Black Wade: The Wild Side Of Love (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
This book popped up under one of Amazon's "recommended also" features. I hesitated to buy it since it seemed a little expensive. However, I found that it was well worth the price. "Black Wade" is a gay romance graphic novel - similar to hard yaoi in theme and tone. And I do mean HARD yaoi, this book contains very graphic sex scenes, including noncon at the beginning. A typical yaoi manga runs about $12.95 to as much as $15.95 for a trade paperback in black and white. This is not only a hardcover edition, it is also FULL COLOR throughout like standard graphic novels. So the higher price is actually reasonable. There is no dust jacket, but the cover image is printed right on the binding. It has 80 pages, but the pages are larger format so readers get about as much content as a manga, perhaps a tad bit less. Also, the production values are high quality. The paper is heavier stock than normal graphic novels, and very bright showcasing the brilliant coloring.Art is subjective, but I found the artwork here to be excellent, and extremely well done. Clean lines and good proportions on all characters and the text was carefully placed to retain clarity but not block any of the imagery. I found no typos, and the language fit with the period nature of the story. I enjoy yaoi, but sometimes the characters look a little feminine. Not so here, these are "manly men." Right down to having hair on their chests (and other areas ;-) Still, they were attractively drawn. It's a pirate story, so there's action outside the sex as well and the ending leaves room for more without cliffhanging.I enjoyed the novel so much, I went looking for the publisher's site to see if there would be more from the authors. No news yet, but I really hope they do a sequel. Highly recommended to hard yaoi fans, and M/M fans looking for something new to try. This was my first graphic novel. I must say: I don't think it's really my thing. I'm not saying it was bad because it absolutely wasn't. I guess this one was very good for graphic novel standards. You can't really expect an elaborate plot with these kind of books, so it all kind of jumped from hate to rape to love. Another reviewer commented on the characters looking Disney-ish and I must agree. Although I've never seen Disney characters in porn poses. The drawings were hot though and there was lots and lots of attention to detail. With a little a exaggeration here and there. And I'm not only hinting at the amount of fruit packed in those tights... Black Wade and Lieutenant Wilkins sure made the Spartans from 300 look like slackers! All in all: a new experience for me. I'm bumping this up to 4 stars.
What do You think about Black Wade: The Wild Side Of Love (2009)?
Great artwork with LOTS of detail !
—bryan
So great and sexy and just amazing!
—tanyacastro76
