by Matt Fagan
-loopdistro.com
Welcome to the internet home of Love, a serial comic about the adventures of Jack and Pokie. Follow the story of these two boys in love, as they battle the forces of poverty, prejudice, and boredom (but mostly poverty) in the fair city of Chicago.
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(This is not really a sales transaction. The money is essentially a donation which covers the cost of production and postage. There is no profit involved.)
October 24, 2004 Update:
Love vol. 3 is available now! Following a minor technical mishap, the delay is over and the third issue is hitting the stands. And finally, a handful of preview episodes are up and running on the web site, so whet your appetite and then spend those hard-earned dollars on your very own copy!
May 26, 2005 Update:
I've just added four new comics to the web site, and you can expect more in the near future! After completing Love vol. 3, I took some time off to work on the all-new thirteenth issue of my zine, Meniscus, and maybe just gain a bit of distance and perspective on the ongoing Love project. Recently, I've been in touch with the editor of 3rd Coast Press, which is one of those free, left-wing newspapers occasionally published here in Chicago. He seems pretty keen on starting to run Love in his newspaper, and I'm excited about the opportunity. The one thing that has always troubled me about self-publishing is the crippling inability to really utilize temporally relevant material, because if I draw a comic about something happening in the local or national news it will probably lose all of its punch by the time my comic sees the light of day. I'm hoping to run several early episodes of Love to familiarize the audience with my characters, and then allow myself to slip in some brand-new comics that might really matter to Chicago readers in 2005.
Another interesting challenge is that the newspaper is a standard tabloid size, affording me the chance to work in a larger format. Already I have created an episode of Love that makes full use of the tabloid size, and I may preview it here on this web site in the coming weeks. However, a new issue of 3rd Coast Press has yet to be released since I struck my deal with them, so all of this is just hopeful conjecture at this point. Stay tuned for more updates though, and keep reading comics!
October 22, 2005 Update:
Well, I seem to have let these updates lie fallow for too long. For a while, I was waiting for more information about Third Coast Press, which apparently went to a completely on-line publication schedule as soon as I made my arrangement with them. So I guess that my big plan has gone belly up, and you'll never see Love in its pages... because it doesn't have pages anymore. Alas.
In the meantime, I have pressed on with the comics. After taking another hiatus at the end of the summer to publish Meniscus #14, I'm throwing myself full-bore into the task of completing Love volume 4. The plot has largely coalesced and I'm about 25 pages into the project and the end - though not particularly near - is in sight.
Hopefully soon, after my new copy of PhotoShop has arrived and been installed, I'll be adding some fresh samples of the upcoming issue to this site. Until then, you'll just have to use those fertile imaginimations of yours.
January 22, 2006 Update:
We're almost there! After taking some time off around Christmas, I'm back at it with 35 pages of vol. 4 completed. The rest of the book has already been outlined and you can expect the project to be finished in another couple of months (quite possibly sooner, but you never know. I do have a job and all.)
In the mean time, go buy yourself a copy of Punk Planet number 71, the one with Miranda July on the cover. If you turn to page 52 you'll discover an
interview with yours truly, discussing Pokie and Jack, and why gay culture sucks.
In the third volume of Love, Pokie takes a story from his ongoing memoirs and publishes it as a zine. No portion of the text was reproduced in the comic itself, but Jack does describe the zine � it tells a story about when Pokie ran away to New York City to pursue a career in stand-up comedy, and how Jack went there to find him.
At last, Meniscus Enterprises can reveal that the title of the zine is Boring to the Punchline, and it�s available here for the very first time.
I actually wrote this story about eight years ago, mostly in the moving truck between Portland and Chicago. When I decided to integrate the story into the plot of Love, it made sense to let Pokie to tell it his own way. So I published it the way I thought Pokie would have done, and only his name appears on the zine itself.
This zine (and, I imagine, other stories that follow) will be an important part of the ongoing story of Jack and Pokie, but since this is his very first publication it seemed only fair to let him get some honest feedback. So with the help of editor Davida Gypsy Breier, I sent a few copies of Boring to the Punchline out along with the regular stacks of zines that were going out to be reviewed by the staff of Xerography Debt.
Thus far, only one response has come back. But, it was a terrific review (and by that, I don�t mean that it was unconditionally positive). There was plenty of material to work with, and in volume four of Love, Pokie gets to read his very first zine review, and respond to it just like a real author.
Which brings us to the next new item available�
Greatly delayed but hopefully worth the wait, Love volume 4 is finally completed! Clocking in at sixty pages, it's the biggest adventure yet! Jack finally gets his due in this issue, when he embarks on a massive art project that will require not only all of his own efforts to bring it to life, but those of Pokie and Melba too.
Not to be outdone, Pokie has a project of his own. This one seems to put Jason's ass on the line, but Pokie is the one who ends up in jail. Again. It's all leading up to a whizz-bang conclusion that features unexpected guests, a three-act stage musical, and a same-sex wedding that starts in an abandoned warehouse and ends on a spaceship. Intrigued?
Please keep writing, and read more comics!
visit the Gay Comics List, ya big homo!