My very good friend Bill S. recently sent me a link to an article by creator Joss Whedon (whom I greatly admire and occasionally take to task) titled “Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death.” (WARNING: Heavy, but important content — as if the title alone didn’t clue you into that…)

You should read it. It’s a well-written piece and fits nicely into a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:

By creating this book, am I making the world less safe for women?

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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.

(Just FYI, the underwear stays on, but this is probably still Not Safe For Work. Click at your own risk…)

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You can read a review of the first Little Butterfly book here.

Art and Character Design: More of the engaging and beautifully rendered shojo-style we’ve come to expect from Takanaga-sensei: The panel layouts are ambitious and interesting, adding to the emotional impact of the story, while only very rarely becoming slightly difficult to follow. The characters have spot-on perfect expressions for the emotions they are feeling and it is next to impossible not to feel those emotions along with them. Whether showing us sketchy chibis or nicely-detailed close-ups, Takanaga-sensei is a master at using art to tell her stories.

Characters: All the heroes and their supporters are three-dimensional and interesting with only the villain of the piece — Nakahara’s father — feeling a little one-note. Yet, even his actions feel motivated by the kind of person he is, as opposed to merely being conveniences for the plot. Our heroes — Nakahara and Kojima — are very sweet, likable characters with the right amount of strength for us to identify with, paired with the right amount of vulnerability so that we care about them as well. The major characters have complicated layers of motivations and goals and even minor supporting characters, like Kojima’s mother, feel like they have their own lives and interests. And our heroes feel like they have developed from the first book, with Kojima being clearer about his feelings for Nakahara and with Nakahara now much more out of his shell due to Kojima’s love.

Plot: As Takanaga-sensei says in her notes, Little Butterfly was “a complete story in its own right”, so in order to progress the plot, she introduces a new character we’ve never heard of — Nakahara’s young Uncle, Sugisaki, who used to provide refuge for Nakahara when Nakahara was a little boy — and who later became estranged from Nakahara’s family after standing up to Nakahara’s selfish and abusive father. His introduction felt a little rushed to me, but Takanaga-sensei uses him skillfully to forward viable conflicts from the first book, in particular whether Kojima will be able to get accepted to the same college that Nakahara plans to attend and whether Nakahara will be able to escape the darkness of his own family. Both conflicts are pursued in an engaging manner and moreso than in the previous book, Takanaga-sensei’s sense of humor really shines through in these pages — I found myself chucking several times a chapter.

Romance: Still very sweet, but definitely veering more closely to seme/uke territory, with Nakahara clearly pushing for a physical relationship and Kojima resisting this fairly strongly (although part of him clearly wants to be more physical as well.) Kojima still takes the lead emotionally, though, doing everything he can to protect Nakahara from the coldness of his father and repeatedly expressing a desire that he and Nakahara could live together. Seme/uke tropes aside, the romance remains believable and compelling with a number of scenes that show us what both boys admire and enjoy about each other.

Sex: Things do heat up a little bit more in this book, but again I feel that the publisher’s claim that “the relationship between the two boys becomes increasingly sexual” overstates things a bit. There’s some more kissing and even what might be a mutual masturbation scene, but the art is so obscure, the narrative so vague and Kojima so conflicted, it would take a CSI team to be sure. And again, everything feels a bit more straight-forward seme-uke here and thus familiar — but it never falls into anything non-consensual and the art (while often indirect) is still good. Can’t say it’s all that hot, but it is interesting in terms of plot and character development and promises more by book 3…

Overall: Little Butterfly 2 gives us more sweet and smart yaoi romance that will make you chuckle and smile again and again. If you liked the first book, you should definitely buy this one as well.

Rated by the publisher “For Mature Audiences 18+” for slightly more understandable reasons than the last book.

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Here are the finished inks for the first comic in our upcoming book of yaoi short stories: Yaoi 911™. It’s called “A Shot in the Dark” and was penciled by Karla Diaz C. and inked by Winona Nelson. In its 16 comic book pages, a Junior Apprentice must save his now helpless boyfriend, a Senior Apprentice, from a tremendously powerful and crafty demon after a summoning goes terribly wrong.

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.

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In previous articles, I’ve been discussing the process of creating a graphic novel using, as an example, the first comic in our upcoming Yaoi 911™ short story collection, “A Shot in the Dark.”

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.

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Art and Character Design: Yumeka-sensei uses simple character designs and lots of white space — in its minimalism, the art is somewhat reminiscent of Yukine Honami’s work — and the effect is often beautiful and striking. The panel layouts and framings, in particular, are well chosen and do a great job of immersing you in the gentle emotions and humor of each scene. The art’s simplicity, though, can at times get in the way of clarity, with our heroes often looking very similar — and at one point, it took me several pages to realize that a story I was reading actually concerned brand new characters! In addition, while the translation is excellent, the fact that the word balloons lack tails (and often even balloons) can also make it a little difficult to tell who’s saying what.

Characters: Believable teenage sweethearts. In one sense, they are almost universally variations on a theme — there’s the reluctant one and the not so reluctant one — and all have experienced a deep sense of loneliness. But each is given their own personality and quirks that are naturally revealed through their actions and the words of the story’s narrator — and there’s not a one who you wouldn’t want to spend more time with. In particular, the banter between the teenage leads feels real, with the same combination of sincerity and nonsense I remember spouting out and hearing myself when those first feelings of love became too intense. The dialogue captures these moments of insecurity and self-revelation in a way that is truly charming.

Plot: As light as a spring breeze. There are seven short stories in this book with four different pairings and each story unfolds through the eyes of one of the characters. Caption boxes narrate what that character is feeling and thinking and, as a reader, it feels as if you are peeking into some young guy’s diary. All the stories — even the ones that features a fallen angel — concern first meetings and first kisses and the narratives detail how these meetings develop into relationships of symbiotic bliss. There’s no real conflict to speak of — each story is essentially wish fulfillment — and the wish is for a young heart to finally — hopefully eternally — no longer be alone.

Romance: The guys are very young — mostly 16, but even the 21-year old teacher trainee is very innocent — and they are all experiencing their first relationships. The love they feel for one another is the ideal love we all picture in our heads before actually having tasted it ourselves. As such, it has a dreamlike, unreal quality to it and its “perfection” will probably feel fairly shallow to anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship themselves. If you’ve never felt love before, I would imagine the romance in this book will feel very fulfilling to you. But for the rest of us, it can, at best, only evoke nostalgia for that time when you thought that having true love in your life just meant finding the right person.

Sex: Kisses — a lot of kisses actually — cuddles and some hugs. This 16+ book is about the sweet, not the erotic. There’s a couple hickeys, but there’s not even making out.

Overall: It’s a sweet book with sweet wish-fulfillment stories that will speak to those of us who pine to be in a relationship for the first time (or are, at least, nostalgic for that experience.) For the rest of us, there’s some fine dialogue and characterization with pretty art, but not much meaty to sink our teeth into. Buy it for that friend of yours who’s still on the outside looking in — she’ll thank you for it.

Rated by the publisher “For Young Adults 16+.”

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Art and Character Design: Quite good in places and, in others, confusing and lackluster. For the most part, the character art is excellent — with beautifully drawn bishonen characters in striking poses, framed with flowers and bubbles. The chibi art starts off in the first chapter as some of the weakest I’ve seen, but by the end of the book, these artists seem to have found their chibi-style and some of that becomes quite nice also. Many panels are unclear, however, due to a lack of variance in the lights and darks — the foreground objects blend right into the background objects (and speed lines) making it difficult to understand what exactly is happening. In some cases, I felt this was a deliberate choice — particularly in the sex scenes where I think the goal actually was to obscure the action — but it would occur with some frequency in the fight scenes as well, making it difficult to get caught up in the excitement.

Characters: Disappointing. For our romantic heroes, we have an 18-year-old prince, Linth, and a 30-something general, Sei, whom Linth appoints as his “Director General of the Imperial Guards” shortly after being raped by him. Yes, you read that right — the boy appears to have a unique interview process. Now, enough care is actually taken in developing General Sei’s personality and motivations (including reasons for the rape and his later overprotectiveness) that at least he feels full of potential. Almost all the flashbacks concern him and his backstory seems laden with drama and mystery. We can’t, unfortunately, say the same for Linth, who is portrayed as little more than a male nymphet whose main job seems to be to get in trouble, fall out of his clothes, get raped and cheerfully bounce back to want more sex with Sei. He makes a lot of noise about wanting to reform his Kingdom (Landa) but seems so foolish and does so little about it, it is baffling why anyone believes him. Truly, he’s the kind of character who gives “sunny ukes” their bad name. There’s a romantic rival, Baron Touri, who also rises to high position by raping the Prince (and to Prime Minister this time — he must’ve been pretty good…). With strong motivations of love, jealousy and duty, this rival could also have been interesting, but we learn very little about him other than that his subjects love him and that he used to top Sei, so that potential is also not realized. In the right hands, I could see how you might want to get to know Sei and Touri — but we spend most of our time with Linth and these most certainly are not the right hands.

Plot: Flimsy and contrived. The first few pages hold some promise of fun action-adventure-fantasy yaoi, but any plotting concerning battles and castle politics quickly devolves into an excuse for sex, rape and the occasionally Prince rescue. Characters make choices that make sense only in that they enable the next pairing or encounter. Dramatic reveals have no power because no time whatsoever is taken to set them up. The plotting feels like a paint-by-the-numbers imitation of every bad swords and royals drama you’ve ever read. To be fair, at the end of the book, there is an invasion plotline that the authors’ seem to actually care about, but we’ve learned so little about the players, it’s impossible for us to care about the stakes. In a sea of unpleasant traits, the storytelling is easily the worst and most neglected aspect of this book — honestly, it makes Kyo Kara Maoh seem like The Lion in Winter in comparison.

Romance: Well, they seem to love each other, so there’s that. Too bad, again, it’s almost impossible to care. Linth is such a consistent fool, it feels like Sei’s interest in him has more to do with his inner demons than any real connection. And Linth’s interest in Sei, while making more sense, seems to go little deeper than a childhood crush. They’re both very pretty, but beyond the eye-candy, there’s really not much to see here.

Sex: For what its worth, there’s a lot of it. Glowing cones of light and other obscuring techniques create a fair amount of emotional distance, but there’s sex every chapter and you can usually figure out what’s going on. As I’ve mentioned, though, this book has two rape scenes, and one is fairly heavy, involving blood dripping to the ground, so consider yourself warned. Afterwards, the Prince’s wounds give Sei an excuse for using an ointment in an erotic and dominating manner, so the fun just keeps coming. This latter scene is, I believe, intended to be romantic, yet even here the non-con undertones continue with the ever-consenting Prince muttering “no” throughout as if it were some kind of mantra. And when the boy’s not saying “no”, the characters are repetitively and portentously saying each others names. (You know the drill: “Oh, Ted!” “Oh, Martha!” “Ted!” “Martha!” “Teeeeed!”) It’s all so silly, it’s hard to think that anyone, even those who embrace non-con sex, would find these scenes truly erotic.

Overall: There’s some good character art in places and what might have been a fun set-up, but really, this is an awful book. Save your money.

Rated by the publisher “For Mature Audiences 18+.”

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Art and Character Design: No one does adorable, boyish character art quite like Yukine Honami. She could draw a quick pencil sketch of your worst enemy and I swear you’d want to hug him. Thus, her work is completely appropriate for this story and a pleasure to view. There’s rarely much in the way of backgrounds in her art, but the character art is expressive, engaging and yes, huggable. You never have any trouble telling who’s who, and even when she just draws the barest minimum of a chibi outline, it feels completely appropriate for what that panel needs.

Characters: For the most part, they’re all a big pack of sweethearts. Everyone feels fairly three-dimensional and are consistent in their motivations. By the end of the book there’s nobody you don’t like or wouldn’t want to spend more time with — including the “rival” character, Kouichi. In fact, so sweet and caring is older brother Yamato with younger brother Katsura, the pair are downright slashable — for those who are into that sort of thing.

Plot: There are no big surprises in this coming-of-age archery romance, but no false turns, either. Uke Katsura must learn to overcome his anxiety and stand on his own two feet and seme Sou has to learn to overcome his controlling nature and accept his feelings for the younger boy. And while this book is all about their budding romance and the emotions it generates, Kannagi-sensei fleshes out enough of the archery competition subplot so that it also feels like a fully relevant part of the story. Sure, you know how this book is going to end, but it’s a very sweet story complemented by very sweet art, so the journey is quite pleasant.

Romance: It won me over. I actually wanted Katsura to wind up with the laid back, caring and completely emotionally available rival, Kouichi — but then we all know that’s not going to happen when there’s a brooding seme waiting in the wings. As it is, the character development of our two heroes complement each other nicely and believably, and by the end, they felt like a good match. Oh, and yes, it’s all very, very sweet.

Sex: Let’s see… one completely obscured hand-job, four kisses and countless hugs. This is a 16+ book, so don’t expect it to get hot and heavy. But considering the cuteness (and very youthful appearance) of Honami-sensei’s uke, keeping it mostly to hugs was probably just as well.

Overall: If you feel you’ve seen it all before, then this book certainly won’t change that view. But if sweet high-school romance with likable characters and beautiful character art are enough to float your boat, then you won’t be disappointed. And at a nice, thick 228 pages, you’re getting a good value for your $12.95.

Rated by the publisher “For Young Adults 16+.”

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Art and Character Design: Very competent. There is rarely much detail in the background, but the characters are well-designed, each with a distinctive look that approaches more “Western” realism. Both the pouty bishonen young adults and the clean-cut, hunky “geezer” (at age 41, thank you) are attractively drawn and masculine. A particular talent of Ajimine-sensei is the use of chibi versions of her characters, who appear frequently and to good comic/narrative effect.

Characters: There are two pairings in this book, both with a separate series of chapters devoted to them. The main pairing from the “Honest Deceit” chapters comprise Kuze, a twenty-something legal assistant, who is pining away for his 41-year-old boss, Kitahara. Now, as you know, I do have a fondness for sweet, clueless characters, but Kuzu is such a shrinking violet, he is practically a cipher. Putative workaholism aside, he is completely defined by his attraction to this older man, his only desire/aspiration/interest being to express this love. The seme, Kitahara, is not much better, being little more than a nice, slightly clueless guy with mild late-in-life coming-out issues. The second pairing, in the three chapter “Special” section, is a little more interesting. Again, older/younger and former teacher/student, the leads at least seem to have some personality outside of the romance. The older guy, Toru, has a passion for “cute” things, such as stuffed animals, that can get him into trouble with his partners, and the younger guy, Yuu, is a pouty hot-head, which can also be a source of drama in his relationship. None of these characters, though, are really all that much fun to hang out with or get to know.

Plot: I really did want to like the story — here we have a well-drawn yaoi book with actual grown-ups! But the conflicts come from seen-it-all-before unrequited-affections angst along with the usual petty jealousies stemming from simple misunderstandings. A little bit of juice comes from the older/younger power imbalance potential, with both younger partners eventually crying out their desire “not to be treated like a kid!”, but as a lot of the sexual tension comes from maintaining this imbalance, this conflict is really more sizzle than steak. The most interesting story potential rests with Kitahara — here is a man coming out in his 40s, starting a relationship with an obsessed co-worker — but this major life event is merely given the most superficial of treatments so as not to get in the way of the romance.

Romance: The “L” word is used a lot. These characters say they love each other, often can’t keep their hands off of each other, other people in the room become practically invisible because of this “love”, and yet, as these characters are mere sketches, it’s hard to know what all the fuss is about. Kuzu has been pining away for his current boss since Kitahara was his teacher in school eight years prior, but why? Kitahara says he now returns this love with great passion, but again, why? Despite the chronological maturity of these characters, the romance feels more like an adolescent’s take on love — that is, being in love with the idea of being in love — rather than an exploration of the special connection between two people who are right for each other. Thus, it is difficult to get behind. Everyone’s essentially a good person, so I do wish them well, but if they had all wound up with different people, I would have been just as OK with that, too.

Sex: Pretty good. One of the book’s strong points is making the “first time” scene between Kuzu and Kitahara believable — it definitely does believably feel like this lawyer’s first experience with another man, and the butterflies-in-the-stomach and awkward actions actually feel quite in line with my own personal experiences when getting to know someone new physically. No dangly bits are actually shown, but we see enough quality art for it to be erotic. As the characters themselves left me cold, it didn’t really get my motor running, but those of you with a teacher/student fetish should be in hog heaven. (The word “sensei” is used in the book so often, particularly during those special moments, it made me wonder whether Ajimine-sensei was perhaps going for the world-record.)

Overall: If good, masculine character art and fine, but not explicit, “older/younger” sex scenes are enough for you, then you might consider picking up this book. For the rest of us, there are other, better books out there for our $12.99.

Rated by the publisher “Mature Content 18+.”

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I’ve just discovered this great article over at Painter Creativity called “Top 10 Lies told to Naive Artists and Designers.” It basically sums up on one page the first half of the “welcome to the business” speech I give to new freelance filmmakers.

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