The premise of the book involves a new student at college, moving into his dorm on the first day. This is something a lot of people go through so it makes for a fine plot to build form. Now I'm relatively young, though no longer in college anymore (two degrees and still unemployed, God bless the booming American economy!), so I like to think I have a vaguely tenable grasp on the youth of this country.

Given that, let me say that the dialogue in this book is as close to real life as the apartments on "Friends" were to real apartments in New York. I don't know if this is how Robert Fraser thinks college kids talk to one another (or inside their own head) or if I am so far removed from middle America that my godless Northeast liberalism has warped my sensibilities, but the characters in the book talk in almost nothing but declarative statements. There is no cadence change among the characters let alone different dialects or even vocabulary. Every character's dialogue is indistinguishable from one another.

The artwork by Joseph Hawk isn't bad, though it isn't really inspired either. When there is a background it's fairly detailed and bright and while there are a number of panels without a background (just shades of color), that really isn't an exception in today's world. Most people aren't George Perez and I'm fine with that. My only real problem with the art is that all of the men in the book (and I mean men because there is a total of four women, all as background dressing) have exactly the same body type. All are thin, but muscled, smooth and hung like Mr. Ed.

Yes, hung. Now we get to the real issue I have with this book. Opening the cover, the main character catches someone changing on the first page - complete with both an ass and penis shot in the same frame. Then the second page has three separate naked men, two of which are in the hallway of the dorm building. Now, it's a been a few years since I graduated from school, but I don't remember numerous muscled men wandering the halls in skimpy towels or nothing at all. Or maybe I just went to the wrong school.

You may be wondering why I have a problem with these depiction when I bought a book with the subtitle "Higher Sex Education." I bought the book for two reasons: I wanted to support the gay comics industry and I simply wanted to read a comic specifically about gay men. The problem is that story takes a backseat in this book and it would rather focus on sex and looking at hot men. Now both of these are activities I wholeheartedly support, but when I buy a book I'm looking for a good story.

This issue reads more like porn in comic book format. There is no real characterization and no growth for anyone involved. The story is a entire year's worth of time in 24 pages, most of which are taken up by multiple angles of a sex scene. Care to take a guess how many of these pages do not feature a naked man and/or full contact sex? Four. Four! And that's being generous and not counting one of the pages to prominently feature an erection in a man's pants.

If this book was supposed to be porn in four color format, then I suppose it makes its mark, but as just a gay comic book? The book flounders with its lack of story. The art is fine, even if the artist can only seem to draw muscled and completely hairless men. Take their heads off and the body types are indistinguishable from one another. I guess I'm not the audience for the book because I don't get turned on by cartoonish caricatures of men, regardless of what they're doing to one another.

Some would say I signed my own warrant by buying the book given the title and the cover and it certainly is my fault that I didn't really look at the cover when buying it online. I was simply looking for a book for and about gay men as opposed to the gay cast member being an issue or soapbox (in either direction). I too a random sampling of books and ended up with what I'm assuming is supposed to be porn. I very may well be over analyzing the book beyond anything the writer and artist were aiming for, but even if they were going for tawdry the book fails on certain levels. If they converted this comic into a movie it would be laughed off as a sitcom joke version of porn. We're talking on par with the pizza boy answering the door and "looking to deliver something hot."

So if you're looking for a three minute read and possibly some anime-esque pseudo-porn, give The Initiation a try. If, like me, you're looking for an actual story dealing with real characters in an adult way, move on and don't look back.