The story was always envisioned as being finite, so I’m very pleased to be able to say that I’m working with Soaring Penguin Press to bring out a collected edition this Autumn. I was really pleased when I met up with the publisher and he had lots of very perceptive insights into the characters and the preoccupations of the story, so I’m confident in working with Soaring Penguin Press that they ‘get it’, which is a really important sense to be getting from a publisher. Particularly when your book is a sort-of coming of age romantic comedy with a backdrop of prostitution and drug abuse.

I’m also working with Zwerchfell Verlag in Germany on a translated edition, but the release date on that isn’t fixed yet because we want to allow the translation process as long as it needs until it’s right. That said, the parts that the translator sent me had me laughing at the right points and he’s got a really good grasp of the characters. He’s the same guy who worked with Lizz Lunney on Ich liebe Katzen und Katzen lieben mich so I’m really happy that it’s in the safe hands of someone with a good ear for humour.

Once release dates are known and once I know details of where your local bookshop should be pointed to to make sure they buy lots of copies, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, this means that the copies I have left of the individual issues are now limited editions, and to celebrate the news that the book is coming out, I’m selling off the remaining stock at £15 for the full set!

All very exciting stuff! I daresay there’ll be more press stuff to follow soon!

This is Eddie, the central protagonist of The Lengths heading to the shower after a workout at the gym. You can pick up a copy of The Lengths from my web shop, http://cutebutsad.bigcartel.com as well as my other creator-owned comics, Badger and The Peckham Invalids.

If you’re after a t-shirt or anything, head to http://www.redbubble.com/people/hardiman for some cute animal pictures and the like! I’m adding more this week.

Finally, I’m at the Queer Zine Fest London this saturday, it’s your last chance to catch me in person this year, so head along to Space Station 65 in Kennington this Saturday between 12 and 7pm. https://www.facebook.com/events/232251613569656/ has details!

“Gay comics blissfully devoid of rainbow paraphernalia.” – Gay Times.

Today, I took delivery of the last issue of The Lengths, the comic I’ve been working on for the last two years. The series runs to just shy of two hundred pages and tells the story of Eddie, who fell out of art school and into the arms of Nelson, a male escort who took him under his wing, then abandoned him. The story starts with Eddie on a date with Dan, his best friend from art school, as Eddie dances around telling Dan what he’s been doing over the couple of years since they last saw one another.

I’d like to say it’s a pretty standard twentysomething coming of age story, the usual tick-list of hotel-room sex for cash, the ketamine overdose in the Rothko room at Tate Modern, the desperately idolising someone and wanting them in you, then being terrified that there’s something of their nature left behind. Normal stuff when you’re growing up in London. As Eddie puts it, it’s a city where any dick you want’s just a click away.

Once I’ve packed up and posted out the first batch of orders (who are all getting a folder pack to keep their comics in and a poster – while stocks last), I want to write a little post about the experience and I’ll sum up what I’ve learned from the process. For now, though, head to http://cutebutsad.bigcartel.com to order your copy!

Both Eddie and I have come a long way since the first issue of The Lengths, and I’m pleased to say that the final issue of The Lengths, including chapters 7 and 8 will be available in October. Pre-ordering options are available now.

The Lengths started out many years ago when I was in the thick of a London scene where sex, drugs and money were passed around far more than I would ever have thought possible. I got caught up in the bizarre, seductive darkness and beauty of it all and found myself finding things that should’t seem normal, normal, like visiting friends in hospital for liver failure or hearing of people dying in clubs or being knifed in drug turf wars. HIV diagnoses became so common as to be something of a joke: “Oh, you’re in the club, now?”

It reached a point where, apart from an incredible core of amazing friends, pretty much everyone I was interacting with was an escort, a dealer, a porn star or an addict. I stopped looking at online porn because it just broke the illusion of it when I kept spotting people I knew or went to the gym with in some fisting sequence or another. I was just amazed and enthralled to be in this strange fairy-tale world of sexual and sensational opportunity.

I felt like a tourist, and like a tourist, I began to document what I saw. I began interviewing escorts and dealers, starting with friends, then moving out to people who’d heard I was doing these interviews and wanted to tell me their stories. The sense of privilege I had at the honesty of the men I spoke to was overwhelming and stopped the first plan I had for the interviews in its tracks. I was writing a play; I had had meetings with the artistic directors of theatres who said it would sell well, but then I felt it was disrespectful to turn such honest narratives into an excuse for punters to eye a bit of cock on stage.

I shied away from doing anything with the texts for several years, during which time I found myself frightened away from the scene I’d loved by watching friends turn into crystal meth addicts, losing their jobs to do escorting and realising I was teetering on the edge of the same.

I just didn’t have the resilience of some of the men I’d met, who were wholly reconciled with what they were doing and had built their lives in such a way that they could not just deal with but wholly enjoy the lives they were leading. They remain some of the nicest, least judgemental and kindest people I’ve ever met.

Years of reinvention later, I found myself at Camberwell Art College doing an MA in Visual Art with a focus on illustration. I’d started the programme to bring my drawing to a point where I could tell the stories I wanted to tell. A nudge from one of the escort friends I’d interviewed got me looking back through the scripts and wondering if I could make it into a comic book story.

During the run of The Lengths, I’ve had relationships fail because of their drug addiction and I’ve lost a very special man to heroin. At his funeral, selfishly, I found myself thinking “I wish I could show him how The Lengths ends.” I’ve left London for the Isle of Wight and I’ve fallen head over heels in love.

Through the comic, I’ve had to face my own demons and my own prejudices and fears around the lifestyle I’d led; to be nearing the point where I close this story gives the sad sense of closing a long chapter of my own life. I’ve also learned so much about storytelling and the process of making comics that I couldn’t have imagined without finishing a 200 page book in a little under two years.

Cliché though it is, I couldn’t have done it without an enormous amount of help and support from friends, comics professionals and the surprising people who the story connected with. Seeing my sad dogs turning up in magazines all over the place has just been incredibly humbling and has left me feeling even more grateful to the people who contributed to the research for the story.

Anyway, I won’t get all choked up about it, just wanted to let you all know that you can pick The Lengths up from my web shop and to say thank you.

Order The Lengths here.

It’s been a long journey along with Eddie, but after issue 6 came out a couple of months ago, I can now announce that issues 7 and 8 will come out together in a double-length (pun painfully intentional) special to bring the story to its conclusion.

I’ll put pre-order information online in the next week or two and I’ll start sending out electronic review copies. I’m also talking to my printer about getting a customised envelope pack to hold all eight as a collection.

As a heads-up, I’m going to offer a limited number of posters for people ordering the pack ahead, and also as a thank-you to repeat readers returning to pick up the remainder of the series.

If you are, or know of a reviewer who would like to cover The Lengths as it reaches its conclusion, please get in touch with me – hhardiman at gmail dot com – and I can send over copies by email.

Similarly, when the ordering information is out and the preview pages are up, I’ll be doing a final publicity push – any help with spreading the word would be very welcome indeed.

In the meantime, thank you so much for your support through all of this; it’ll be very strange when it’s all over!

Chapters 7 and 8 of The Lengths will be available at the end of October 2012 from http://cutebutsad.bigcartel.com and through comics retail outlets.

I can’t help but think that the newfound prominence of gay characters in Marvel is a bit like that painfully-awkward blaxpoloitation phase that we had in the eighties. Hm, no, if that were the case, then the gay characters would be uncomfortable stereotypes. You know, like a boy-wizard who misses his mummy or a rainbow princess. Oh. Hang on.

I suppose it’s an advantage that characters could suddenly find out that they’re attracted to people of the same sex or have been hiding it all along, so it’s not as unlikely as the gender or race shifts some characters have gone through. No-one said “They’ve made Nick Fury black!” they said “Samuel L Jackson is Nick Fury!” But then, when the new Ultimate Spider-man was mixed race, suddenly “Spidey is black!” was the headline.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to have gay characters in comics continuity, but there’s a bit of whitewashing going on when I don’t think I’ve seen any of the gay characters being promiscuous or rejecting heteronormative sexuality wholesale. The overwhelming singledom or monogamy of the gay characters we see in mainstream comics is well-intentioned, because I assume it’s there to shout out “Same-sex love is normal!” But it misses the kind of key point that maybe by apeing normality, we’re losing some of the wonderful intellectual freedoms that the characters could share with the majority, not having had the expectation of a normal love life.

In The Lengths, I’ve based the characters on myself, escorts who I interviewed and people I know. Monogamy is a choice and an ideology that not everyone finds right for them, rather than a default option that’s never been questioned. Similarly, love and sex are treated as distinct realms, and they don’t always overlap. Hence the asexual love between Peter and Tony, or James telling Eddie that if he wants to wank men off in the shower at the gym, that’s fine by him. It’s probably something that doesn’t need explaining, but in the world of The Lengths, marriage doesn’t come up as a thought for Eddie or any of the other characters during his story.

Personally, when it comes to the gay marriage debate, I’m all for it being an option, but not an assumption. I think that in the debate about whether marriage is sacred, we lose a little bit of the discussion about whether it comes with a value judgement being cast on people who choose to get fisted by strangers in some railway-arch club because that’s what’s right for them, sexually, whether or not they have one or more steady partners.

One of the best things about gay lives coming out of the shadows has been that it proves there are options and possibilities that mightn’t have seemed available. To everyone. We didn’t have dogging until everyone cottoned on to cruising. Grindr has been a fascinating phenomenon for everyone, not just men after sex (or banter, more likely) with other men.

I’m not saying that gay culture is ahead of straight or bi, at all. Just that some things that are more prevalent in each provide the awareness of options for everyone. From heteronomativity, we’re reminded of how secure and powerful pair bonds can be. The bi community is interwoven with awareness of polyamory as an option. Stereotypical gay male sexuality emphasises opportunity and adventure. It should be obvious that as long as you’re not harming anyone (including yourself), then there’s no reason why you can’t do any of these things.

I can’t remember if Marvel’s gay characters have ever been to the local equivalent of The Hoist, getting fucked by a queue of strangers while in a sling, their senses alight with G. Sure, there’s risks associated with it of infection or overdose if things don’t go the way you hope, but is that any more foolish than marrying the first person you sleep with and never using condoms because you’re assuming monogamy and letting risk be symbolic of love or trust? Of sharing your finances or your home and hoping that you’ll both grow as people in compatible ways in a way that could leave you broke if you ever broke up? It’s all about investment of risk. Whether you set yourself up for heartbreak or HIV it’s a question of how you want to manage risks and how you choose to live, and you can survive the consequences of both if the worst happens.

I’m aware that it’s a skewed sample, but most men who I know who’d describe themselves as gay have had non-standard relationship setups. Whether that’s being single and playing the field, having more than one regular partner, having an open relationship or whatever it is. Like pair-bonding, these setups don’t always last, but that doesn’t make them less valid or moral.

Sure, in The Lengths, I’m telling a story that’s darkly gritty and focuses on the failings of one man to be honest about how he expresses his sexuality and his need to feel powerful, validated and secure. He finds these in one boyfriend, sex work clients and deceit. For Eddie, there’s a tension between his behaviour and his ideals. He’s hiding from failure as an artist by taking solace in physical and monetary interest in his body. He’s hiding from thinking through talking about his desires with his boyfriend and smothering that with drugs and self-annihilation. Obviously, his setup isn’t working and can’t last. That’s the story in The Lengths. It’s rang true for readers, even if they haven’t gone to the extremes Eddie goes.

I’m not saying one story’s right and another less valid, but let’s really try to question whether we’re properly embracing diversity if it’s couched in an assumption that people who aren’t “normal” are acceptable if they behave in the ways we’re used to. That’s not open-minded. It’s tolerant, at best. At worst, it’s hiding oppression behind a mask where the eyes are just painted on, but don’t let you see.

–

The Lengths is available here.

“You’ll be desperate to know what Eddie does next.” – Bizarre Magazine

Next month, I’m going to be moving away from London, which is going to be a strange change for me – leaving behind the city that’s been home for most of my life, apart from brief sojourns in Norwich and Leeds, and the place that’s been home throughout my adulthood. It’s also the places where all of the most adult stuff has happened, too. It seems apt that the move comes as I finish The Lengths. The last two issues are feeling more and more like a love letter to the capital.

I’m going to have an action-packed final month of living in London, despite having managed to slip a variable number of discs in my back (seems to be 1d4 each time I see a doctor – sorry for going on about it, twitter!), so I’ll be at Kapow in Islington next weekend, where you’ll find me on the mezzanine in Artist’s Alley on table 204. The following weekend, I’ll be at the London MCM Expo, in the comics village.

Then, it’s the Jubilee weekend, so obviously, I’ll be shaking my head forlornly while my boyfriend waves a tiny flag at a canary-coloured woman (who, I admit, was very funny when I met her), then the following weekend, for the 9th of June, I’ll be at the Comic Salon as a guest of Zwerchfell Comics in Erlangen in Germany. It wouldn’t be a goodbye London month without a trip to Germany, would it?

Issue Six will be shipping next week, and to celebrate all of this, and to make moving house (on my birthday weekend, too) a little easier, you can use the very cryptic code LONDON to get 10% off orders from the web shop until the 15th of June. That’ll work for The Lengths, which now runs to 150 pages, Badger’s Diary, The Peckham Invalids (including a new story!), and art sales. Get in!

Issue six, Art History, is coming soon.

Eddie has to face the consequences of the choices he’s made and face his demons and himself and answer the painful question: has it been worth the price he’s paid to create the new life he’s leading as Ford? Challenging realisations and surprises await as he looks back and wonders if he can keep running from himself.

I’m taking pre-orders over at the web-shop, which will let you beat the rise in postage costs.

As a little bonus, over the weekend, I drew this picture of Nelson on my new iPad, trying to get my head around how to draw on the tablet. If you’d like the full sized version for a background on your iPad or phone or whatever, I’ll happily email it over to you as a freebie with your order.