The Magician’s Choice ~ End
It’s some nakedness but it’s not really raunchy? Anyway here’s the end- I recommend you go back and read the entire thing now to get a feel for the story in one go.
There are some panels in this I love, some I hate, but I think the thing that really shines through is the narration. I’m not quite happy with some the digital editing over the inks as the red gets weird in some places but I’ll tweak that for a print edition (which will be available as part of the $10 physical subscription tier on patreon because I think this comic needs to exist in real life).
The next story is back to Gay Buttlers and is called Collar and Cuffs. It’s about 20 pages long but is completely finished if you wish to join the patreon $5 tier and get early updates!
I don’t know if you care for this sort of criticism, but there is a typo. In frame four, it reads “The magician decideds [sic] which card gets dealt.” Just thought I’d point it out.
In other news, I like the comic. I’m just easily sidetracked.
This was maybe my favorite yet. I see what you mean about the weird color (kind of? But I’m not the artist, so it bothers me much less). But I adore the color scheme and you’re right: the narration in this is lovely.
Will this site ever get back to stories like Khaos Komix? Each new series like this gets less and less interesting to me.
What’s your actual criticism here? Modern vs historical? Short vs long format? If you’re looking for more teen coming of age stories you won’t find it here- I’m never going to be able to write about teenagers again without feeling like a dirty old man.
Awww. I loved your coming of age and learning who you are stories. I love these more though, you’ve gotten much better at telling/drawing stories.
whilst interesting, I found myself kinda confused throughout this comic. can you clarify? How does this magician identify? do they dress to be acepted as a magician?
its a different method of story telling than I’ve seen you do before so perhaps thats why but … Trans man here has no idea if this person is trans or a cross dresser or even if thats the point of the story that we dont know or that im missing a deeper meaning…
help a guy out?
I can’t answer to the story itself, but something I really like about studying literary history is getting to see how complex identity always is, and how our contemporary categories of sexual and gender identity are just the latest attempt to figure out what’s up with the richness of human experience. This story reminded me a lot of Dr. James Barry, an 18th/19thC surgeon who might have been male, female, or intersex.
The 1920s (my guess as to the period) are interesting because the idea of “a cross-dresser” and “a transsexual” were, in fact, beginning to exist as concepts (unlike for Dr. Barry), but I think mostly they were applied to people whom we would now likely consider trans women; people whom we would now likely consider trans men seem to have been folded into butch/femme lesbian dynamics as particularly butch butches. But our protagonist isn’t moving in those circles and would have yet another different understanding of how identity is both performed and true, both constrained and chosen, etc. Which I think is a long way of saying “I don’t think this person would have had any clearer terms than these to identify with, so it’s part of the story that there’s no obvious answer.”
As a 19thC example of the fluidity of identity / identity along different lines in different historical periods, I highly recommend the book Between Women, by Sharon Marcus. Among other things, it digs into Victorian novels to show how intimate relationships between women were understood to reinforce heterosexuality as long as the relationships conformed to other Victorian norms. A woman would be ostracized for extramarital heterosexual contact, or homosexual promiscuity, or excessive masturbation (which would be considered an illness), but she could quite openly live in a ‘female marriage’ (as they were called!) with another woman, because the bourgeois nature of these female marriages meant that they were not seen to contradict the social valuation of heterosexual marriages. So you could have a woman quite happily living in a marriage with another woman, whom she might call her wife or her husband or her friend on different occasions — but she would be unlikely to consider herself a lesbian.
As a trans man myself I really enjoy thinking about historical periods where the same presentation, behaviour, and feelings would be divided into categories along different lines (i.e., the behaviour of monogamous sex between women landing on the “heterosexual” side of the line!) and therefore really enjoyed this piece for letting a complicated experience speak for itself despite its resistance to categorization.
Maybe I had a really different take on it than Tab intended, but Tab, I think you did a wonderful job of grappling with historical identity! All of your stories feel ‘right’ for their times for me, but usually by glossing over the idea of identity categories — this story faces those questions directly, but doesn’t oversimplify, and doesn’t anachronistically assume more oppression in the past than would have existed.
My take on this is that the Magician didn’t realize he was a man or meant to be masculine until he decided to become a Magician.
I really identify with the Magician as a transman. I spent most of my life (into my late 30’s!) suppressing my masculine nature, so I can understand how someone can not really consciously realize they’re not really the gender they appear to be. Sexuality, though, is at the other end of the spectrum. LOL
And I agree, Tab. This story neds to be in print.
You’re not the only one lost here. I also read it and I’m like “Ok, nice and all, but what it really is about?” The magician that pretends to be a man to get the contract, then starts to feel male, but not totally so they sleep with their seamstress as a woman because she will only do it like that, but then get back to being a man, but is it still for show or what?
Not quite like that Vaira- the line ‘but he is still here if we both close our eyes’ is about how the seamstress sees them as masculine even without the trappings and showmanship of the magician.
I would call this a trans male story but please keep in mind that that’s a very modern term to describe what’s happening here.
Oh, I understood it the other way around upon reading that she would only have the magician at their most vunerable.
I really loved this. The black and white with the reds was really delightful and the story, although short, was sweet and incredibly powerful. Thank you so much for these wonderful tales, I love being able to see into other worlds through your eyes. <3
This is my favorite of your stories ever. The art is beautiful, and the story is written so simply but it’s powerful and it really moved me.
I enyoyed the story, althought not as much as I have enyoyed others of your stories, Tab. I think that, for me, the lack of explicit emotions (with frames fulled with faces showing gestures or text said by the characters during an interaction to express themselves) is what did not made possible, for me, to connect to this story. Now, what I think might had happen to a huge amount of people who did not understand the story is that this story, and the way you chose to make it, is more implicit, short and subtle, which is also different from the kind of things we have seen of you. If you want to take this line of art work, I think that it will just take a while till people get use to this. Either way, consider that, when you make a short story, it is really important to connect fast with the public or they may not follow the story or care for it in a deep level.
Anyway, thanks Tab for your work, it never repeats it self and is always new and fresh, somethimg that I love about you and your art. Sorry for any grammar mistake, spanish is my first languaje. Saludos y mucha suerte! Y felices fiestas!
This story was awesome, thank you :). If you ever want to do a longer version of this, feel free :D.
Popping in to say I love this too :)
Looking forward to more (greedily so :) )
*big hugs* take good care of yourself! :)
I haven’t read this site in ages, but I’m glad I wandered back! I LOVE the direction you’ve taken it in, Tab! As a genderqueer person and a historian I approve most heartily!
(This story – and the resulting confusion – reminds me of the Thomas/ine Hall story from colonial Virginia. Who was Hall? How did they *really* identify? Turns out the answer is “depends on who they were with.” It’s lovely.