rec

[buggery]

So, if you've been involved in slash fandom any length of time at all, you've probably heard of From Eroica With Love. I certainly heard OF it long before I had any real idea what it was (beyond a series of some sort that a number of my fellow slashers followed) -- which is, a Japanese "boys love" comic originally published starting in the mid-1970s.

Boys love manga, also known as yaoi ("yow-ee"), have traditionally been aimed at an audience of adolescent girls, and features romantic and/or sexual relationships between male characters. (Yes, there's a good deal of crossover between yaoi and slash; I'm often tempted to say the main difference lies in the mainstream awareness of yaoi in Japan vs. the near-invisibility of slash in the West, but it's not quite as simple as that.)

Eroica isn't explicit, or rather it's not as graphic as some manga get; the dialogue makes the characters' desire for one another quite clear. Or at least, the first three "chapters," stories approximately seventy-five pulp-comic pages in length each, which comprise the first volume of the From Eroica With Love collection, isn't explicit. I'm not entirely sure what later volumes may bring.

There have been fan translations of Eroica, as well as other manga, available for years. The internet and affordable scanners have made it possible for fans to "scanslate" many Japanese comics -- scan in the pages, edit out the japanese characters, and replace them with English (or other language) translations using a program like Photoshop, then compile all the scans into .zip or torrent format for other fans to download from sites like Hochuuami or Nakama.

Now, at long last, there is an official translation of this classic of yaoi manga... and it's available in a comics shop near you, because DC comics is distributing it.

To be precise, it's been released under the "CMX" imprint, a subdivision of Wildstorm, itself the "mature readers" division of DC Comics. (Rather than an adult content warning, the cover is marked "T for teen; sexual themes" like the video-game ratings system.)

Still. I LOVE MY FANDOM. And I love DC.


More on Eroica, for those who need convincing (mild spoilers follow):

"Eroica" is the name of an international art theft ring. At the center of this ring is Earl Dorian Red Gloria, an indolent, effete aristocrat whose wardrobe rivals that of David Bowie's (70s incarnation) for flamboyance and androgyny. He loves beautiful things, and pursues anything he wants single-mindedly until it is his -- artworks and men alike. Some of the plot elements veer far over the silliness threshhold (TM lcsbanana): a trio of friends gifted with superpowers and linked telepathically after meeting a strange old man in the Andes mountains, an eighteen-year-old university professor, an amphibious zeppelin,, a male German military officer with shoulder-length hair. If you can get past, or enjoy, the farcical and absurd aspects of the story, there's plenty of entertainment value. Dorian pursues his quarry, and everyone, it seems, eventually falls under the sway of his charisma. There are moments of pure inspired hilarity, such as when a lovely young man whom Dorian has taken a fancy to is shown holed up in his room, a book titled 'How to Handle an Unwanted Gay Love Interest' on his bed. The art is manga style (big shiny anime eyes, tiny noses, characters periodically turning chibi with strong emotion) but good-quality, as is the printing (the ink is reasonably colourfast, but the paper is closer to newsprint grade than fans of American comics tend to expect nowadays).

All in all, I found volume 1 of From Eroica With Love well worth the $9.95 cover price, and I'm looking forward to volume 2.


If the maintainer of dc_clocktower, or anyone else who thinks they know the answer -- the community info specifies Vertigo titles as welcome, but doesn't mention Wildstorm, much less CMX -- would let me know whether I ought to link to this rec there, I'd appreciate it.

Comments

[grey-bard.livejournal.com]

Ah, Eroica. How I love thee. Having a friend who has read scanslations for the entire series to date, I can tell you right now that there Is No Sex on the page. So, not quite yaoi, as I've seen it defined.

As for the slash levels, on one side the relationship is canonically gay and on the other it is more traditionally slashy. Well, you'll see.

If anyone is looking for more info on the comic or the fandom, there was a nice write up on it on "The Crack Van".
http://www.livejournal.com/community/crack_van/11157.html

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Ah, nice! Thanks for the link and the info.