Long enjoyed by homos of the Gallic world, the Angelface comics of Benoit Prévot are now been released in English, writes Barry Lowe.

Remember the name Benoit Prévot. He’s well known in the French-speaking parts of the planet but not so well known outside. His claim to fame is his utterly filthy hard-core comic Angelface, the first volume of which is now available in English, translated by Patrick Fillion, via Class Comics.

It follows the adventures of Alan, the Angelface of the title, a sort of Raffles of sex. He steals from the wealthy, using his angelic good looks and hot, hard bod to finance his way up the social ladder. His mouth, tongue and arse are available to men in all shapes, sizes and ages and in any number. The comic adventure begins with Alan and his mate Red getting away with a bag of loot from a jewellery store – but after a celebratory root, Alan absconds with Red’s share of the robbery, and his heart, and boards a ship for a new life in New York. The broke and broken-hearted Red swears revenge and hops on the next steamer to catch up with his sex tramp. Meanwhile, Alan has picked on the wrong man to double cross aboard his luxury liner…

Phew! Prévot packs a lot of story as well as a lot of graphic (and horny) sex into the 28 pages of the sepia-coloured strip. The artist eschews the highly stylized and over-endowed vibrantly colour superheroes of, say, Patrick Fillion, instead settling for a style similar to that of the superb gay artist, J.C. Leyendecker, who was responsible for creating the distinctive look of Saturday Evening Post covers.

In so doing he has successfully combined his love of male erotic art and his passion for the 1920s and 1930s and Art Deco while adding dollops of sperm-laden humour. Born in the French Ardennes, Benoit has always had a passion for drawing and worked as a graphic artist and on television animation for ten years after his education at the CFT Gobelin (L’Ecole de l’Image).

As he reveals on his website: “I didn’t try to emulate an old style at first, but little by little I thought it could be interesting to do so, and put more of my fantasy in my drawings and show these ‘glamorous men’ in the situations I dreamed of.”

The artist is equally at home illustrating the working class milieu of London in 1922 as he is with the top hat, white tie and tails of Angelface’s new Park Avenue ‘prison’ as a member of the exclusive and sinister Black Rook organization. Meanwhile Red is wanking his way and shovelling coal as he steams his way to a rendezvous with his former partner.  

This is one sexual adventure I want to follow.

www.benoitprevot.com

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