Off Beat Kickstarter

[oyceter]

Chromatic Press is running a Kickstarter to republish and finish Off Beat, as the third and final volume never got published. I actually saw this before and ignored it, I think because I had vague memories of checking out Off Beat and not being interested.

I am pretty sure I got it mixed up with another one of TokyoPop's OEL series though, because I got around to checking out a review, and it actually sounds pretty interesting. Gay teens in a story that doesn't sound like BL! (I like BL! I just also like LGBTQ representation outside of BL as well.) Apparently very rooted in Queens! Quirky sense of humor!

Anyone here read it? Impressions?

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I don't remember it very well, other than that I liked it but didn't fall in love with it. It had much more of a quirky American indie vibe than a BL one. I think I only ever read the first volume.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, it bears a lot more resemblance to a comics-format YA psychological novel (with a protagonist who's apparently so detached from his own non-intellectual feelings that he doesn't even realize his fascination with the mysterious new boy across the street could be construed as a crush until most of the way through the first volume) than it does to the average BL manga. This may well have hurt its reception at the time, since TokyoPop was really pushing it as BL. The editor even made some rather misleading pre-publication comparisons between "Off*Beat" and TokyoPop's then-recent BL release "FAKE," when the two series really had little in common besides a relatively unexplicit m/m element (the characters in "Off*Beat" never even got to the kissing stage by the end of volume two) and being set in New York City. The closest specific comparison I can come up with is that "Off*Beat" is somewhat analogous to a more polished-looking but less humorous (and more mystery/science fiction-oriented) equivalent of the one-high-school-boy-obsesses-about-another webcomic "Always Raining Here" (http://alwaysraininghere.com/). I'd definitely like to read the final volume, but I wouldn't say it's the greatest high school m/m story ever.

Marfisa from Livejournal

[oyceter]

Yeah, I was thinking the description sounded very YA coming of age! Which I've probably seen in comics format before, but they are always nice to read.

[oyceter]

Yeah, the American indie vibe was what I was getting from the description...