COMIC-CON VERSUS THE SHARK:
It feels like every year the San Diego Comic-Con is followed with some kind of discussion of if the event has outgrown San Diego, gotten too big for its own good or just generally jumped the shark. (This year's Nerd Prom certainly has drawn some complaints.) Graeme McMillan compiles the gripes, including complaints from the mainstream press sent to cover it, celebrities unable to get to their parties due to the huge crowds, comics publisher IDW talking about puling back and more press complains about too little comics at the Comic-Con.

What, Paris Hilton's appearance only gets mentioned in a quote? I thought she and Kim Kardashian were supposed to represent the end of Comic-Con's geek cool?

It's been a couple years since I've been able to get myself to Comic-Con (I am going through such withdrawal, I could mug someone for a Cafe 222 waffle ... if people were in the habit of carrying a hot breakfast on them) but I've long said that there's so much going on that Comic-Con that Comic-Con is what you make of it. You can focus on the indie comics, the manga publishers, the capes and cowls or just be there for the TV/film coverage without getting to bogged down in other aspects. Has that changed in the past two years of growth?

However, I've said for a few years now that the TV and film studios are overlooking the potential of Comic-Con by focusing on male-skewing titles. After all, thanks to the rise of publishers like Viz and Oni, Comic-Con attendees includes the fans of Nana, The Wallflower and Hopeless Savages and I can see those fans getting excited over an Ugly Betty panel. I'm disappointed that, so far, that audience keeps getting overlooked.

OFF*PRINT:
This was the news I was expecting/dreading when the news of Tokyopop's financial troubles first came out. Jen Lee Quick recently revealed that her incredibly likable (and adorably quirky) boy-meets-boy title Off*Beat won't see an ending anytime soon:

"as some of you probably heard Tokyopop is doing a lot of restructuring in the company. many of the OEL projects got affected. Off*beat got put on "hiatus". what does that mean exactly? i'm not entirely certain myself. i apologize for not sharing the news earlier but i was hoping to learn more information about the future of the project. all i can say still at this moment is that i have expressed deep concern to my former editor that i wanted a means to finish the story and give my readers closure. i'm trying not to say too much because i want to keep my options and relations as good as possible. i was given a kind of vague response quite some time ago that things were still being re-organized on their end and they were looking in to options for allowing their creators to finish their stories.

in short, tokyopop put the freeze on off*beat and there's nothing i can do about it until i hear otherwise...which maybe never."

The quirky and endearing Off*Beat

I'm not surprised, as I noted earlier, since the series has been behind schedule for a while. Still, it's disappointing to hear that the story won't be completed anytime soon; Off*Beat was a charming story that I would have loved even if it were a traditional opposite-sex romance. Fingers crossed that something happens to let us see the how Christopher and Colin's courtship wraps up.

IT'S NEVER JUST ONE THING:
Well, sadly, it's never one thing. A week before I heard about Tokyopop's problems, YAOI publisher DramaQueen had also hit troubled waters and now the Boys Next Door Blog is reporting that DramaQueen's anthology Rush looks like it won't be putting out any more issues, another hint that the publisher might not make it survive these troubles. Rush was DramaQueen's attempt to put out new material with western creators and, it seems, those creators have found their efforts frustrated by business troubles.

"Night and Day"'s Adder (by Akira Atsushi, left) and "Roulette"'s Riley (by Tina Anderson, right):

Rush was one of many titles that I never got around to sampling, so I can't say much about it. Are there any Rush readers out there who will be missing the series?

YAOI may be one of the few genres of manga still seen as having plenty of growth potential but with Iris, DramaQueen and Tokyopop hitting hard times, that seems to leave YAOI Press as the last healthy publisher creating new male romance comics.

Treasure by Studio Kawaii

I'm wondering: do we have any followers of YAOI Press out there? At last year's YAOI-Con, I ended up picking up period pirate romance Treasure! and mostly found it to be a fun bit of escapism (plus I liked how the story set up the naval setting as a way for the protagonists to try to escape the homophobia of the era).

GETTING CLOSE TO CAPRICA:
I usually end up totally geeking out at this time of the year, as the Television Critics Association is a time when some interesting TV news and discussions starts coming out. Here’s one rumor that has me particularly excited – the Sci-Fi Channel has reportedly ordered two scripts for the Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica.

That’s encouraging news since I long had the impression that Caprica’s pilot would air as a mini-series before the network would decide to make it a series or not, as it did with Galactica. This probably means that The Sci-Fi Channel thinks Caprica is good enough to please us Galactica fans. Hopefully there’ll be some official news when the Sci-Fi Channel has its TCA session next week.

EMBRACING TRACING PAPER:
Scandal apparently broke out last week amongst the YAOI community in Japan when Embracing Love creator Youka Nitta admitted to having traced images from various fashion ads. You can check out a collection of side-by-side comparisons at this Japanese web page. As Brigid Alverson notes, I find it interesting how Nitta frequently took images of opposite-sex couples and changed them into male couples:

The page that got Nitta in trouble and the ad that inspired it.

Nitta’s faced a few consequences as her work seems to been dropped from an upcoming issue of Be-Boy Gold magazine and she’s also canceled her planned appearance at YAOI-Con. I wonder if this will further affect the availability of Nitta’s work in the United States. Embracing Love is hard to find due to financial trouble at Be Beautiful, the publisher who licensed the title, a situation that became even more complicated when the Japanese publisher Biblos went into bankruptcy and put Be Beautiful’s licenses in limbo. DMP just published one of her titles earlier this year and has another title coming out in December.

If it's up to American audiences, I doubt this will hurt Nitta’s presence here. While her tracing is a big scandal in Japan, I’ve seen a few American artists whose tendency to copy and alter images became a running gag (like Greg Land and Rob Liefeld) and it didn’t seem to hurt them. Then again, maybe manga audiences will react differently.

I know Nitta has a few fans here (and I probably would be one of them if I ever could find myself a copy of the second volume of Embracing Love); does this change your impression of her work in any way?

After the break: Gays in games and comics ... and what's Stephen Fry doing in this column?

From our perspective the most frustrating thing about this year's New York Comic Con wasn't the already-anticipated lack of gay characters in any of the big comic, film, or video game presentations or booths. After all, we weren't expecting much. Sadly, though we were thrilled to have a panel of our own, our biggest frustration was with the gay panel discussion, for which we had higher hopes.

Check out the descriptions of two panel sessions listed in the Con program, and see if you can spot our frustration...

In one room a session titled Disguised as Clark Kent "explores how the Jewish backgrounds of the creators of the best-known superheroes helped make them our most familiar pop icons." At the same time and right next door is a session called Sticky Pages: NY Comic Con Super-Queero Edition!, which looks at "What's good, bad, and ugly in the industry today... Featuring a visit from Special Guest CAPTAIN CONDOM!"

The sexualized program name alone put us at odds with the event; what message does this send to the comics industry, the press, and the thousands of fans attending the con? The panel was made up of a good mix of independent and corporate comic book artists, writers, editors, and publishers. And the very talented members of the perhaps overbooked 9-person panel had interesting insights to queer representation in all areas of the comics world. It was difficult, however, for us to not be distracted by Captain Condom, who stood on the stage with arms folded behind the moderator for the entire event.

Hulk not happy with poor gay representation at Con
(and did someone try to stuff a dollar in his pants?)

Also unfortunate was the extension of the sexualized discussion into the panel discourse. Half the moderator's questions seemed out of place and we wondered whether the session next door was also asking its panel what characters they thought were hot, if they'd rather have Supergirl or She-Hulk, and whether the writers and artists would sleep with their fans?

Interestingly, none of the audience questions were even remotely sexual. The audience wanted to know how receptive publishers were to gay storylines, whether being gay ever created career obstacles, and how public reaction affected editorial decision-making in mainstream comics.

The talented folks on the panel had some very interesting insights to offer on these topics. Among them we learned that employees, writers, and artists of mainstream publishers don't find being out very difficult. The discussions at the mainstream publishers are less about whether there should be new LGBT characters, but rather how they should be formed. At the same time the panel acknowledged that mainstream houses tend to look for very 'vanilla' LGBT characters in their search to appeal to the broadest possible audiences. And of course that progress in LGBT representation is very slow.

YAOI, or "Boys' Love" comics, are becoming more popular Stateside

We, like the audience, were interested in all these questions and lines of discussion. And it was heartening to see so many talented LGBT editors, artists, writers and publishers out there giving us these great gay characters and storylines. But walking away from the panel we couldn't help but feel a little bummed about how this came across to the industry professionals, press, general audience, and LGBT attendees at Comic Con.

More pics from the Con after the break! 

This is Avatar of the Week: Best Animation Edition. Ratatouille seems destined to take top honors for best animated feature at the Oscars, but here on AfterElton.com it’s a tough call to pick the best animated avatar. There are so many great ones to choose from. I know I must be missing a number of incredibly worthy nominees, but here are the folks that leapt out at me (feel free to nominate other great animated avatars in the comments!)

First up is wewdie and his Yaoi money-shot movie clip. I’m wondering if wewdie has always been a YAOI fan, or if his avatar was inspired by our recent feature article on the Japanese gay anime phenomenon. I’m also curious where he got his clip from – I’m familiar with YAOI in print, but I don’t recall ever seeing any movies. Or is this that fabled Speed Racer home sex tape I’ve heard has been making the rounds on the internet? Go Speed Racer, Go!

Second up is Liz and her futuristic go go dancer. Liz is a 22 year old classic movie fan in Washington DC. From her bio:

"In my spare time, i surf the web, watch old classic movies that mainly consist of judy garland films and if not that, i am watching Animal Planet."

We’ve recognized Liz before, but her most recent avatar is brilliant and earns her a second commendation. I’m curious, is this Kylie Minogue’s latest video? Or has Sporty Spice had an extreme makeover? Who knows. Whatever the case, this clip is hot hot hot.. I just wish it had a dance track to go with it.

This week’s winner was brought to my attention by VioletFemme. Violet, I so agree that Fansprez’s Luke and Noah avatar deserves recognition. It’s a clever use of animation to get the point across that our favorite Oakdale teens need some intimacy in their storyline.

Fansprez is 25, single, and hails from Denver, Colorado.

Congratulations to wewdie & Liz, and a special tip of the hat to this week's winner: Fansprez!

Looking around at AlienBootCamp.com, Logo's collection of LGBT-themed animation, I see that they've got clips from the animated adaptation of Fake, one of the earliest examples of Japanese male-male romances to make it across the Pacific. While the video reached American vendors first, the comic that inspired it is well worth checking out.

Fake follows two New York cops -- Dee Laytner is loud and obnoxious, while Randy "Ryo" Maclean is the shy and cerebral one. Before I had the chance to read any YAOI, I had read plenty of essays warning that the genre usually featured characters who didn't identify as gay, insisting they in love with only one particular man. That wasn't the case, however, with Fake. Dee is openly bisexual and in one scene he corrects people who think that bisexuals are "on the fence" about being gay or straight. Ryo, meanwhile, is closeted due to his shyness -- his problem isn't a matter of self-acceptance, but not feeling secure in how to approach another man romantically, or even how to respond to another man's attention.

The story primarily focuses on the two investigating a variety of crimes, with the police procedural serving as an excuse for the two to get to know each other better and to grow close. In their first case, they encounter Bikki, the stubborn son of a murdered mob lackey. Bikki quickly latches on to Dee, who becomes a foster parent to the young man, but clashes with Dee. Bikki's homophobia and conflict with Dee causes him to vow to "protect" Ryo from Dee. However, as the series progresses, he slowly builds a kinship with Dee and accepts his foster father's relationship.

Fake has plenty of faults, but those problems usually give the series a goofy charm. As a police procedural, the series is laughably bad. However, the point of each case is to put Ryo or Dee in jeopardy so that the other one can come running to the rescue, so it's easy to forgive the plot holes since those rescue scenes are effective. Similarly, whenever a special agent arrives to help with a case, the person usually is more interested in winning Dee or Ryo's heart than in solving the case.

Since it was the first a boy-meets-boy manga to be published in English, Fake was heavily sampled by gay male comic readers. The title drew a large number of gay fans, who were drawn into Fake's mix of adventure and romance. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a title grab gay fans quite the way that Fake did, not even later work from the same creator. A sequel series is currently being published in Japan, though no one has licensed it for American readers, yet. If it makes it over the Pacific, I wonder if it capture the magic twice.

YAOI (also known as BL or Boys' Love) makes for a challenging comic genre to describe. Inspired by a genre of Japanese comics depicting male/male relationships created by women with a female audience in mind, the genre has found a sizable enough audience with American readers that a few comic publishers have created specialized imprints dedicated to these stories. YAOI stories vary greatly in tone and degree of romance/sexuality and the types of stories can run from high school drama to police procedurals or stories in historical settings.

But there has always been something of a divide between YAOI's core female fanbase and gay men. Some gay men have criticized the genre for fetishizing gay male sexuality (similar to the way that straight men fetishize lesbian sexuality) and for depicting gay relationships unrealistically. The genre's female fanbase responds that the stories aren't meant to portray gay men, that the characters aren't really gay and that the genre should be left alone from male interference since there are so few places where women are allowed to express their fantasies freely.

Now, that division doesn't represent everyone who reads YAOI. There are plenty of gay men who find emotional resonance and escapism in certain YAOI titles, just as there are plenty female YAOI readers who are happy to find gay men with similar tastes to share their interests.

But I'm wondering if there's a truce on the horizon. Bay Area-based publisher Iris Print has announced that they will be publishing an anthology magazine next year, BL Twist, which will focus on these male romances. What's striking to me about the press release is its opening sentence, where Iris names itself as the publisher of a Lambda Literary Award finalist. By establishing itself as a publisher that's gotten praise by a respected voice on LGBT literature (but still emphasizing that the primary audience is women) Iris seems to be trying to strike a middle ground between the two groups.

Iris has three stories from its BL anthology When Worlds Collide that you can download to get a taste of Iris Press' take on the genre. But if you're impatient, after the break you can see the page from Paintings of You where the couple meet. What do you think? Does BL Twist look like a promising fix for escapist romance, even if it's not made with a gay audience in mind?