Teleny and Camille

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Jon Macy, longtime contributor to gay comics publications such as Gay Comics and Boy Trouble, has adapted a moving and erotic gay love story from Oscar Wilde’s classic Teleny.

Camille, a wealthy young gentleman in Victorian London, falls in love with the handsome and mesmerizing pianist Teleny. While Teleny performs on stage, the two star-crossed lovers discover they share a psychic link in the form of an erotic vision. While Camille struggles to resist his homosexuality Teleny is being pursued by others. After telepathically witnessing the erotic encounters Teleny has with both sexes, Camille attempts suicide. Teleny rescues Camille physically and emotionally with his rapturous love forsaking all others. In this newfound happiness Camille tries to forget that Teleny owes much of his success to the generosity of the women who desire him.

Fans of gay comics and gay love stories will devour this sensual tome.

spacer A beautiful gay love story adapted by Jon Macy from the novel Teleny, attributed to Oscar Wilde and his circle of writers and poets.

Winner of the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Erotica!

240 pages. 7″x10″.
Black and white interiors, color cover with gold ink and gloss coating.
$29.99 USD retail price.

Retailers! Download Teleny and Camille Promotional Displays that highlight its Lambda Literary Award win and help encourage customers to check out the book.

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Distributed by:
Diamond Distributors (North America and United Kingdom) — order #SEP101088
Prerogatives/PrideCatalog.com
Last Gasp
Haven Distributors
Bulldog Books (Australia)

PREVIEW:

spacer Read the entire first chapter right now! (This preview has had a few images obscured in order to make it more acceptable for general audiences; the full graphic novel is sexually explicit and is intended for adult readers only.)

INTERVIEWS:

Interview with Outlook Columbus — “The bottom line? This book is fun. It’s unique, academic and sexy. Teleny and Camille is far and away the most innovative gay novel of the past few years. I caught up with other Jon Macy to talk about his creation.” — Mackenzie Worrall

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Northwest Press Interview on Comic Book Queers — Comic Book Queers’ EvilJeff takes over L.A. with the help of Zan Christensen of Northwest Press who brings his lackeys Justin Hall, creator of Glamazonia: the Uncanny Super-Tranny and Jon Macy, he of Teleny & Camille fame.

Interview on The Feast of Fun podcast — “Based on Teleny, the secret round-robin novel written by Oscar Wilde and his anonymous circle of friends, the classic work of erotica is now visually re-interpreted by Macy in all its lush, sexual excess. Join us as we take a look at the origins of modern gay culture in Victorian England, the origins of one guy one jar, the complicated man that was Oscar Wilde and how to cruise for sex in ye merrie olde England.”

REVIEWS:

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Article from The Times Literary Supplement by Paul Gravett — “Macy goes on to accompany the already highly charged texts with an imagery of brooding eroticism and, as required, uninhibited pornography, in some passages stripping everything down to purely visual terms. His inky linework stays sensuous and sensitive to the turbulent emotions and settings of his two idealised lovers, shifting between streamlined simplicity and more ornate flourishes from Expressionism to Art Nouveau.”

Review on Lambda Literary by Chuck Forester — “The book is a beautifully illustrated story of the love of one man for another, ripe with all the barriers to such love in a strict unforgiving society. The artwork alone conveys the intensity and beauty of the men’s feelings as the clear, simple language conveys their thoughts.”

Review on Fire-Breathing Robot by Ashley Cook — “Overall, this is an excellent adaptation; Macy’s visual interpretation fits the style of the original perfectly. The panels flow like stream of consciousness prose, with surreal pictoral representations of a love that words cannot adequately express.”

Review on renderwrx by P.D. Houston — “If you like romance books, pick this up. If you’re an Oscar Wilde fan, this book is a must. And if you’re neither of those things, pick this up because it’s a unique book and I highly doubt we will see a book of this quality in this kind of genre for a long time.”

Review on Comic Book Resources by Brian Cronin — “Almost instantaneously, the two men form a bond between themselves that goes beyond just attraction, but more into telepathy. That is how much they are tied together. It’s a fascinating inter-relation, and Macy handles it spectacularly with his moody, evocative artwork.”

Review on Broken Frontier by Steven Surman — “I have no idea how daunting this must have been—and daunting I’m sure it was—but it was worth all the effort, because Macy’s finished product is nothing short of breathtaking.”

Review on Oscholars by John McCrae — “There is an agenda here, and it is not simply the visual re-telling of a well-known novel. It is a celebration of that novel and a celebration of what that novel deeply wants to assert. It is an artistic and aesthetic triumph.”

Review on Lambda Literary by Cathy Camper — “Different chapters follow the two lads to brothels and the salon of their adventurous gay acquaintance, Bryancourt. Dalliances are gay and straight, erotic and shocking. Macy’s drawing style handles it all and manages to be both sexy and fantastical. While the main story line is gay, to Macy’s credit, neither the drawings nor the plot shortchange the women characters. Though more roughly drawn than Beardsley, Macy’s style harkens back to the graphics of Art Nouveau, with its stark black ink pen lines, and its references to nature..”

Review on The Rumpus by Evan J. Peterson — “…Most impressive is Macy’s attention to detail and historical accuracy: plant life, architecture, absinthe spoons, doorknobs—he conducted extensive research in order to give his work such intricacy. The sex scenes between Teleny and Camille are succulent and sinless, but elsewhere, as in the original, the novel delights in the grotesque. Macy brings to vibrancy the troll that prowls London’s gay cruising ground, a hollow-cheeked character sucking his fingers in invitation to the young men looking for trade.”

spacer Review on Fanboys of the Universe by Chance Whitmire — “…I savored and studied each page and felt the book should only be read alone and by candlelight. So vivid is the world Macy constructs, and the threat of exposure so daunting, just the experience of reading the book feels wicked and forbidden. It’s a very sensual reading experience.”

Review on ComiXtreme by Andrea Speed — “The art is high contrast black and white, beautifully lined, and Macy varies the style from very representational to somewhat surreal as the scenes and situations call for it. Camille being overwhelmed by psychic visions caused by Teleny’s music is a beautiful sequence, probably my favorite in the entire graphic novel. From the way poodles are depicted, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Macy doesn’t like poodles, but hey, who does?”

Review on PrismComics.org by Sean McGrath — “One thing I must thank Jon personally for is his ending. THANK YOU, JON!! Your indictment against the trend in gay literature that ‘even the ones written by the gays’ require a tragic ending because ‘it’s like we’re too damaged to even dare imagine being happy’ is difficult to refute. So many stories dwell on death for obvious reasons, but even pre-AIDS gay media fall to either Boys Beware or Cruising-type idioms. It’s refreshing to have a gay love story with a happy… well, at least an ending without murder, death, or disfigurement (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if your ending is a happy one). E. M. Forster is no doubt completely behind your modern addition to the text.”

spacer Review on GayLeague.com by Joe Palmer — “This novel, no this affront of debauchery, this Teleny and Camille has the telltale stamp of the once feted degenerate Oscar Wilde. This is no simple manuscript; accompanying the writing are illustrations depicting the lecherous adventures of these two young men as they indulge in unspeakable, lascivious and unnatural acts which are proven as the abhorhence of God and hallowed civilization.”

Review on The Gay Comics List by François Peneaud — “What Jon Macy has done with his Teleny and Camille graphic novel is impressive: adapting a work with such a weighty historical and sensual baggage is no small task, and he’s done so by creating visual narrations suited to the powerful prose, without shrinking from the less palatable aspects of the story, but also by acknowledging that this is a fiction, and more than that, a fantasy that was created in a specific culture for a specific audience.”

Review on OutPersonals by T.R. Moss — “Teleny and Camille works as an introduction to the glorious, flamboyant, coded world of the aesthete that Wilde and his cohorts invented and reveled in. You are slowly drawn into the beautiful, sumptuous world of elegance, art, and cruising through wit, an arched eyebrow, a carnation, or a heliotrope in the lapel.”

Review in The Gay People’s Chronicle by Andrew Glassman — “Buying [it] is not a suggestion, it’s a command. Don’t do it to nobly support a gay artist, don’t do it to be cool. Do it because [it's] an incredibly engrossing, beautifully-drawn work of brilliance.”