What's this photo of Ryan Kwanten got to do with the gays? Besides the 'mos lusting after the always-shirtless True Blood star, Kwanten has started filming Griff, a superhero flick "with a difference." And that's when we heard about another superhero plotline "with a difference." It's called Spandex, and it's LGBT-errific.
Created by artist Mark Eden (who created The O Men), the Brighton, U.K.-set troupe of superheroes is, to our knowledge, the first all-queer team of crime fighters. The first issue, The Attack of the 50-Foot Lesbian is on-sale and has already required another printing.
Rounding out the cast are Liberty (glamorous transvestite superhero), Diva (a lesbian Wonder Woman), Prowler (absorbs the abilities of gay people), Glitter (male Dazzler), Indigo (beautiful French teleporter), and Mr Muscles & Butch (strong twins). But we're more impressed with the villains: Muscle Mary, Pussy, the Pink Ninjas, and the spy James Bend.
"My comics tend to differ from typical superhero stories because the emphasis isn’t on the super-heroics," says Eden. "There are some super-fights but I’m more interested in the characters’ private lives. I like to pitch my comics as ‘Eastenders meets Watchmen’. Spandex is also very sexy and it’s very adult and it’s very experimental. You will see things that you have never seen in a comic before. I’m really trying to push boundaries, but not in an in-your-face, scary way, so don’t worry. Oh yes, and of course, you may have heard that the characters in Spandex are all G-A-Y, and you don’t get a lot of that in comics!"
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It's actually the fourth or fifth all-gay super-group.
–
Dale Lazarov
writer/editor,
NIGHTLIFE (drawn by Bastian Jonsson)
(available through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Nightlif.....867870446/ – OUT NOW! )
MANLY (drawn by Amy Colburn)
(available through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Manly-Da.....861878879/ )
and
STICKY (drawn by Steve MacIsaac)
(available through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Sticky-D.....861879719/ ).
"Lesbian Wonder Woman"? Redundant.
Huh…That uh…That sounds just awful…
I do hope the character "Attack of the 50ft Lesbian" wears pants. I think it best to leave it at that.
Yikes, I sincerely hope this hasn't really been greenlit.
Have you ever heard of Patrick Fillion? He's been running his own all-gay comic book company for years. And the artwork is hot and fantastic.
Class Comics
Yeah, this isn't the first all gay superhero team or the first all gay comic book. The creator of the comic needs to do his research and respect what's come before. Being an indie queer creator of comics he should know his history before he makes bold statments. Check out his awesome article on the history of gay comic characters:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/20.....superhero/
I'll add another one to the mix: Boy Meets Hero
http://www.boymeetshero.com
This is it!? The design and drawings are ugly. Just because the characters wear spandex with big bulges doesn't mean they are gay.
Guys, I don't write the articles, okay?
Sorry that you are all so negative :-(
Spandex is a crazy soap opera, with LGBT characters, it's a lot of fun. You might like it if you try it.
Mart
P.S. I also wanna say that I checked out the links above. A lot of them are super-duos, which I wouldn't class as a team – plus mine's a mix of lesbian, gay and transvestite, and most of what I've seen here are male couples.
And the other stuff is more sexual. I'm going for a 'main-stream' gay super-soap thing here.
And I'm not gonna look at Bitch, I mean, Rich Johnson's column, he's just a trouble-maker.
Mart – Spandex
Martin, you sent me your press release. Why would you do that if I was just a Bitch/trouble maker?
I was also one of the first to write about Spandex – and I let a couple of friends on the UK national press know about the book.
But yeah I think Pride High does have to count for something. It didn't win a PRISM award for nothing…
Rich, okay apologies for the Bitch/T-M thing, I was just getting riled. My bad.
All I've seen was that first column you wrote, which seemed scathing and dismissive. I offered to send you the comic so you could judge it for yourself, away from the hype, but you didn't respond.
All I know after that is that my friends have said that you have been generally negative towards the project. It must be bad for one of them to use the 'c' word and there seems to be a negative attitude to your website in general, not just over Spandex, but for other things too. I don't know, I don't normally read it.
Anyway, I don't want to get involved in a slanging match. I wish, now, that people would judge the comic on its own merits, the fun nature of the characters and the original nature of the plotlines.
Learn to draw?