CarnalNation

Now, I love me some fag porn. As usual, I've given a lot of thought to—why? Well, I do identify with some seriousness as a lady faggot diva queer kinky slut so it follows I have unpredictable pornographic interests. I also perform in, discuss, and consume a hell of a lot of porn, and we over-stimulated jaded sex workers need a new kinda kick every so often.

I find the uninhibited, uncomplicated lust of two horny men extremely appealing (not to mention the fact that I identify with it). It may very well have something to do with that particular coupling—two cissexual men—being one I will never actually be a part of (though lord knows I get myself in the middle as often as I can). There is strength, and danger, and a sense of rebellion and creativity and emphasis on pleasure in the very nature of gay male sex. And I really, really love cock, which usually plays a central, disproportionately large, throbbing role in gay porn. Or maybe it's the inversion of the standard explanation for the appeal to straight men of lesbian porn.

Dale Lazarov thinks about gay porn a great deal, probably even more than me, seeing as he is the reigning king of the genre in comics, his chosen smut medium. In his own words, he is experiencing a renaissance as the producer of "chic hardcovers of gay comics filth." Lazarov writes scenes without any words; a daring and unique experiment in comics of any kind, or porn of any kind. He evokes a world of male sex that, like male lust, often comes very quickly to the point.

The Chicago-based Lazarov and I spoke via email correspondence about his latest, Nightlife, illustrated by Bastian Jonsson. For a writer whose best-known work doesn't use words at all, Lazarov is exceptionally articulate about comics, gay sex, and the creative process.

PART ONE

One Big honking title; Homoerotic Greek mythology; character beats and sexual choreography; 70s/80s Marvel fight scenes as sex scenes.

Can you explain a little about the credit you give yourself instead of "writer," which is "scripts/edits"?

I am responsible for story, script, the editing of the art through multiple stages, the agenting, the marketing and the publicity for the books. Since that would be one big honking and confusing title, I am happy to just give myself a credit of "script/edits: Dale Lazarov" on the title page of the books.

Considering all the hats you wear, I'd like to hear about your writing process. What's it like working with the visual artists on a comic piece like this?

Basically, you work within the boundaries of what you want to write and what the artist wants to draw. I was able to convince Amy Colburn to draw Manly by writing the script for the first story in the book specifically to entice her and she loved the other two I wrote after she signed the collaborative.

Let me use a recent example to give you a better idea of how things work. Bastian Jonsson, Nightlife's illustrator, mentioned in passing that he has a college degree in antiquity studies, and it's too bad that our publisher doesn't publish fantasy or historical-themed comics anymore since he could use that background in a gay erotic comic. He also hinted that he would collaborate on another book with me.

So I pitched him a set of stories for Nightlife, including one that would be slice-of-life but set in a location that could use all sorts of allusions to ancient Greek design with protagonists that are contemporary equivalent two characters from Greek myth. He loved the idea and it was now up to me to make it work as a gay erotic story and a comics script.

I spent about a week thinking about how the location could generate the story, how the contemporary gay guys would reflect their Greek myth models, and then it hit me that the location gave me the perfect means to introduce both of the characters with a great deal of "wow factor." Once I figured out how to introduce them, I knew who they were and their relationship to each other and how that informed the way they interacted and had sex.

As for the scripts, I write in full comics script style. I only script what is essential to the story: the narrative design (the size of the panels in relationship to each other and their sequence and what they focus on visually), the character moments shown through action, expression and gesture, the sexual choreography, etc, that are important to the feel of the story. The rest I leave to the illustrator to fill in. I imagine the page visually and write a description of the page as articulately as I can. The artist is free to interpret and change the panel breakdowns in the script but I ask them to keep the character beats and the spirit of the sexual choreography.

The next step of the editing process is the page layouts. If something—the storytelling, the body language—isn't clear or evocative in the layouts of a page, I ask artists to revise it so it reads clearly without dialogue or captions (since the comics are "silent") and strikes an emotional or erotic note that I think needs to be there. Bastian very rarely needed notes on layouts as he is fantastically dynamic about how he designs the page and frames a moment in a panel. It may not be apparent to someone who hasn't read them, but the slightly-exaggerated dynamic, exciting use of foreshortened or elongated perspective in his art is SO Marvel Comics from the 70s and 80s; what people in that period used for fight scenes, Bastian uses for sex scenes. And that's just brilliant and delightful, as far as I am concerned.

Then comes the full, detailed drawing, and if notes need to be given about the rendering of the expression of the characters or the anatomy, this is the time to do so. Bastian draws on computer so revisions are easy for him and, in any event, he did not require many.