Last week, when Ye Olde Comic Book Blogge posted about a gay romance manga starring Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, I’m afraid I was among those who fell for it (although we at least managed to scrub the item from the home page when I found out it was a hoax). Now blogger Jake is enjoying his clever jape, which spread so far across the Internet that both yaoi publisher BeBeautiful and Simmons had to issue online denials.
“I figured manga fans would spot the hoax since the image I photoshopped was something I found after exploring Google Image Search results for yaoi for about 45 seconds,” Jake writes. “Anyway, the real target was KISS fans. We really were hoping this would take root on some hardcore KISS fan sites and 50 year old men would cry themselves to sleep fearing their rock idols might be portrayed as doing something that might be construed as gay… or at least gayer than wearing leather, high heels, and makeup on stage.” Thus, people who know just enough about manga to be dangerous—like me, for instance—fell right into his trap. And it still sounds better than the actual, officially licensed KISS comic, too.