Dale Lazarov has established himself as one of the world’s leading creators of erotic gay comics.
Ahead of his appearance at Los Angeles Comic Con, I caught up with Lazarov to talk about the men that fuel his imagination.
Your style of storytelling doesn’t include any dialogue. Does wordless storytelling make the images more erotic for the reader?
Wordless storytelling in comics is more immersive. People dwell on the image and read the facial expression and body language - imagine trying to do that with the average porn clip with the sound turned down.
What appeals to you about telling stories through comics?
Ultimately, it’s a function of comics as a narrative form that it can present and represent the intimate and the subjective experience of sexuality. Pin-ups, photos and video clips can’t as they depend on the spectacular or objective for its hotness. Fan art depends on the viewer to view it with the borrowed hotness of a context of another medium. The gay erotic fan art of, say, Tom Hardy fucking Venom, depends on the presence of your fandom for the intimacy of that coupling, and if you haven’t seen the movie you don’t have it.
Comics are able to represent both the intimate and the spectacular and we have the complete freedom to not endorse toxic masculinity or homonormative conventions while representing a spectrum of masculinity, colour, age, fetish, and relationship styles.
The men that feature in your stories generally seem to be fairly every-day kind of guys. Is that a deliberate aesthetic that you’re going for?
I just like a diversity of men, and we have the opportunity to represent them. They are erotically idealised, but they’re still within human possibility. The men in my work are more every-day guys compared to Japanese Bara manga or butch daddy videos - things get very samey in those.
I’d love to collaborate on a gay erotic graphic novel featuring two femmes - just to go against the grain of masc4masc culture that dominates gay erotic comics. I haven’t yet found an artist for it.
Which are some of your favourite stories that you’ve created?
Greek Love and Peacock Punks are the most shameless fuck-fests that I’ve written. Manly was the first book that crystallised the sophistication of what we can do in comics that no one else has tried to do, and Carnal shows that we can still do it in a collection of three short stories even though we’ve moved to single-story graphic novels.
What do you hope that people feel when reading your stories?
A sense that being gay is wholesome, that gay art can be smart, that gay sex is possible at any age, for any colour, for any body-type, and that same-sex love depends on the context of a relationship, whether it’s congenial, romantic or adventuresome.
What are some of the current projects that you’re working on?
The hardcover of Adversaries!, with art by TJ Wood, debuts at Los Angeles Comic Con later in October, and it’s about a grudge fuck between a superhero and a supervillain - with a twist. March sees the hardcover of Comrades with art by Enrique Nieto, which was inspired by unintentionally homoerotic Sino-Soviet propaganda art and by Putin’s ban on gay culture in Russia. Next Fall, we’ll see the hardcover release of Tapstuds, our first sci-fi gay erotic comic, with art by Dustin Craig.
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Not really my thing, but I can tell it’s pretty good. Really cool that this is at something as mainstream and significant as Comic Con has become.
Just to note but this is NOT “THE” Comic Con that gets all the national media attention. That’s officially “San Diego Comic Con.” This is a kind of “spin-off” that started as “Comikaze” back in 2011. This is fairly “mainstream” but it’s not nearly as “significant” as THE original SD Comic Con. (Also, THE Comic Con takes place in July.)
Good talent
I remember going to leather bars when I was under age and seeing the Tom of Finland art on the walls. Got me sooooo turned on. This post fails in comparison, but is an eager homage to time when men where men.