Boxing Julian Review

The other day I had the pleasure of reading Boxing Julian.  It's a graphic novel by David Cantero, that's is being distributed in English by Class Comics.  I found the book to be extremely moving,  I actually had to step away from the PC for a moment after finishing the PDF, I was so overwhelmed with emotion.  About a half an hour later, after soaking in a hot tub, I read it again.  Unlike David previous works, such as Keys, Dick 22 cm, or the video game Super Gay, Julian doesn't have any kind of jovial tone to it.  No, it's sombre all the way through.  It's one of the few (if not the only) erotic comics I have ever read that dared to paint the grim reality many of us have faced and continue to face as gay men in a serious manner.  Sadly for me, Julians story hit very close to home.

Julian is a pro boxer, who has had a very troubled childhood.  Through the constant verbal and physical abuse of his father, Julian has learned to repress his gay side. The scary part is, even though his father is long dead, Julian still relives his torments, to the point where he gets lost in his memories and fights back against the world around him.  This causes him to lash out at the ones he loves and become even more aggressive in the ring.  Julian knows what he is and although his pride won't allow anyone else to know, his hormones constantly betray him.  He jerks off to his own beauty, forces anal sex on his sweet as candy girlfriend and various other not so straight acts, until one day his repression leads him to commit an act so heinous, it robs him of someone that could very well have changed his life for the better forever.

The truth is the book didn't convince me that Julian is a bad guy.  If anything I felt an overwhelming amount of empathy for the character.  The fact that he is still fighting against his past makes think, he probably didn't commit the horrible (though justified) crime we see him committing in his flashbacks.  His ego will never let him be the man he wants to be.  He will never know true love...never really be happy.  He will continue to pretend to something he is not.  All I can see is a life of bitterness and abuse ahead for him.

How often is it that we see men like him?  I worked at a company where no less then 5 of the upper managers were if you will pardon the expression, flammers with families.  I saw them give each other looks and looks to the handsomer men at the company.  I've seen it at school, online, within my friends and even while dating.  Society and our families can sure play a number on us. We to often allow ourselves to be trapped in these lives, so we can integrate better with society.  We do so until the day when we finally give into our true nature and risk it all falling apart.  As a child of abuse myself, I can at least say that I buried the hatchet after the passing of the abuser.  Julian was not so lucky.  I know what it's like to hide what I am to protect what little I have in life.  To live in unnecessary fear.  I can sympathize with him.  Julians got too much going on in the public eye, (way more then your average closet case will ever have) for him to risk anything.   And you know this is all going to make his crash all the worse one day sooner, or later.

Boxing Julian is an amazing comic that serves as a warning not only to gay men, but to society as a whole.   It's one of the few gay pornographic titles I have recommended to even my straight friends, because it's erotic elements never take center stage away from it's story and message.  This is what you do to us and this  is what we do to ourselves and others in return. I give this title a 10/10.