Yaoi 911

How To Keep Manga Fans Out Of Jail

A manga fan is arrested in his own home for owning manga for personal use. The next time it could be you. Here are the details of the case and one thing you can do right now to help change the law.

Yaoi Art: “Tough” Character Designs

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. 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.

Gay Comic Review: Manly

This talk-free graphic novel clearly intends to be both hot and sweet. So far as porn goes, it is definitely sweet — and I found that pleasing. Whether you find it hot will depend on how much you like the character design, how much character development you require to actually want the characters to have sex and how much enthusiasm you have for explicit cum shots. It struck out for me on all of those accounts, but I know my tastes are rather singular. On their website, the publisher lets you review the first 30 pages of the book. This is a well-constructed, well-endowed and good-hearted porn graphic novel — if you like what you see in those first 30 pages, you won’t be disappointed with the rest.

I Kissed A Boy (YouTube Remix)

Images of cute boys kissing over Katy Perry’s song (seriously messed about with by YouTube user nengstle). I do believe this is Katy Perry’s actual voice doing the singing, just EQed to sound like the guy from Erasure. The adding of the words “boy” and “girl” in the appropriate spots is a little kudgey, but all of the sweet kissing made me smile.

From the ordinarily quite sleepy Boys Kissing Livejournal group.

How To Find Bara In English

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.)

Yaoi Art: “Artifice” Pencils

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!)

Yaoi Review: Constellations In My Palm by Chisako Sakuragi & Yukine Honami

It’s an enjoyable if sometimes frustrating read. Writer Chisako Sakuragi is skilled enough to give us believable characters and avoid cliché. Artist Yukine Honami’s art is as sweet as ever. Had the protagonist been less passive and a little smarter, this story of kissing cousins could have been a lot more fun. As it is, it’s a pleasant diversion. A must for Honami-sensei completists; one the rest of us should buy only if you can’t borrow it from a friend.

Yaoi Review: Seduce Me After the Show by Est Em

Well, hell, finally an 18-and-over book that you might honestly need to be over 18 to fully appreciate. These are thoughtful stories for grown-ups that subtly and compellingly share moments of human connection. It’s a book that you’ll read through and then immediately read through again just to savor the nuances. If you think that yaoi has the potential to be great literature as well as a great time, you need to buy this book. Hell, even if you don’t give a damn about great literature, buy the book anyway — it’ll be the best yaoi book you’ll read this year.

Why Comics Need Age Ratings

Recently, John Shableski of Diamond Book Distributors, writing as The Graphics Novel Guy, has been writing about Age Ranges for Graphic Novels. In an article, he wrote on May 19th, he made this bold claim:

I think I have finally nailed what the tipping point will be for the graphic novel publishing industry and it comes down to the applications of age ranges.

How to Survive as a Small Yaoi Publisher Part 2

A conversation with Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing.

So, last time we talked about the difference between manga and porn, what it means to be a successful publisher of erotic comics and what challenges face those who choose to publish this material. This time we’ll talk about working with Japanese publishers and bring the focus more specifically on what English-language yaoi publishers need to do to succeed in today’s market.

How to Survive as a Small Yaoi Publisher

A conversation with Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing.

Recently, there’s been some discussion about how some small yaoi publishers have been struggling despite offering quality yaoi titles to their readers. With DramaQueen in particular, it saddens me to hear of their difficulties — I’ve enjoyed their work, found their enthusiasm infectious and have great affection for company president Tran Nguyen, despite having only met her a couple of times — she’s just that cool.

So, the question for me is “How can a small yaoi publisher survive, even flourish, in today’s competitive bookselling marketplace?”

A Yaoi Flavored Short Film

All right — it’s just two cute guys messing around in a bed in a short by an independent film director whose work I’ve enjoyed, but I thought I’d share. (Very, very Not Safe For Work, but you knew that, right?)

“Les Puceaux” (The Virgins) directed by Francois Ozon, starring Jeremy Elkaim and Sebastien Charles. Found on Sambag’s Blog.

Yaoi 911™ in Prism Guide 2008

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 — 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!

Yaoi Review: Say Please by Kano Miyamoto

I kept on reading it, straight-through. That says something. But this book shows more promise than actual skill. The art is competent and the author’s interest in complex relationships might pay dividends in future works but, despite the more ambitious material, overall the experience of this book feels like the same-old, same-old. From what I understand, this is not the strongest of Miyamoto-sensei’s works. There’s enough here for me to be willing to give another of her books a try, but I really can’t recommend you putting down hard earned cash for it.

Free Yaoi Comic For Registered Users

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.