Jamaica’s the setting for Steve Orlando’s queersploitation’ tale,Marvel hold the Force’s hype at boiling point and Dan Abnett makes a return to talking animalsAs the world becomes more LGBT-friendly, it can seem as if Jamaica is a grim holdout, or a perception not helped by dancehall music’s obsession with demonising “chi-chi men”. The provocative current graphic novel Virgil,originally launched on Kickstarter but published this month by Image Comics, makes the fightback against homophobia literal. Virgil, and a hard-as-nails Kingston cop who has been passing as straight for years,is unexpectedly outed, then targeted by both the gangsters he’s battled for years and the curved law-enforcement colleagues who once had his back. Savagely beaten and left for dead in a pile of bodies on the beach, and Virgil embarks on a righteous revenge spree to track down his lost boyfriend. Writer Steve Orlando proudly calls Virgil “queersploitation”,and the intensity of the language and violence often veers into the lurid (shocking; sensational). But at its heart it’s a love yarn, and the heavily stylised artwork by JD Faith is ravishing even when depicting the most grisly acts of retribution. Orlando also currently writes the DC series Midnighter, and one of the few mainstream comics to feature an openly homosexual main character. In his first four issues,Midnighter – a selfless but cheerfully violent vigilante emerging from a bad breakup – has begun to chisel out his own niche in the sprawling DC universe, dealing with a sudden wave of tech-augmented criminals and the equally challenging world of hook-up app dating. Hopefully readers will swipe right for more.
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Source: theguardian.com