Eva

This isn't a book about how to make comics. It's a book about understanding what comics are—and even beyond that, what art is. That may sound pretentious, but it's essential context for understanding how comics can shape the way we perceive sight, sound, language, time... even how we perceive the self. Excellent and comprehensive book. Essential reading for anyone interested in visual art and communication.

As someone who grew up fantasizing about Sam and Frodo, Harry and Cedric, and Kvothe and Bast, I can't imagine a genre more likely to appeal to me than gay fantasy. So when a friend recommended Carry On and I saw the cover sporting its hunky wizard-vampire duo, I said: sign me the fuck up.

What a letdown.

Let's start with the most glaring oversight, to my queer eye: the main character, Simon, has shared a bedroom with a smokin' gay vampire, Baz, for SEVEN. WHOLE ASS. TEENAGE. YEARS. But they somehow despise each other, to the point that even with identical class schedules and a shared room, they go out of their way to avoid and belittle each other.

I don't claim to speak for every gay teen, but in the 2010s at a school where kids carry around wands for fun, there's no way in hell this situation is even remotely plausible.

I get trying to craft sexual tension, but this takes it to such an extreme—they try (repeatedly!) to kill each other—that when the characters actually, finally, acknowledge their love, it comes off as totally inauthentic and stilted. Where is the fallout from the years of antagonism and self-deception? Where is the internal struggle?

After this, when Baz, who “from the first day” realized he was in love with Simon, asks Simon if he ever realized he was gay, Simon's response is “I don't know, I never really thought about it.”

[Mandrake shrieking]

Nope.

Even after the two profess their mutual boner, Simon continues to display remarkable apprehension, and Baz continues to ruthlessly make fun of Simon. (Not in a cute, joking way, but in an “eesh, this relationship is not gonna last long” kinda way.)

Characters are one-dimensional, the writing is cliche, and the plot is predictable. Each chapter—sometimes each sentence—is written from a different character's point of view, but the voices are so indistinct that I had to keep flipping back to remember who the hell is narrating.

Carry On is torn between trying to be a love story and a thriller, and failing at both.

To its merit, I finished the book in 2 days. Like I said. Gay fantasy. Done and done. But by the second half of the book I was skimming to get to Simon and Baz's relationship (all told, two brief kissing scenes and a whole lot of unexplored, internalized homophobia. Literally, at one point a “magick psychiatrist” tells Simon that being gay is “4th or 5th” on his list of issues. Cool message to send queer kids.)

Thank you, next. Don't let straight women write gay stories.