STEERS & QUEERS

December is generally a pretty slow news month in the real world, unless they're shooting Ceausescus. In the world of comics, it's a dead month. The industry quite fittingly makes most of its major announcements in what would normally be regarded as the silly season. In December, the majority of comics readers are too overdrawn and overstretched to worry about adding another order to their pull list.

Yet for that very reason, if you want to cause a stir, December can be a pretty good month to do it in, because it's so damn quiet. And of course, those perennial publicists at Marvel always want to cause a stir, hence the major news push behind RAWHIDE KID.

The story's been teased for a few months now, but earlier this week it was made official. The Rawhide Kid, one of Marvel's classic Western heroes, is being re-imagined as a homo on the range. In a series launching in February, upstart writer Ron Zimmerman and veteran artist John Severin (who co-created the character with Stan Lee) will make plain (if not quite explicit) the Rawhide Kid's sexuality.

On the one hand, the announcement has met with horror from conservative quarters. Naturally, there are those who object to the queering of an established character, which is understandable, if not entirely reasonable, given that comic continuity is hardly sacrosanct these days - plus, of course, closeted cowboys are hardly unheard of, and both Severin and Lee expressly support the idea.

There are also those who object purely on 'moral' grounds, as if putting homosexuals in works of fiction somehow grants us a degree of recognition not already earned by our actual, you know, existence.

On the other hand, the announcement has also met with resistance from liberals. Some have dismissed it as trivia. Others are notably distrustful of Marvel, and fear an approach that could do more harm than good.

Talking to the New York Post, Zimmerman claimed he wanted the character to be "empowering". Yet the article also indicates that the character won't directly address his sexuality - which presumably means he won't be seen in a relationship - and that his sexuality be expressed primarily through innuendo and remarks about fashion.

It wasn't a groundbreaking approach in ARE YOU BEING SERVED. It's not likely to be received with gratitude today.

The book is a couple of months away, of course, but everyone feels fit to pass judgement now because of the sheer weight of publicity already out there. Which is exactly what Marvel wants, because Marvel learned from one of the great homosexuals that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. RAWHIDE KID has become another publicity stunt from the company that loves publicity stunts - the company that only ever seems to sign exclusive deals with people who have their own entries on the Internet Movie Database. (Whatever did happen to that Freddie Prinze Jr SPIDER-MAN comic, by the way? And when will Howard Mackie be making a touching teen romance flick with Tara Reid?)

'His sexuality will be expressed through innuendo and remarks about fashion.' But I suspect this isn't just a stunt. I think, much like the U Decide contest, which pitched three Marvel titles head-to-head for the biggest audience share, this is a publicity experiment.

I think Marvel is trying to discover if the rewards of selling to the gay market outweigh the dangers of provoking the puritans, who could force the publisher to lose advertising revenue. I think Marvel is giving this title as big a launch as possible because it wants this to be a test case. Consider the approach:

It's not a superhero book, so there's less geek stigma.

It's by a writer whose name, while no particular recommendation among those who already read comics, has some kind of cachet outside of the established audience.

It's about a gay cowboy, for heaven's sake!

And it's not part of the everyday Marvel universe. If the book fails, Marvel can bury the character and never speak of him again.

So ultimately, it doesn't matter whether RAWHIDE KID is good or funny or genuinely empowering. The important thing will be to see if it's burned in the Midwest or brandished in West Hollywood. That's why Joe Quesada is on CNN telling us that it's a story about acceptance. He's courting queer currency and provoking Pat Robertson. The comic doesn't actually matter. This is all about the noise.

For that reason, RAWHIDE KID might yet be the most important queer comic ever published.

TWO TO TANGO

Last month I was raving about the European comic scene and the way a few of the diverse and exciting works produced on the Continent are oh-so-slowly seeping onto the Anglophone market. However, it's not just Europe and Japan that produce top-notch comics in strange foreign tongues. Some of my favourite work of the past year has come from a pair of Argentinean creators I'd never previously encountered; Carlos Trillo and Domingo Mandrafina.

The first work of theirs to come to my attention was THE BIG HOAX, published by Dark Horse Comics and Strip Art Feature's laudable Venture imprint. It's a sleazy noir tale about politics and mythmaking, in which a dishevelled but decent ex-cop finds himself on the run from a truly vicious killer when he becomes entangled with the 'blessed' and untouchable virgin of La Colonia. There's also an excellent sequel, THE IGUANA, which explores the brutal life and terrible legend of the monstrous assassin introduced in the first book.

They're exquisite works. Trillo has a typically Catholic feel for the strange and eccentric, and a vivid knack for capturing the sort of moral dissembling that seems characteristic of South American politics. Mandrafina has a fine and delicate line, and a skill for distortion that seems absolutely natural. His approach to structure is both experimental and accomplished.

As you might expect for two creators of such apparent skill, they're not new to all this. Mandrafina's been working in comics since the early 70s. Trillo's been in the business since the early 1960s. They've been working together since 1979. As I understand it, they're very highly regarded back home. Most of us just haven't heard of them because so little of their work is available in English, and what is available has received comparatively little notice.

It's time for that to change. THE BIG HOAX and THE IGUANA are two remarkable works that would find a fan in anyone who enjoys movies like TOUCH OF EVIL or THE BIG SLEEP, and the more of you that go out and read them, the more chance I might get to read some of these gentlemen's other works. So go on, go check them out. Do it for me.

Of course, these books are only the tip of the iceberg. Argentina clearly has a whole wealth of talent that the Anglophone audience has barely begun to explore. Artists like Eduardo Risso, Marcelo Frusin and Leandro Fernandez owe their talents to a background in Argentine comics that currently lie beyond our reach. Perhaps Argentina needs its own AKIRA before we'll ever get a decent education about what Argentina has to offer. Or perhaps I'll just have to learn Spanish.

MAKE MINE OLAV

I was delighted to quite accidentally discover yesterday that Olav Beemer has his own comics website. It's mostly in Dutch - apart from the slogan and the navigation tools, for some reason - but it looks like it's probably quite well organised and informative. (There are columns every Woensdag, and reviews every Zondag.) If you read Dutch, it may well be worth checking out.

If you don't know who Olav Beemer is, you've probably never spent much time reading letters pages. Olav is one of the all time legends of the fine art of letterhacking - the practise of writing in to just about every comic you could find an address for. He belongs in the hall of fame alongside such men of letters as Uncle Elvis, the late, great TM Maple, and Kurt Busiek. (Whatever happened to that guy?)

Letters pages aren't as common these days, and the internet has rendered the great unsung art something of an irrelevance. Still, it's oddly reassuring to see that Olav is still out there, doing what he loves and adapting to the times. Comics just wouldn't be the same without Olav Beemer.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

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