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E.O. Plauen, Father and Son: Plauen was a German cartoonist whose anti-Nazi sentiments almost forced him out of work; he managed to survive by switching to drawing the nearly wordless adventures of a father and his imitative, clever, trouble-making son. They were very popular—even appropriated by the Nazis to advertise a charity drive—but I found them trite and a good example of how art is suppressed under totalitarianism even when the artist is formally allowed to keep making art.
Ulli Lust, Voices in the Dark: Graphic novel based on a book by Marcel Beyer, about a German sound engineer during WWII who experiments with collecting sounds (including experiments on prisoners of the Nazis) and who interacts with the children (including a teen girl who is also a narrator) of a high-level Nazi propagandist until their ultimate downfall. Super, super depressing.
Blutch, Peplum: Weird graphic novel retelling events from the Satyricon, sort of. An exiled Roman finds a woman frozen in ice, falls in love with her (ick), then tries to get back home as disasters befall everyone around him.
Harton Pushwagner, Soft City: Graphic novel in childlike style about a world of identical white families, with the men all going to work at the same time for the same Soft corporation and the women all going shopping at the same time, until the day ends and they take a pill to sleep just as they took a pill to wake. More Brave New World than 1984, though there are screens everywhere showing terrible things. Graphic novels for adults are depressing, guys.
Nicole Claveloux, The Green Hand and Other Stories: French comics from the 60s, about fantastical happenings to ordinary people. Not enough narrative payoff for me.
K.J. Charles, An Unseen Attraction: Clem, who runs a boarding house for his rich half-brother, falls in love with one of his lodgers, a man who stuffs and mounts animals as his profession. Although the love is mutual, barriers include Clem’s non-neurotypicality and one of the other lodgers, an alcoholic clergyman who Clem’s brother forces him to tolerate. Clem’s Indian mother only contributes to his half-brother’s hatred of him—Clem was conceived when his half-brother’s mother was dying, and he’s been raised to think of himself as an embarrassment. When the clergyman is killed, it seems that family secrets may endanger both Clem and his lover Rowley.
K.J. Charles, A Fashionable Indulgence: Another Edwardian gay romance with recurring characters in which a newly found potential heir to a fortune, who has a radical political past (and to some extent, present), is tutored in upper-class ways by a dandy with a tragic past. The parties are relatively open about their feelings for one another, and Charles has created a small society where m/m relationships are plausibly an open secret despite the threat of flogging or jail if discovered by the general public. The barriers are Julius’s war-related trauma and Harry’s fear of being found out/disinherited, and more specifically the dangerous-in-many-ways demands of his bigoted grandfather and the investigations of one of their social rivals. Harry’s lack of interest in politics was relatively unsympathetic to me.
K.J. Charles, A Seditious Affair: Another Edwardian gay romance with recurring characters, overlapping in time period with A Fashionable Indulgence. Silas is a publisher of seditiously democratic pamphlets, and also the dom of a Tory whose name he doesn’t know but with whom he has excellent political discussions after the sex. He’s understanding about the Tory’s need for pain—much more so than of his political opinions—and wishes for a fuller relationship with the man. Except then the man turns out to be part of His Majesty’s Government dedicated to extirpating sedition. Duty and passion collide! While the characters are in difficult positions, I thought Silas had a very good point when he (among others) noted that the Tory’s sexual practices broke the very law he purported to believe must be rigorously upheld. Dominic’s self-hatred was focused mostly on his need for pain, not his internalized homophobia as such—Charles seems very careful to avoid that in main characters, leaving the sexual (and racial) slurs for others. Silas even fumbles his way into requiring the use of safewords, without learning it from any community. It is interesting that even this little pocket of they’re-all-gay fantasy gentleman can’t exist without classism, which many of her main characters do partake in even as others in the narrative rebuke them for it. If you want an Edwardian romance, even an idealized one, that seems to be the price.
K.J. Charles, Think of England: Archie Curtis, who lost part of his hand and his military career in a training accident, is investigating the source of that accident when he gets into a very compromising situation with Daniel Da Silva, a Jew who takes pride in his flamboyance. Given the late-19th-century high-class England setting, this is somewhat problematic, especially since it turns out that Archie might be queer too. Lovely use of the trope of the strong-brave-honest guy meeting the smart-slippery-observant guy and making them both better. Historic-typical language and homophobia.
K.J. Charles, A Gentleman’s Position: I read too many of these at once! Part of an intertwined set of narratives about m/m couples in Edwardian England. Richard is in love with his valet who is also his right-hand man where intrigue is concerned, but is convinced that it would be abuse to act on his attraction, however reciprocated, because of their difference in position. And you know what, he’s right—this is not my kind of power kink, so I had trouble with the justifications (which included that the valet knew his own mind very well, and that Richard was really being a snob and thinking that the job of a valet was inherently demeaning, which he was too, but that didn’t make him wrong about the power disparity). Fortunately there was also a lot of plot that involved needing the valet back to take care of an incipient scandal over revealing Richard’s set’s homosexuality, from which I took the lesson that corrupt and unjust systems corrupt and make unjust even relatively sympathetic participants like Richard and his coterie.
Ulli Lust, Voices in the Dark: Graphic novel based on a book by Marcel Beyer, about a German sound engineer during WWII who experiments with collecting sounds (including experiments on prisoners of the Nazis) and who interacts with the children (including a teen girl who is also a narrator) of a high-level Nazi propagandist until their ultimate downfall. Super, super depressing.
Blutch, Peplum: Weird graphic novel retelling events from the Satyricon, sort of. An exiled Roman finds a woman frozen in ice, falls in love with her (ick), then tries to get back home as disasters befall everyone around him.
Harton Pushwagner, Soft City: Graphic novel in childlike style about a world of identical white families, with the men all going to work at the same time for the same Soft corporation and the women all going shopping at the same time, until the day ends and they take a pill to sleep just as they took a pill to wake. More Brave New World than 1984, though there are screens everywhere showing terrible things. Graphic novels for adults are depressing, guys.
Nicole Claveloux, The Green Hand and Other Stories: French comics from the 60s, about fantastical happenings to ordinary people. Not enough narrative payoff for me.
K.J. Charles, An Unseen Attraction: Clem, who runs a boarding house for his rich half-brother, falls in love with one of his lodgers, a man who stuffs and mounts animals as his profession. Although the love is mutual, barriers include Clem’s non-neurotypicality and one of the other lodgers, an alcoholic clergyman who Clem’s brother forces him to tolerate. Clem’s Indian mother only contributes to his half-brother’s hatred of him—Clem was conceived when his half-brother’s mother was dying, and he’s been raised to think of himself as an embarrassment. When the clergyman is killed, it seems that family secrets may endanger both Clem and his lover Rowley.
K.J. Charles, A Fashionable Indulgence: Another Edwardian gay romance with recurring characters in which a newly found potential heir to a fortune, who has a radical political past (and to some extent, present), is tutored in upper-class ways by a dandy with a tragic past. The parties are relatively open about their feelings for one another, and Charles has created a small society where m/m relationships are plausibly an open secret despite the threat of flogging or jail if discovered by the general public. The barriers are Julius’s war-related trauma and Harry’s fear of being found out/disinherited, and more specifically the dangerous-in-many-ways demands of his bigoted grandfather and the investigations of one of their social rivals. Harry’s lack of interest in politics was relatively unsympathetic to me.
K.J. Charles, A Seditious Affair: Another Edwardian gay romance with recurring characters, overlapping in time period with A Fashionable Indulgence. Silas is a publisher of seditiously democratic pamphlets, and also the dom of a Tory whose name he doesn’t know but with whom he has excellent political discussions after the sex. He’s understanding about the Tory’s need for pain—much more so than of his political opinions—and wishes for a fuller relationship with the man. Except then the man turns out to be part of His Majesty’s Government dedicated to extirpating sedition. Duty and passion collide! While the characters are in difficult positions, I thought Silas had a very good point when he (among others) noted that the Tory’s sexual practices broke the very law he purported to believe must be rigorously upheld. Dominic’s self-hatred was focused mostly on his need for pain, not his internalized homophobia as such—Charles seems very careful to avoid that in main characters, leaving the sexual (and racial) slurs for others. Silas even fumbles his way into requiring the use of safewords, without learning it from any community. It is interesting that even this little pocket of they’re-all-gay fantasy gentleman can’t exist without classism, which many of her main characters do partake in even as others in the narrative rebuke them for it. If you want an Edwardian romance, even an idealized one, that seems to be the price.
K.J. Charles, Think of England: Archie Curtis, who lost part of his hand and his military career in a training accident, is investigating the source of that accident when he gets into a very compromising situation with Daniel Da Silva, a Jew who takes pride in his flamboyance. Given the late-19th-century high-class England setting, this is somewhat problematic, especially since it turns out that Archie might be queer too. Lovely use of the trope of the strong-brave-honest guy meeting the smart-slippery-observant guy and making them both better. Historic-typical language and homophobia.
K.J. Charles, A Gentleman’s Position: I read too many of these at once! Part of an intertwined set of narratives about m/m couples in Edwardian England. Richard is in love with his valet who is also his right-hand man where intrigue is concerned, but is convinced that it would be abuse to act on his attraction, however reciprocated, because of their difference in position. And you know what, he’s right—this is not my kind of power kink, so I had trouble with the justifications (which included that the valet knew his own mind very well, and that Richard was really being a snob and thinking that the job of a valet was inherently demeaning, which he was too, but that didn’t make him wrong about the power disparity). Fortunately there was also a lot of plot that involved needing the valet back to take care of an incipient scandal over revealing Richard’s set’s homosexuality, from which I took the lesson that corrupt and unjust systems corrupt and make unjust even relatively sympathetic participants like Richard and his coterie.
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Sad but true.