Yaoi911

Not too long ago I found Yaoi911, a website feature two pretty good comic series; Artifice, a sci-fi strip set in a Bladerunner-esque world of artificial humans and outer world colonies; and The Young Protectors, a pretty standard super-hero book. Both series happen to be gay-friendly.

The Young Protectors features a young hero who is afraid of coming out, and finds an unlikely shoulder to lean on (among other things) in the team's main super villain, who also happens to be gay. The relationship between the two is rather touching and the fact that it is written by a gay man tends to accentuate just how homoerotic most mainstream comics really are.

Artifice has a stronger gay story line and in the first bit, the the two main characters quickly become lovers with pre-and post coital scenes. I had to admit that this made me a bit uncomfortable at first, but then I realized something: if the plotline had featured a standard man/woman dynamic, or even two woman, I wouldn't have gotten uncomfortable, so I forced myself to keep reading. I don't happen to be gay and when I looked at those pictures in that context, it realized that there was nothing in them to make me uncomfortable. They are drawn to attract a certain kind of reader, just like a mainstream character like Psyclocke is drawn to attract another kind of reader. I don't happen to be part of that demographic, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a decent sci-fi comic book.

I don't really know where I am going with this. Mostly I just wanted to say that you should all check out the Yaoi911 comics, and that it is a good thing to challenge your boundaries every once and a while.