For the love of bara

I’m a big fan of the queer art site Future Shipwreck. They’ve featured some of my favourite artists, such as Christopher Schulz, creator of Pinups (NSFW), and the now infamous Seth zine.

One of the editors/contributors, Graham Kolbeins, recently posted an homage to a lesser-known genre of Japanese comics known as bara. Unlike the better-known gay stories told in yaoi – which is written predominantly for women- bara is a form of manga where the stories told are about and for gay men. Although the images and storylines are often erotically charged, there is also, as Kolbeins notes, a sense of tenderness in between the sex.