Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, jd faith, kickstarter, steve orlando, virgil

Why Now, Why Virgil?

By Steve Orlando

It's been a month. Ever since we decided to launch VIRGIL on Kickstarter I've been sweating bullets, spending every waking hour talking to anyone that will listen about the book. Why would I make this part of my life? Because it's time.

While groups fight for Marriage Equality in the USA, 70% of Jamaican Citizens did not believe gays and lesbians deserved basic human rights, as of 2008. In past weeks multiple reports have appeared about violent, brutal crimes against the LGBT community. And this is supposed to be a vacation paradise.

Last week the President connected LGBT Civil Rights and African American Civil Rights by bringing up Bayard Rustin, an often ignore adviser to Martin Luther King Jr and out gay man. These communities can be linked, and so can their stories.

With these two things in mind, VIRGIL is a hardcore 1970s style revenge book with a gay lead right in the center of it, set right in the heart of Jamaica. This is a man fighting tooth and nail to rescue the man he loves, and why not?

Why couldn't John McClane be fighting terrorists to save his partner?

Why couldn't John Shaft be a sex machine for all the…well, everybody?

When Jamaican cop Virgil gets outed in the newspaper, a mob destroys his house, kidnaps his lover, and leaves him for dead. But he survives, and has to fight his way across the city to rescue his partner and get revenge.

VIRGIL takes a bold step by not fetishizing the gay relationship at its heart, making a strong statement with its casual integration into the story. The sheer normalcy of it is powering. This is a man out for revenge, and it doesn't matter that it's a gay man, the story doesn't care. It's a kick-ass action story first, with all the trappings of 1970s action and crime noir. Just like Batwoman happens to feature a lesbian lead, VIRGIL takes it's cues from 100 Bullets or Sin City, laying on the grit and throwing a tough, righteous gay man through the ringer.

People ask me "Why Jamaica? Why Virgil?" My answer is that if genre work, whether its crime, romance, science fiction, at its heart has to explore. It's a vehicle for people to relate to feelings and people they never would under normal circumstances, thanks to geography or philosophy. VIRGIL lets us take a fight and put it in terms everyone can get behind; a wronged man out for revenge, protecting what he loves. And with Jamaica we spread the word about an area the Human Rights Watch has deemed the worst place on earth to be gay. BUT even in the heart of that there are allies, there is hope. And from that springs the hope inherent in VIRGIL.

VIRGIL has been funded on Kickstarter thanks to the wild support of a fantastic group of readers. Now is the time, until September 11th, to get your exclusive copy of this Original Graphic Novel, and find out what a host of industry professional backers and eager readers have already discovered. This is the only place to get this hard copy edition, with a ton of prints from artists including Chaz Truog (Animal Man) and Chris Batista (The Legion of Superheroes). It's time for VIRGIL, time for a crime story with a social edge like the blaxploitation/exploitation films of old.

They took Virgil's lover. Now he's not leaving town without his man, and some blood on his hands.

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