Spandex: Fast and Hard HC
Publisher: Titan Books
Release Date: June 2012
Price: $19.95
Creators: Martin Eden
Format: 96 pages, Full-Color, Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-8576-8973-3
Age Rating: Mature Readers
ICv2 Rating: 3 Stars out of 5

This book will certainly start conversations, but not always in a good way.

Martin Eden has created a superhero team of openly gay characters, but in ways that often feel like he is poking fun at various gay stereotypes.  That, combined with artwork which is only okay, at best, does not explain why it was nominated for Britain's Eagle Awards.  One hopes it was for the writing, which was by far its strongest part of the book, but even that is strange and surreal.  By the end of this volume, a compilation of shorter stories, the reader is left wondering about several plot threads, and wondering whether they will ever be resolved.

The story, if you can get past the various parts of the premise that will put some readers off, is an interesting study in character interactions.  Some readers will not find enough in it to get past the art or the gay characters, as portrayed.  Readers of underground comics or some of the things found in weekly newspapers may find the artwork tolerable, but readers used to the more polished art found in mainstream comics may flinch.

The sexual content, while not extremely graphic, is enough to put it in the adult section of graphic novels, but the book is written for adults anyway.

--Nick Smith: Librarian Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.