Send me a free full color yaoi comic!”). (Or, alternatively, just fill out the form on the Free Comic page — it’s the same thing.)

Using an announce list, I can be absolutely certain that everyone I send an email to — be it with a link to a free comic or a special members-only discount on the ones for sale — honestly will want to get one from me. Living and learning here, friends…

So, to make this clear: If you want the comic, you should click on Free Comic and fill out the form there. Kay?

I hope you enjoy the comic. And I’d sure love to hear what you think about it. Please use the comments section of this post to let us know!

Jeff, an inconvenient orphan...

UPDATE: The pencils for this comic can now be see at Yaoi Art: “Artifice Pencils” and there the underwear comes off!

Hey, everyone! The first book of the Yaoi 911™ action-yaoi series (which I’m pretty sure I’m going to call “Firsts”) is well under way. And the first story in the book — “A Shot in the Dark,” which you’ve been watching us create on this blog — is finally completely colored and lettered and you can now download the entire comic for free. But there are, of course, more stories in this graphic novel and I’d like to begin previewing them here as well, starting with “Artifice,” a comic with art created from start to finish by “A Shot in the Dark” inker and colorist Winona Nelson.

“Artifice” is a scif-fi story featuring an android assassin, Deacon, who fails to eliminate his target, a 19-year-old human refugee named Jeff, on a routine search-and-kill mission. Robopsychologist Clarice Maven is brought in by the Corporation that owns Deacon to determine why. This being a yaoi story, I’m pretty sure you can guess at least one potential reason he let the boy live , but there is much more than meets the eye in this corporate-ruled dystopian future where everyone has dark secrets and their own agenda. And the brilliant and formidable Dr. Maven will not rest until she has all the answers — and has made sure that Deacon will never fail the Corporation ever again!

But onto the making of this comic! I haven’t discussed this yet, but the very first stage of creating the art for a comic, before even the thumbnail pages, are the character designs. I’ll talk briefly about that process and then show you what the heroes of our story look like, both with and without their pants.

The Ultimate Casting Couch

When working with an artist on a new story, I’ll send her the script and a short document of Character Descriptions which contains notes about the characters as well as a number of supplementary pictures I hope will inspire her to create the look that’s needed. (For example, for Cornelius, the old mage in “A Shot in the Dark,” I wanted a cross between Gandalf and Dumbledore and included representative pictures of both characters from various movies in my Notes.)

While finding the right images is a lot of work (it’s not unusual for me to search through three or four thousand, yes thousand, pictures online before I find the 2 or 3 that really work), it’s also a lot of fun. It’s my chance to “cast” anyone I’d like in the roles of my characters, from famous actors from the past to random people from the street. The goal isn’t, of course, to recreate an exact likeness of any one person — they should all be new characters with their own look, both for artistic and legal reasons — but the ability to capture the essence of a certain character by finding the right pics is very exciting. It’s like having an unlimited casting budget coupled with a time machine at my ready disposal.

Now, I hope you’ll forgive me for being a little coy about which examples I chose for specific characters in “Artifice” — as I’ve said, I want you to think of them as new characters in their own right — but suffice it to say that Winona captured exactly what I was looking for.

So, without further ado, here are the main characters of “Artifice”!

DEACON

Our protagonist, a resourceful and sensitive android soldier, living in a world that views him as nothing more than a tool. Formerly a contented member of a Corporation Kill Team, he failed to complete his last mission and even attacked the Corporate Officers sent to retrieve him.

Why did he bite the hand that created him and what is to be done with a killer robot that won’t follow orders?

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site. (You can also use the keys “N”, “P” and “X” to navigate.)

JEFF

Jeff is the only surviving member of a group of scientific colonists who were killed for knowing too much. Ironic and bitter, having endured numerous hardships throughout his short life, he faced certain death at the hands of a relentless killing machine. Yet Deacon spared his life — why?

DR. MAVEN

Brilliant, insightful and very skilled at what she does, she now faces her biggest challenge — an android with the strategic intelligence of a hundred military commanders who wants to keep the truth about what happened on Da Vinci Four from her at all costs.

Will she outsmart this synthetic killer and learn why things went so wrong on that barren world or has she finally met her match?

SECURITY

Deacon has the strength of ten men and someone has to get him under control if he chooses not to toe the Corporate line. Here are a few members of the Corporate Security Forces who will try to do just that:

But Is It Yaoi?

As you can see, the art style we chose for this comic is more realistic European-style than anything else, but it definitely fits the tone and style of the piece. And as I’ve said all along, my goal is to create stories that will appeal to those who love yaoi for the same reasons I do, not to slavishly follow any particular artistic or thematic convention.

Will there be folks who will cry “It’s not yaoi!”? Maybe. But perhaps there will be others who will be open to shaking up their assumptions a little bit. In these yaoi stories, I’m promising cute guys kissing (and more… ) in character-based romances that’ll be a lot of fun for both women and men. And hopefully, there are at least a few of you out there wouldn’t mind seeing characters looking like Deacon and Jeff getting naked for your reading pleasure.

Let me know what you think!

I hope that you enjoyed this small sample of the art from the second comic in our book. If you do like what you see or find the story content intriguing, please let me know in the comments!

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Learn More!

• Want to learn how to write a script for a graphic novel? Check out How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• How about finding an artist so you can turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Would you like to see the character designs for our next yaoi book, Tough? Take a look at Yaoi Art: “Tough” Character Designs!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? Then click on over to our Yaoi Reviews!

If you’d like to follow along with the script, you can download a copy here. And if you are interested in learning how these pages were made, click here.

Please note that some of these pictures are not safe for work and are not for children. If you are under 18 years of age, please do not click to read the complete article or read any further.

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site. (You can also use the keys “N”, “P” and “X” to navigate.)

So those are the final inks — keep tuning in to Yaoi 911™ to see this story come together before your very eyes as these pages get colored, lettered and finally transformed into a PDF comic with no watermarking — tailor-made for your downloading pleasure.


Want to see more cool Yaoi Art like this? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get it emailed right to you — for free!

See this comic finished and in full, living color — for free! Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Curious about what the art from one of our other stories looks like? See for yourself at Yaoi Art: “Artifice” Pencils! (Age 18 and over, please!)!
• Want to learn how to write a script for a graphic novel? Check out How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• How about finding an artist so you can turn that script into great art? Start with How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Interested in seeing how these inks were made? Take a look at Yaoi Art: From Pencils to Inks!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? Then click on over to our Yaoi Reviews!

I’ve covered writing and formatting the script as well as using thumbnail sketches as an aid to creating final pencils. Traditionally, the next step in the process would be to ink those pencils. So, let’s talk about what that means, look at how the process has changed in the digital age and, of course, show you examples of cute boys covered in digital ink.

(If you’d just like to look at the art, all inked pages for “A Shot in the Dark” can be found here.)

Please note that some of these pictures are not safe for work and are not for children. If you are under 18 years of age, please do not click to read the complete article or read any further.

The Rise of the Inker

The separation of tasks between a “penciler” and an “inker” is much more American comics style than Japanese and to understand why this separation of roles occurred, we need to look at a little history.

In the early days of American comics (and for some time after), if you wanted to print something, the lines had to be fairly dark and that meant replacing all the pencil work with ink using either a dip pen or a brush. At first, artists would ink their own pencils, but as the comics industry progressed in the United States, the process was soon divided up. Artists found that they were able to pencil more books if someone else did the ink finishing, which meant more money for them and, perhaps more impactfully, less expense and more profit for the publisher: a popular artist was able to put their name on a number of books each month — helping sales — while lesser names could make the work inked and print-ready. Thus the role of inker (and eventually the roles of letterer and colorist and other members of the comic book assembly line process) was born.

It’s easy to think of inking as a mere technical skill, as no more than “tracing” the pencils. But as you will see from our examples, excellent inking is, in fact, excellent art and thus requires an excellent artist. There are many creative and artistic choices an inker has to make while interpreting and refining the pencilwork, so it is far more accurate to think of them as “finishers” than as the “mere tracers” they have often been accused of being.

Why would an inker need to have strong art chops? Well, some pencilwork is fairly sketchy and in that case, the inker obviously has to make a fair number of creative choices. But even with relatively detailed pencilwork, like Karla’s, translating those panels into final production pages still means making important creative decisions such as

• what tool to use to apply the ink (dip pen, mechanical pen, marker or brush)
• what line-weight to use while inking (line-weight being the thickness used while drawing each individual line)
• whether to “improve” anatomy or make other changes to the lineart
• as well as how to best to realize the overall effect the original artist was going for now that the work must essentially be completely recreated.

And they have to balance all these choices and considerations with the desires of an editor, their boss, who often has no art training.

It is certainly no easy task and you can see why many inkers are offended to be referred to as “mere tracers.”

The Inker’s Role

As finishers, the inker’s technical responsibilities are to increase clarity and enhance the sense of three-dimensionality (on what is a 2D medium — paper). But, as is the case for every member of the creative team, the inker’s primary responsibility is to the story and its readers.

Obviously, removing the temporary penciled construction lines and darkening the remaining object lines — the work most people think of when they think of inking — both enhance clarity. But for things to be truly clear, panel contents must be also be readable — that is, a fire hydrant must look like a fire hydrant, not a tree stump; a bicep must look like a bicep, not a tumor. This requires a strong knowledge of anatomy and rendering as well as a good sense of what best serves the story: Is that head three times normal size because the penciler was not paying attention to anatomy or was it a deliberate expressionistic choice to represent the character’s emotional state? Should lines in a bookcase be left wavy and uneven to keep the sense of dynamism in the linework or cleaned up and straightened for a more realistic effect? Sometimes the penciler or editor is available to answer these questions for the inker, but not always — and these are choices only a skilled artist should make.

But why exactly is clarity — and thus the inker’s job — so important to the story? Because confusion about what an object actually is will stop a reader dead in her tracks. Sure, sometimes you want a reader to take a moment or two to understand exactly what is happening in a panel — perhaps allowing that reader the intellectual challenge and pleasure of discovery — but most of the time, you’d like her to forget she is engaged in the process of reading at all! You want her caught up in your narrative.

Clarity in the art is essential to visual storytelling because by avoiding confusion, it also avoids distraction. It lets the reader become immersed in the world and characters of the creators. And for creators like myself, that immersion is the Holy Grail.

And of course, another way an inker can enhance this sense of immersion is by adding a sense of depth to the linework. Creating the illusion of light falling realistically on objects makes the art (and thus the story) seem more “real.” As the vast majority of Japanese comics is typically printed black and white, most manga fans are well aware how much texture and three-dimensionality can be created using nothing but black ink and white paper — the inker actually has many techniques at her disposal to create dimensional and lighting effects such as cross-hatching, variance in the line-weight and, especially in manga, the use of screentones.

Again, each of these techniques creates a different effect for the reader and understanding how these effects impact the storytelling is essential. Too little shading and everything looks “flat” — too much and it just looks like a busy mess.

Digital Ink

Modern technology is, of course, changing inking as much as any other part of the comics process, so now we have the possibility of “digital inking.” Thus instead of using a pen and India ink, an artist can use a Wacom tablet and a program like Corel Painter or Adobe Illustrator to create final linework. (Many creators are also very enthusiastic about using Manga Studio for their inks.)

Using these applications to “ink” has the advantage of being

• non-destructive (fixing a screw-up is only an Undo command away!)
• more precise (you can zoom-in nearly infinitely)
• allows you to directly create digital files from your work (which are now expected by the printer)
• and, if you use vector art, allows the possibility of creating work that is resolution-independent (which means that the same linework files can be used in a small manga book as well as a huge convention poster with no loss of quality)

(For an interesting, if slightly dated tutorial on using vector graphics this way, check out John Rauch’s “Digital Inking in Illustrator 10.”)

What We Did

In the case of “A Shot in the Dark,” both Winona and I felt that creating our “inks” in Photoshop using vector art would, in the end, give us the best quality and most flexibility; it would create the cleanest possible lines when printed as well as offer me the opportunity to use the art for a variety of purposes after the book was published.

As it was always our plan to color this work, Winona made the choice to ink Karla’s pencils using a “dead line” (that is, a perfectly even and consistent line-weight with no variance within an individual line — although different lines might, of course, have different thicknesses), and with minimal shading, so it wouldn’t distract from the depth effects she planned to use with her colors.

Thus her main task at this stage was to enhance clarity — the shading and three-dimensional rendering would, for the most part, come later.

So, let’s take a look at some of the ways she did that.

Examples From “A Shot in the Dark”

For most pages, enhancing clarity in the inks mainly involves a general clean-up of the line work — especially when the pencils are as tight and well-done as Karla’s. For an example of this, take a look at the changes in Page One, paying particular attention to the last panel.

Page 1

Clicking on a thumbnail page will activate our cool Javascript-based Lightbox viewer. Once you have activated the Lightbox, click on the right side of the page for the next page, the left side for the previous page, and the “X” at the bottom-right of the script page to return to this site. (You can also use the keys “N”, “P” and “X” to navigate.)

Overall, Winona’s inks look pretty close to Karla’s final pencils. In that last panel, you might have seen that the lines in the bookshelves and dresser have been evened out. You might have also noticed that the Demon’s legs have been shortened to be in better proportion to his body. Mostly likely, though, the biggest change that caught your eye — after noticing that we decided to fill the panel gutters with black — was that all the magic and shading have been removed — and this is because, as I said, they’ll be added at the coloring stage.

But even doing just a light clean-up, changes were still made here for the sake of story clarity as well. Continuity errors (like the tilt in Aman’s head in Panel 1 and Panel 4) have been fixed and the door is much more clearly a door in this panel. (Minor alterations, yes, but I believe they do have an effect on the overall realism of the scene for the reader, if only on a subconscious level.)

Now, sometimes, for the sake of the story, an editor will actually ask for specific changes to the art at the inking stage. For Page 3, upon reflection, I felt that the Demon’s expression in Panel 2 wasn’t snarky enough for his “Fee Fie Foe Fum” line, and asked Winona to sneer it up a bit. In Panel 6, Ben’s eyes felt a bit cartoony to me and I had Winona dial them back. Being a skilled artist, she had no problem accommodating me:

Page 3

Sometimes it’s the poses and gestures that an editor decides to change at this stage and Page 7 offers a good example of this. In the first panel, I felt it wasn’t clear that Ben was actually leaping to his feet and that he looked a little awkward in that pose. Winona fixed this with a simple reposition of his right leg.

Page 7

(In addition, you might have noticed that we moved the hologram back behind Ethan’s feet to add to the illusion of depth, so even without shading considerations, enhancing the three-dimensionality of the work at this stage is still important.)

Occasionally, the changes to the art are more significant. In Panel 2 of Page 9, I felt our leads (particularly Ethan) were looking a little androgynous for this comic and believed the anatomy of the kiss could be improved. Similarly, I felt that Ben’s eyes in Panel 4 also needed to be cleaned up. This is an important romantic scene, after all, and strong, compelling anatomy and poses are very important. I think you’ll agree with me that Winona found great solutions to both requests without making it feel like we’ve suddenly turned the page on a complete different comic.

(This one is an 18+ page, so if you’re under 18, please just take our word for it and don’t click on these thumbnails…)

Page 9

Now that’s what I call a kiss!

You might also have noticed that even though, for the most part, texture has been removed in the inks, Winona actually added some nice detail in the sheets and pillows in both Panels 1 and 3. Again, it’s touches like that which really add to the feeling of realism…

Panels 1 and 3 of Page 11 offer some more examples where the anatomy was improved while keeping within the style of the comic.

Page 11

Here again the look of the eyes are brought more in line with the rest of the story without losing the impact of the emotional expressions.

Trying to improve good art is a fine line to walk — particularly when given such detailed pencils to begin with — but I hope you’ll agree with me when I say that I think Winona did a really great job.

It’s Starting To Really Feel Like It’s Coming Together

Honestly, I had expected the inking stage to be fairly boring, but this part of the process actually turned out to be quite exciting for me — I got to see pencils I was very happy with being transformed into inked art I was thrilled with. There was a very special synergy that came out of Karla and Winona working together that I think made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And shortly after, when I started to receive the colored pages, I had the euphoric experience of seeing one of my scripts more perfectly realized than I’ve ever felt watching one of my films.

But that’s a story for a future article…

Want to see more cool Yaoi Art like this? Don’t miss out! Subscribe and get it emailed right to you — for free!

See this comic finished and in full, living color — for free! Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link!

Learn More!

• Want to learn how to begin creating your own graphic novel? Start with the first article in our series: How to Write a Full Comic Book Script!
• Already finished your script? Then it’s time to learn How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Curious to see how the pencils you saw above were actually made? Be sure to read Yaoi Art: From Thumbnails Sketches to Final Pencils!
• Just looking for a good book to curl up with? We’ve got you covered there, too. Click on over to our Yaoi Reviews!

In the comment section to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Pencils, I was asked why I was choosing to publish the first Yaoi 911™ book in color — an unusual choice for a manga book. In responding to that, I also commented on reasons why the vast majority of manga books here in the U.S. are not published in color, despite our culture’s current embrace of full-color comics. And I gave some reasons why these books are consistently published in a small “digest-size” format (typically around 5″ x 7.5″) as well.

Even though it’s just a comment, I thought that readers might find these topics interesting, thus I decided to pull it out into its own post. So, if you’re curious about why manga is printed the way it is here or why I’m bucking this tradition by creating full color yaoi, read on!

Bowing Towards Japan

The short answer to the question of “why small and black-and-white?” is, of course, the fact that most manga printed in the U.S. is licensed from Japan and the publishers here are merely being true to the original material — material that contains almost exclusively black-and-white art (which Japanese readers are very comfortable with) and that is often collected in digest-size tankoban.

Now, of course, there are straight-forward logistical reasons for publishers not making changes to this format — if the books were never colored there, then you’d have to hire an artist to do it here, a considerable expense of time and money (not to mention a bit Ted Turneresque…). But also very important is the desire to honor the Japanese author’s creative choices, something that has become very important in an increasingly savvy U.S. manga market.

A good example of how these factors play out is the fact that most Western manga publishers now print their licensed books in the Japanese-style right-to-left reading format, even though it requires a learning curve on the part of many Western readers to have to read manga that way. Why do they make this choice? Out of respect for the original art (so it doesn’t looked “flopped“), deference to the fans of that art (who want to experience the creator’s original vision), in response to contractual requirements of certain mangakas and, frankly, because it’s just faster and cheaper.

Obviously, changing the aspect ratio of a book to a more traditional American graphic novel size or coloring the pages would be an even bigger alteration of the original work and thus would also have to be avoided for the same reasons — despite the fact that it could very well make the books more accessible for a Western audience. (I still know people who won’t read black-and-white comics of any stripe…)

For licensed manga, however, the market has spoken — the books sell. Why take on additional expense and effort if you don’t have to?

But What About Original English-Language Manga?

So, those are good reasons why publishers wouldn’t want to make changes to licensed manga — and thus why most manga here is formatted the way it is. But many American publishers also choose to stick to the smaller, black-and-white format even for their own original, English-language works — a choice which seems to fly in the face of the traditional comics market here in the U.S.

Now, there has to be more behind this than a desire to imitate the Japanese works. The vast majority of these publishers are smart enough not to slavishly follow the right-to-left tradition for OEL manga. Most are willing to innovate in terms of story and art to appeal to more Western tastes. So, why would they almost universally choose the Japanese format for size and color? Why are so few willing to break out of that box?

In order to offer some good reasons for that (and tell you a little more about what my plans are for the Yaoi 911™ books), I will now post some excerpts from my original response as to why I am choosing (perhaps foolishly) to buck the small and monochromatic manga tradition. (I’ve altered the order of the text a bit to facilitate our discussion here — let’s call this the “remix version.”)

Comment by Alex Woolfson

…There are good reasons why almost all manga [including OEL manga] is a particular size. One is, of course, tradition. But that tradition has created certain expectations that have shaped the manga market. For one thing, having one size for a particular genre of book makes it easy for bookstores to stock your book on their shelves — and you want to make it easy for bookstores to stock your book. For another, consumers get used to a particular size and have probably adapted their reading habits to that size — you can stick one of those small manga books in your purse, for example, good luck doing that with an 8.5″ x 11″ book — and confounding consumer expectations can be dangerous. (It can also pay off, they might rea