Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It

Edited by Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd & Graham Kolbeins. Published by Fantagraphics. 

Softcover, 280 pages, B&W, 2014.

This is a groundbreaking manga (Japanese comics) anthology by and about gay men, put together by an award-winning team.

Big, burly, lascivious, and soft around the edges: welcome to the hypermasculine world of Japanese gay manga. Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It is the first English-language anthology of its kind: an in-depth introduction to nine of the most exciting comic artists making work for a gay male audience in Japan. Jiraiya, Seizoh Ebisubashi, and Kazuhide Ichikawa are three of the irresistibly seductive, internationally renowned artists featured in Massive, as well as Gengoroh Tagame, the subject of The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: Master of Gay Erotic Manga. Get to know each of these artists intimately, through candid interviews, photography, context-providing essays, illustrations, and manga. Massive also includes the groundbreaking, titillating work of gay manga luminaries Takeshi Matsu, Fumi Miyabi, Inu Yoshi, Gai Mizuki, and comic essayist Kumada Poohsuke.

"Here's a book I want to give the highest recommendation to, but for very different reasons from those I would usually highlight for an amazingly effective collection of male-on-male erotic art — which this happens to be. But it is also fascinating and incredibly informative. The book's sections are not only beautiful, intelligent, sometimes humorous and always sexy as hell. They are also important, for what the artists have to say in the accompanying texts and essays about themselves and about the art they make. This is a wonderful collection that every reader and writer should read. It's a knockout on so many different levels!" — Samuel R. Delany - (author of Bread & Wine, Hogg, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders)

"Massive is amazing. Bigger and bolder than Tom of Finland, this manga porn transcends any genre, and stakes its claim on unbridled and unapologetic masculinity. Funny and beautiful, erotic and unworldly, it's a blessing to have this uniquely Japanese subculture now available in the West." — Andrew Sullivan - founding editor, The Dish

"Massive indeed accurately describes not only the multiple manifestations of homosexual desire, particularly in Japanese culture, but also a common aesthetic throughout all of these artists' drawings…; hopefully this anthology will please ardent fans and raise the awareness that will stoke the new talent and audiences necessary to bara manga's longevity." — Alexander Cavaluzzo - Hyperallergic

"…[T]he new anthology Massive helps to fill a gap in Americans' understanding of the vital, complex culture of manga. … The level of drawing in these erotic fantasies is extremely high, sometimes rivaling the work of the iconic Western porno artist Tom of Finland." — Charles Solomon - Indiewire

"…Massive is just that: massively hot, massively entertaining and massively informative." — Tom Cardamone - Lambda Literary