Gay blog

Konrad and Paul is a comic book, in which everything is put straight - crude humour, brilliant observations concerning characters’ every day and sexual life. Bad for them that they’re gay, because everyone will pay attention to their bed adventures and these are rather occasional… Sure, they talk about sex quite often (especially one of them), but this makes the comics even more funny.

What’s so shocking about this comic? When I hear such opinions, I sometimes feel as if I had gone back in time. In the West it really doesn’t shock anyone any more, we have to get through with this hypocrisy which dominates here in Poland - fags do exist, whether anybody likes it or not.

Wojtek Szot, abiekt.pl

Yesterday in Luna Cinema, just before the Warsaw Equality Days opening ceremony, an official Polish premiere of Ralf König’s comic book Konrad and Paul was held. König, born in 1960, is one of the best known and most commercially successful German comic book creators, his works have been translated into fourteen languages. In 1979 he experienced his coming out as a gay man and about that time he started to publish some short comic stories. Despite the work’s consistent gay culture setting, he gained great popularity among heterosexual readers. Most frequently, his work portrays daily routines of gay life, often based on his own and friends’ personal experiences. König tries to eliminate all the prejudice against gays and lesbians, by which he contributed significantly to the progress of social liberalization.

Konrad and Paul first appeared in 1990 in Magnus magazine, they’ve been a couple for 15 years already (first edition in 1993). It’s the first gay themed comic book in Poland. This kind of work has never been taken into consideration by Polish publishers. It surprises, because of its great popularity in the West, but is also understandable, because of Poland’s public feeling.

Ralf König identifies himself with the gay community, which he accompanies with his comics. He shows gays’ sexual tastes and fixations, human disappointments, fear of old age and loneliness. He does not pose as guru of emancipation (…). König just adds punchlines to the gay life.

Die Zeit

It’s supposed to be funny, yet not controversial. This is to be called normality.

Wojtek Szot, abiekt.pl

Konrad and Paul are released by a young publishing house abiekt.pl (established and led by Wojtek Szot, the author of the blog Abject: An alien penetrates the Internet [in Polish]).

In our - debuting - publishing house we would like to publish just the literature, which - due to various reasons - is unknown in Poland.

So, what is to be done now is simply to buy my own copy :] It’s really worth this small price it costs! This wonderful initiative is another notable turning point and I hope that it’s only a beginning and abiekt.pl will ply us not only with the next parts of Konrad and Paul, but also with other queer titles, giving a clear signal that this is a niche also attractive to other publishers in Poland. And popularity of this kind of works, the popularity, nay!, its outbreak!, on which I really count, can do no harm to anyone. Admittedly, all things in moderation, but still there won’t be much to moderate in Poland for a long time, so there’s nothing to worry about.

So I wish the very promising abiekt.pl good luck and much success! And I mean it!

sources: Wikipedia, abiekt.pl, Poltergeist

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