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The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection
Tim Barela's Leonard & Larry are back! The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection contains every Leonard & Larry strip, from their first appearance in Gay Comix, to The Advocate and Frontiers magazine. Strip creator Tim Barela gave voice to a generation of LGBTQ people. Whether we were gay, straight, into music, or into leather, we could see our lives mirrored in the sometimes crazy but always loving Leonard & Larry universe.
The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection contains all the strips from the long out of print previous collections of Tim Barela's Domesticity Isn't Pretty , Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead , Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall , and How Real Men Do It . Also in this collection are cartoons from Mountain Man and the never seen before Grizzly 'N' Ted series. The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection features a forewords by internationally respected animation historian Charles Solomon and Gay Comix pioneer and pop culture historian, Andy Mangels, plus an introduction by Tim Barela.
The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection contains all the strips from the long out of print previous collections of Tim Barela's Domesticity Isn't Pretty , Kurt Cobain & Mozart Are Both Dead , Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall , and How Real Men Do It . Also in this collection are cartoons from Mountain Man and the never seen before Grizzly 'N' Ted series. The Complete Leonard & Larry Collection features a forewords by internationally respected animation historian Charles Solomon and Gay Comix pioneer and pop culture historian, Andy Mangels, plus an introduction by Tim Barela.
- GenresComicsLGBTGraphic Novels
390 pages, Hardcover
Published September 30, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 18, 2024
Leonard & Larry is a comic strip that had been published in various gay magazines since the 1980s and previously collected in four trade paperbacks. I bought this collection partly to support the artist and partly for the bonus strips from his other short lived series, Mountain Man and Grizzly n Ted.
The comic is about a middle-aged gay couple who live in West Hollywood, and their circle of family and friends. Leonard is a Jewish photographer, Larry owns a leather shop and has two sons from a previous marriage.
There really isn't much of a plot. The difficulty in finding a consistent magazine to run the strips means we're getting brief snippets and short storylines about their lives through the 80s and 90. Often the strips touch upon topical issues of homophobia and gay tolerance but the overall vibe is sitcomy.
The characters all have realistic body shapes. No twinks showing off their abs here. Most of the guys are bears, a bit heavyset with body hair and mustaches or beards.
Overall the collection is excellent. Barela's art is phenomenal, even the early strips from the 80s show an attention to detail and character expressions that I don't see much of even the 2020s.
The strip is also an important part of gay history, showing gay men who aren't stereotypes and cliches, but real people with the same mundane problems as everyone else.
My only complaint is the writing. Most of the pages are filled with dialogue balloons and the story grinds to a crawl as the characters talk paragraphs at each other. I know this is only really more noticeable when reading the strips all at once in a book and not spaced out in a magazine, but I feel an editor could have helped cut some of the dialogue and improved the flow.
Still, it's an excellent series and worth picking up if you weren't able to get the previous trade paperbacks.
The comic is about a middle-aged gay couple who live in West Hollywood, and their circle of family and friends. Leonard is a Jewish photographer, Larry owns a leather shop and has two sons from a previous marriage.
There really isn't much of a plot. The difficulty in finding a consistent magazine to run the strips means we're getting brief snippets and short storylines about their lives through the 80s and 90. Often the strips touch upon topical issues of homophobia and gay tolerance but the overall vibe is sitcomy.
The characters all have realistic body shapes. No twinks showing off their abs here. Most of the guys are bears, a bit heavyset with body hair and mustaches or beards.
Overall the collection is excellent. Barela's art is phenomenal, even the early strips from the 80s show an attention to detail and character expressions that I don't see much of even the 2020s.
The strip is also an important part of gay history, showing gay men who aren't stereotypes and cliches, but real people with the same mundane problems as everyone else.
My only complaint is the writing. Most of the pages are filled with dialogue balloons and the story grinds to a crawl as the characters talk paragraphs at each other. I know this is only really more noticeable when reading the strips all at once in a book and not spaced out in a magazine, but I feel an editor could have helped cut some of the dialogue and improved the flow.
Still, it's an excellent series and worth picking up if you weren't able to get the previous trade paperbacks.
December 11, 2021
This book has been provided by the editor for the purpose of a review. This review has also been published on Rainbow Book Reviews.
I like comics but admittedly, just like Marc Laforge, the main character of my novel ‘Ordinary Whore’, I prefer those of the Ha-ha!-funny kind—you know, books like ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ or ‘Dilbert’. As for gay comics, the only writer I knew so far was the very talented and hilarious Ralf König, whom I highly recommend to anyone like-minded.
Yet I also like history, especially our history, if I may say so, the history of the LGBTQ+ community and its members. I’m therefore always happy to discover new aspects in whatever area, be it the arts, writing, or their combination: graphic novels (and comic strips). That’s why I was so glad to receive this book—not only did I learn that Tim Barela produced the first mainstream comic strip featuring a gay couple but also that his drawings were first published thirty-seven (!) years ago, in 1984 (a realization that suddenly made me feel very old).
The ‘Leonard and Larry’ comics introduce two men (young men at the beginning, but they age over the years like normal human beings, a fact that must be underlined as another first in comic strip characters), Leonard Goldman and Larry Evans. They form a gay couple with kids from Larry’s former marriage who are living with their mother but pop up from time to time. Both men, more of the leather-bear-type, lead what UCLA lecturer, animation critic, and historian Charles Solomon aptly calls an “unconventional, conventional life” in his foreword. Thus, while I turned the pages, I discovered delicious little bickerings over trivial matters (household chores, clothes, each other’s personal quirks, neighbors) as well as sometimes awkward sometimes touching scenes (the coming out to Leonard’s mom was fun!). As the AIDs crises strikes, they witness many friends around them dying. Then, Larry’s kids grow up, get married, have kids themselves.
A pity it’s so hard for me to truly describe what is going on in these comic strips—as always, there’s no novel-like narrative, just a series of short scenes telling the life and love of two average guys. But what I can say is that I loved the read, which I found in turns laugh-out-loud funny, endearing, or touching. For fans of the genre and for those who want to see what gay life was before the 2000s—pick up a copy!
I like comics but admittedly, just like Marc Laforge, the main character of my novel ‘Ordinary Whore’, I prefer those of the Ha-ha!-funny kind—you know, books like ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ or ‘Dilbert’. As for gay comics, the only writer I knew so far was the very talented and hilarious Ralf König, whom I highly recommend to anyone like-minded.
Yet I also like history, especially our history, if I may say so, the history of the LGBTQ+ community and its members. I’m therefore always happy to discover new aspects in whatever area, be it the arts, writing, or their combination: graphic novels (and comic strips). That’s why I was so glad to receive this book—not only did I learn that Tim Barela produced the first mainstream comic strip featuring a gay couple but also that his drawings were first published thirty-seven (!) years ago, in 1984 (a realization that suddenly made me feel very old).
The ‘Leonard and Larry’ comics introduce two men (young men at the beginning, but they age over the years like normal human beings, a fact that must be underlined as another first in comic strip characters), Leonard Goldman and Larry Evans. They form a gay couple with kids from Larry’s former marriage who are living with their mother but pop up from time to time. Both men, more of the leather-bear-type, lead what UCLA lecturer, animation critic, and historian Charles Solomon aptly calls an “unconventional, conventional life” in his foreword. Thus, while I turned the pages, I discovered delicious little bickerings over trivial matters (household chores, clothes, each other’s personal quirks, neighbors) as well as sometimes awkward sometimes touching scenes (the coming out to Leonard’s mom was fun!). As the AIDs crises strikes, they witness many friends around them dying. Then, Larry’s kids grow up, get married, have kids themselves.
A pity it’s so hard for me to truly describe what is going on in these comic strips—as always, there’s no novel-like narrative, just a series of short scenes telling the life and love of two average guys. But what I can say is that I loved the read, which I found in turns laugh-out-loud funny, endearing, or touching. For fans of the genre and for those who want to see what gay life was before the 2000s—pick up a copy!
August 20, 2023
Dado que las tiras de Leonard & Larry estuvieron publicándose desde mediados de los años 80 hasta principios de los 2000, esta recopilación se presenta como un testimonio imprescindible de la historia reciente del colectivo LGTB en Estados Unidos.
A pesar de que se trata de un cómic de enfoque humorístico, el autor no pasa de puntillas por temas clave como la crisis del VIH/SIDA o la violencia contra el colectivo, haciendo una crítica social y política que, por desgracia, sigue plenamente vigente.
Los personajes son entrañables y muy humanos, y las divertidas escenas cotidianas y familiares reflejan que las personas LGTB no somos diferentes de cualquier hijo de vecino, con nuestros anhelos y nuestros problemas diarios.
A pesar de que se trata de un cómic de enfoque humorístico, el autor no pasa de puntillas por temas clave como la crisis del VIH/SIDA o la violencia contra el colectivo, haciendo una crítica social y política que, por desgracia, sigue plenamente vigente.
Los personajes son entrañables y muy humanos, y las divertidas escenas cotidianas y familiares reflejan que las personas LGTB no somos diferentes de cualquier hijo de vecino, con nuestros anhelos y nuestros problemas diarios.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews