STICKY situations

Like most gay porn, STICKY is short on plot and heavy on fucking. Unlike those adult videos, however, there's no bad acting. Instead, the comic-book medium allows STICKY's fictional coterie of hot, hung and versatile duos to run wild with their libidos in ways that would make their real-life counterparts flaccid with envy. Inevitable exaggerations include impossibly well-endowed dudes who come like machine guns.

STICKY is the brainchild of Chicagoan Dale Lazarov, and his Toronto-based cocreator, Steve MacIsaac, who, together debuted the slim comic in January and recently completed issue #3. Lazarov handles the concepts and storyboarding while MacIsaac draws. The premise of STICKY is relatively simple: Two hot men cross paths, perhaps at a party or street fair, exchange furtive glances and then retreat to the bedroom for several hours (or several dozen panels, as it were) of hot man-on-man action. When MacIsaac broached the idea for the project (the two met on a comics message board), Lazarov was hesitant. "At first I said no, since I'd never really written porn. The next day I had the idea for 'Hold On,' the story in STICKY #1, and it basically wrote itself. When Steve sent some character sketches back and he said he loved my scripts' combination of carnality and sweetness, I knew we were onto something," Lazarov says.

Carnality and sweetness is exactly the combination that makes STICKY a real standout in the genre. Readers will find the material is both erotically charged and unabashedly romantic. "Lots of gay culture is sex positive, but emotionally stupid," Lazarov laments. "We try to make gay porn...where sex is healthy, fun, doesn't protest its 'normalcy' or 'realness,' shows that tenderness and hard fucking are not mutually exclusive, and connects people."

In STICKY, the men are large, beefy guys well beyond their twenties who don't conform to notions of top/bottom role-playing. While it would be easy to politicize these choices, Lazarov distinctly downplays them. "There are plenty of representations of gay-male masculinities. We just think it's hot to see sweet, burly guys meet and have sex in a way that reveals their relationship to each other. There's no implied critique in our choices." As to the obvious (but refreshing) fiction that all characters in STICKY are versatile in top/bottom role-playing, Lazarov shrugs and says, "It turns us on. I like porn that smiles, like a lot of Tom of Finland comics and a lot of early Colt or Zeus silent-film shorts from the '70s."

It is also noticeable that not a single word of dialogue is written into the stories, a fact that some readers may find difficult to embrace at first. "The stories were written without dialogue or captions since Steve and I wanted to make it very easy to publish the work on an international scale," Lazarov says. "I made this commercial choice an aesthetic challenge; this limitation makes me write fully scripted stories of gestures and actions that reveal character while being erotic."

Lazarov confesses, however, that distribution for erotic comics is tough and says that STICKY has stalled at issue #3 as he and MacIsaac await a hardbound volume of the series to hit shelves this spring. "Comic and erotica fans are devoted and responsive, but comic stores that support queer work are few and far between. Gay bookstores almost exclusively refuse to carry the single issues of STICKY," he says, noting that stores are hesitant because the comic doesn't come from one of their traditional distrbutors.

Hopes for volume two of the series with a possible expansion of the brand remain high, although both men are pursuing solo queer-themed comic-book projects in the meantime. Still, Lazarov doesn't seem overly concerned about STICKY's commercial potential. "We make our comic, first, for ourselves," he says, "and then for gay men and the women who love them."

STICKY is available at Quimby's (1854 W North Ave, 773-342-0910) and Chicago Comics (3244 N Clark St, 773-528-1983). It can also be purchased online at www.lastgasp.com.