Professor H's Forbidden Zone: JAY: After The Show

I would hope anyone familiar with my work would, by now, be aware of my character STORMBOY. I first created him back in September 1966, as a reaction to many of the wonderful TV shows of the era (and before). Unlike BATMAN where Robin was just the sidekick, he was more like JONNY QUEST or Will Robinson-- the young boy who was in fact, the series' main character. I wrote a series of stories between 1966-70, all of which took place in the kind of utopian future seen in various Gerry Anderson shows and Japanese cartoons. In a seriously misguided move, I then spent 1972-78 (or so) writing an entirely different series about him, which took place in the then-present day. This "reboot" (which predated DC's in 1986) was an attempt to imitate early-70's Marvel Comics. It's no wonder I never really liked it, and why, decades later, I saw similar reboots by the big publishers as the totally-wrong-headed things they were.

Throughout the 90's, I kept trying to piece together in my head how I might approach the series if I "did it right". And of course, that meant once again setting it in a utopian future. To my own surprise, one day I drew a page which sort of answered the unasked question... "What if Stormboy was all grown up-- and had a BOYfriend?" I found the idea somehow hilarious. But it stuck with me. Next thing I knew, several months later, I came up with a story to go with it, and wound up doing an entire comic-book, which I then published in mid-2002! Sometimes you have to go where the inspiration takes you.

The supreme irony of this was no doubt that the STORMBOY comic, despite being very X-RATED and featuring gay and bisexual characters, was connected directly to those more "innocent" sci-fi adventures I wrote way back in the 60's, illustrated in a stylized "stick-figure" form.

It seems that among a lot of people who've read the book, that the boyfriend, rock singer (and self-professed sex maniac) Jay Love is the most popular character. I can understand that. A good friend of mine, who read the book in B&W before it was printed in color, told me Jay reminded him of "a nicer, sweeter version of Coley Cochran", John Blackburn's "voodoo love-god" character. Blackburn's comics, possibly the most intelligent and unique X-rated comics I've ever encountered, were definitely a big inspiration to me.

In late 2001, While I was still putting finishing touches on the book, and trying to work out the technical stuff as far as printers, bar codes, and a hundred other things, I got inspired to write a JAY short story, intended for submission to Winston Leyland's MEATMEN anthology series. Apparently he had more material than he could use (and in fact, a couple books later, he went out of business). Eventually, an edited version of this appeared in QUEERBAIT #2 (May'08), in glorious color which matched the art so well even I was pleasantly surprised.

However, here, for the first time, I'm presenting the complete 12-page story, with the SEX intact. If X-rated material doesn't interest you, if it in fact offends you, if seeing or if even the very idea of young guys being very nice to each other in this fashion bothers you deeply, then... DON'T READ any further. The rest of you... ONWARD!

This story, by the way, takes place before Jay met Pete. I've actually written several follow-ups to this, in one form or another, but this is the only one, so far, with art to go with it. ENJOY!