Primer: From Eroica With Love

From Eroica With Love

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From Eroica With Love is a long-running manga about a gay art thief and his futile pursuit of an uptight, homophobic German NATO Major.  Like the title suggests, it's a bit of a light-hearted spoof of Bond movies and other Cold War spy stories, with wacky hijinks, globe-trotting adventures, and an alternately fascinating and hilarious relationship between the two leads.  The series is happy, bubbly fun and very, very funny, but with layered and complex main characters and some darker, more serious espionage spinoffs set in the same universe, there's plenty of scope for different kinds of stories to be told.

The Characters

Dorian Red Gloria

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Dorian is an English aristocrat, the Earl of Gloria, who moonlights as the international art thief Eroica.  He's whimsical, impulsive, flamboyant and dramatic, and firmly of the opinion that all things beautiful ought to belong to him.  This includes both priceless treasures of the art world and attractive young men.  Klaus caught his attention when Dorian tried to steal a painting of one of his ancestors, The Man in Purple, and ever since then, Dorian has been determined to claim both painting and Major for his own.  Despite the Major's extremely hostile attitude to this plan.

Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach

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"Iron Klaus" is a major in NATO's Intelligence Division, working out of the headquarters in Bonn.  He's bad tempered, fiercely dedicated to the job, and impatient with people who are too frivolous and inefficient for his tastes (namely, everyone).  He has zero interest in art and culture, but appreciates machines, and managed to charm Dorian by admitting he sees beauty in polished steel.  He's deeply homophobic, but also equally alarmed by women hitting on him - in fact, the only women that he seems to like are nuns.  It's up for debate whether he's asexual or just very, very repressed.  He mostly responds to Dorian's overtures with fury or extreme panic, but over the years has come to reluctantly consider him a friend.

Dorian's Men

Dorian leads a gang of fabulous thieves who pull off daring heists all over the world when something catches his fancy.  He has two main sidekicks in particular who show up in most stories:

James

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James is the Earl's accountant, and has two fanatical obsessions: money and Dorian.  He's fiercely jealous whenever Dorian shows interest in other men and stingy to the point of ridiculousness.

Bonham

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Bonham is Dorian's dependable second in command.  He's sensible and competent, to the point where Klaus has even offered him a job, but somewhat intimidated by the Major after getting on his wrong side.  He and Klaus's second in command, Agent A, have struck up a friendship and sometimes coordinate to deal with their bosses.

The Alphabets

Not to be outdone by Bond's M and Q, Klaus has an entire alphabet of twenty-six codenamed agents working for him.  They're a nervous, easily flustered bunch, frequently terrorised by the Major's threats of transferring them to Alaska.  There are four main individuals who stand out from the group:

A

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The lead Alphabet, poor Mr. A is the nervous type, and leads a very stressful lifestyle.  He tries to take charge when Klaus isn't around but tends to fold under pressure.

B

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B is the lazy bumbler of the group, and tends to slack off, fall asleep, and get in trouble for taking toilet breaks at inopportune moments.  He and A are usually partnered together.

G

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G is gay, and frequently cross-dresses for missions or just for his own enjoyment.  He has a big crush on Klaus, and is completely dazzled by Dorian.

Z

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Z is the baby of the group, and had his own spinoff series following his adventures as a rookie agent learning the ropes.  He's probably the most sensible and hard-working of the Alphabets, and Klaus seems to like him, which is notable considering Klaus doesn't like anybody.  Dorian's rather taken with him too, much to Klaus's displeasure.

Other Characters

The Chief

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Klaus's boss, whose name we never learn; in the official translations he's known as the Director, but thanks to the fan scanlations that circulated before that he's often referred to in the fandom as the Chief.  He's an equal-opportunity lecher, ogling pretty women, harassing G, and appreciating Dorian's good looks.  He and Klaus have a mutual dislike going on, since Klaus disapproves of his habits and the Chief blames Klaus's gung-ho behaviour for the fact that he can't get promoted.

Mischa the Bear Cub

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Klaus's main nemesis among the KGB agents he faces off against.  He's a former Olympic boxer and has managed to give Klaus a beating once or twice, while Klaus was once responsible for him being sent to do hard labour in Siberia.

Caesar Gabriel

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The first volume of the manga suffers from Early Instalment Weirdness: the original plan was apparently for the heroes to be a trio of squeaky clean teenagers out to thwart Dorian's heists, before Klaus was introduced as a much better foil for Dorian and the kids were swiftly put on a bus.  Still, you may see some mention of Dorian's blushingly innocent original love interest Caesar, or even more rarely, his hilariously named sidekicks Sugar Plum and Leopard Solid.

Charles Lawrence

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Lawrence is an inept British SIS agent who thinks that he's James Bond and Klaus is his brother in arms, and generally otherwise drifts along in his own happy little dream world.

The Manga

The series started in the 1970s and is still technically ongoing today, though it's been a while since the most recent volume was published.  Sadly only the first fifteen volumes received official translations into English before the company publishing them folded in 2010.  (The series is fairly episodic and volume fifteen contains the last part of a multi-part story, so there's no issue with it being cut off on a cliffhanger.)  Fan translations and summaries of some later volumes and spinoffs can also be found online, or you can buy all 39 Japanese volumes in ebook form on ebookjapan.

For a sample of what the manga is like, there are links to some excerpts from the first few stories here.

The Fandom

Eroica had a small but dedicated fandom in the zinefic days, and still receives a steady trickle of new fanworks today, especially during Yuletide.  It now has its own community here on Imzy:

There are also two LiveJournal communities, both low-traffic but still active:

Klaus/Dorian is naturally the juggernaut pairing and makes up the vast bulk of the fic and fanart for the fandom, but there are a few rarer pairings out there too.  Klaus/Z and Klaus/Dorian/Z have a small following (though sadly not that much fic) thanks to Klaus's atypical friendliness towards Z.  There are some ship primers on the old LiveJournal ship_manifesto community:

The Fanworks

Though some older personal sites have become dead links thanks to the age of the fandom, many Eroica stories are still available on various archives:

  • Fried Potatoes is the main fandom-specific archive.
  • Belladonna.org is the personal site of prolific author Kadorienne, and also hosts many older stories from the zinefic days.
  • Caffiends Asylum is a site shared by several authors who've written a number of longer stories, many of them darkfic.
  • Much of the fandom's fic, old and new, is now archived on AO3, and there's also a smaller amount on fanfiction.net.

There's quite a bit of overlap between the different sites, so there's less fic out there than it might seem at first glance, but it's still edging towards the medium side as small fandoms go, and you won't run out of things to read that quickly.

There's also some nice fanart out there, though much of it is by Japanese artists who don't want it widely distributed outside of password-protected sites, so check out the fanart tag on castlegloria for details.