Chelsea Boys

Neuwirth and Hanson use the lighthearted medium of a comic strip to deliver deeper and more serious messages about the reality of being a modern gay man. Every strip has a lesson to ponder and the authors smash sterotypes wide open. Ironic indeed that the strip is named Chelsea Boys given the author's overwhelming proven point that sterotypes are rather silly given the fact that noone indeed ever lives up to the expected ideal. Neuwirth and Hanson add a work of great relivance and importance to the cannon of gay literature. This is a must have for every gay man's libray! A great gift for friends too!

Hanson and Neuwirth have created warm, acerbic, witty, and utterly human characters who totally defy the Chelsea Boy stereotype. So don't let the strip's title fool you. These guys are universal-just like gay men from Pasadena to Poughkeepsie. This is a great collection, both for the terrific drawings and the wonderfully inclusive stories about these three gay roommates and people of ages, races, and sexual orientations in their lives.

Chelsea Boys is a bi-monthly strip that most readers wish was daily. It always sparkles with wit, even when the authors are steaming about an injustice or the prejudices hidden within seemingly benign attitudes. The strips are always funny but the characters aren't just caracatures. They have depths and heart and contradictions just like real people. Glen's artwork always pleases the eye, and the chance to just sit and wallow in a bookload of the strips, rather than parsing out the pleasure in two minute doses every two weeks, is a glutton's delight. I recommend this book highly, not only to gay readers, but to everyone who loves to laugh. That a little wisdom comes with the laughs won't bother you.

With charm, wit and talent Messrs. Hanson and Neuwirth have managed to straddle the line between sweet satire and real pathos. Tempered with a feel for contemporary issues facing gay and lesbian New Yorkers, "Chelsea Boys" is like a gay 'Doonesbury'. Beginning with a cute 'meet' we are introduced to 3 inhabitants of a Chelsea apartment share. The characters and their milieu are so sharply crafted in line and words that we identify with them immediately. We need little introduction to recognize friends and lovers from our own lives in Nathan, Sky, Soiree, Lucie and Ricki, their follies and foibles. The authors manage to take even serious world issues (Sept. 11th) and turn them into thought-provoking, entertaining strips. I have been a big fan of the strip since I moved to New York and its a pleasure each time I read it to see how the characters have grown as I have in this wonderful, crazy, complicated city I am now proud to call my home. I'm so glad that I can finally read all the strips consecutively in one volume. Needless to say this will be a great gift for all my out of town friends who are sadly New York deprived.

I have been following the Chelsea Boys for years and am thrilled to see that they have finally gotten their stories together in a book. In my opinion, this is the only strip out there in which the characters open themselves enough to expose the reasons for who they are. The boys deal with real issues that face all of us (and I mean all of us - gay or straight) in real life and gives depth and "realness" to gay people.The writing by Allan Neuwirth is insightful and poignant. And, as always, Glen Hanson's illustrations are brilliant. I look forward to future additions to the Chelsea Boys library.