Review of "Young Bottoms in Love"

"Chad is all wrong for me, but he's offered me everything I want!"

That kind of melodramatic declaration, usually uttered by a teary-eyed heroine sketched in primary colors, is typical of classic romance comics of the '50s and '60s — the ones delegated to the Junior Miss section of the comic book store that girls were supposed to read (and learn from) while their brothers were given Richie Rich.

But in "My Gay Romance," the hilarious strip that kicks off the wonderfully entertaining new comic anthology Young Bottoms in Love, the beleaguered heroine is a he. Martin is torn between self-obsessed stockbroker Chad, who "kisses like a vacuum cleaner," and his best friend Joe, "who looks just like Chad but has different color hair and dresses casually."

Writer and artist Tim Fish gets every detail of the genre right, from the tears streaming down characters' faces to their disapproving mothers and judgmental gal pals. The illustrations are dead-on, as stylishly pop as they are amusing. One panel is a giddy montage of Martin and Chad out on the town: ballroom dancing in tuxes, clinking champagne glasses, firing rifles at unsuspecting birds.

By queering up the genre, Fish moves beyond mere homage into biting, contemporary satire. " Chad's marriage proposal sent me reeling in bliss," Martin cries, "despite the fact that it was legally impossible to simulate the heterosexual lifestyle."

But "My Gay Romance" is just a jumping-off point for a thematically rich collection that extends beyond romance into multiple comic genres and explores a variety of perspectives on gay life and love with surprising depth and complexity.

Like all great comic book epics, Young Bottoms in Love has an origin story, recounted by Tim Fish, the series creator, and Ed Mathews, editor of the comic book website PopImage.com. Fish recalls how, shopping around gay-themed comics, "I was told no at every turn: too 'gay' for comic books and too 'comic-y' for LGBT publishers. I was determined to share my work with the world and turned to the Web as a vehicle."

Fish showed Mathews a superhero book he was working on, in which the sidekick, Coming Out Boy, was grappling with his sexuality. Mathews, impressed by Fish's handling of this more sensitive material, advised him to ditch the superhero angle and focus on "day-to-day life issues." Fish came back with Young Bottoms in Love, and it found a home on PopImage in 2002. Over the course of its four-year, six-volume run, the daily online series became a forum for more than 50 comic book artists and writers — many well-known in the comic world — to contribute their work in whatever way they wanted.

The YBIL anthology brings together the best from the web series, plus a few print exclusives. Reading it from cover to cover highlights the series' impressive variety of stories and styles, all connected in some way to the topic of gay love. It's like the world's most fabulous Pride parade: a vibrant, colorful lineup of hot guys loving life and each other.

Comic art lends itself to caricature; in the compressed space of most strips, characters must be defined quickly, and it's easiest to do so by sketching in traits associated with recognizable types. It's not surprising, then, that several of the stories in YBIL deal, affectionately, with stereotypes familiar within the gay community.

In "Beauty and the Beast" (story by Michael DiMotta and Gregory Lockard, art by DiMotta), a pretty boy everyone calls "Beauty" is sneered at by leather daddies who deem him "too big a sissy," by bitchy twinks who call him "too straight acting," and by drag queens who judge him as "not camp enough." It's fun, but while the illustrations are an amusing parody of classic Disney, the fairy tale allusions are a bit too obvious to carry much bite, and a cameo by the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Fab Five just seems dated today.

A more subversive treatment of stereotypes comes up in a twisted three-part story arc by Frank Muse with art by Fish. In "A Hair-Raising Trip!" two muscle-boys, waxed to hairless perfection, go camping and are kidnapped by the biggest bear of them all: Bigfoot himself. Cameron, his stubble now showing (much to his partner's disgust), falls in love with Bigfoot, who must then prove his worth in the second story, "Bigfoot vs. the Perfect Boyfriend." And in "The Size of the Wand," Cameron is kidnapped by magical fairies, ancient guardians of artistry and wit who force muscle-boys to work out for all eternity.

Much like these burlesque treatments of common gay stereotypes, several stories similarly upend familiar comic book genres. "Into the Woods" (story by Decker, by Fish, grays by Jay Laird), with its stark black-and-white illustrations, is a comic riff on horror books with a young couple trapped in the woods, the guy all-too-happy to be enslaved by a handsome ghoul while his anxious girlfriend looks for help.