Credit: Johanna the Mad
Ladies, Gentlemen, and those in-between, I am very excited.
“Why are you so excited Devin,” you ask? Well, because of a recent announcement about a fencing comic. Yes, that’s right. I’m excited because someday in the future I’ll be able to read a fencing comic.
But let me explain further.
Fence is a new comic franchise published by BOOM! Studios that was announced recently. It’ll be the brainchild of author C.S. Pacat and artist Johanna the Mad.
Now, I was already excited for the topic of the story but when I realized that I knew Johanna the Mad, I was even more excited. See, I’ve been following Johanna the Mad on Tumblr for possibly a year now. She is a wonderful artist who creates great queer art of multiple fandoms like Harry Potter and Voltron: Legendary Defender. As such, I already know that the artwork will be beautiful and the story queer friendly.
And on that note, it’s been announced that there will be a gay storyline intermixed within the athletic/competition plot going on with the rest of the story.
If you need some further explanation to imagine how the story would work in your head, imagine a gay Rocky or imagine last year’s anime Yuri!!! On Ice. If you don’t know, Yuri!!! On Ice was an anime from last year about figure skaters and in the middle of all the competition on ice was a wonderful depiction of a gay romance.
Yuri!!! On Ice ended up celebrating as a mass hit with a large audience and fanbase and it seems that Fence’s author and creator were one of them. In fact, the genre of sports anime and manga (Japanese comic books) were what inspired this Western comic.
C.S. Pacat talked to the L.A. Times and said, “Even though it’s just an emerging genre here, it’s a super popular genre over there. Because I fell in love with sports comics in Japan, it just made sense to make the best fencer on the team Japanese.”
I hope that after reading this some of you are just as excited as me, or at least interested, and that you look forward to reading the first installment in this comic in November.
If you need more convincing, here are some images created by the wonderful Johanna the Mad (all credit belongs to her).
Devin, I work for the
Hi Devin, I work for the publisher of FENCE. Thanks for the write-up! I'd like to send you a copy of the finished product when it comes out in a few weeks. Please send me an email. I am @melcaylo on Twitter.