Honestly, being a parental figure is incredibly stressful. But there are definitely moments of advice and silly behavior where it’s how we really are as parental figures for our nieces and nephew. L-R: Simon Steel, niece Chloe, Bryan’s mom Antonia, Bryan Steel, nephew Jeremiah and niece Caitlynĭo the cartoons contain real parenting advice?ī: Not intentionally. So it’s pretty awesome to actually be together and married, not ‘life partners’ or any of the terms people in gay relationships had to settle for. We actually met when I was working in Germany and we hit it off so we started dating, he visited me and eventually he moved to the US and we got married! It’s still a bit surreal to us both, since we grew up figuring marriage just wouldn’t be available. We’ll be celebrating our third anniversary this August! My background is game development and Simon’s background is illustration and animation. Simon and I are husbands, he’s from Italy and I’m American. What does your real family life look like?ī: Myself and Simon, my mother, our two nieces and our nephew all live together in Palm Bay, Florida. It could be relatives, friends or childhood friends but we draw inspiration from the people around us.
All of the characters in our comic are inspired by real people. We get so much of our inspiration from our family. It’ll be a discussion at the dinner table or a situation that just plays out at home that makes us all laugh. Many of the stories, conversations, or situations have been pulled right from our life. The two dads, Alex and John, are loosely based on Simon and myself and AJ is based on our nephew, while Magnus is our English mastiff. What inspires the stories in AJ & Magnus?ī: We consider the comic family to be a fictionalized version of our life, more of a ‘what if’ fantasy being played out as what life would be if Simon and I had been dads. It was too late for us, but we know there are still LGBTI youth out there who need more positive role models and alternative representations of what a ‘gay lifestyle’ includes. We thought it would be great to ‘fix’ our childhood and produce a comic that could be funny and cute while also representing a gay parent family. We’d also both grown up with the concept of being gay a cause of concern there weren’t any positive role models and if you saw gay people in movies or television shows, they were mostly stereotypes and comic fodder. Watching them play was fun and led Simon and I to start talking about what if we had had the chance to be dads.
In particular we spent a lot of time with our nephew, who would play with our English mastiff. What inspired yourself and Simon to start the cartoons?īryan: When Simon and I moved close to my family we spent a lot of time with our nieces and nephew.
Gay Star News caught up with Bryan to talk gay families in the media, ‘fixing’ bad childhood memories and their plans for the first ever animated series to feature gay parents. Florida couple Bryan and Simon Steel respectively write and illustrate comic strip AJ & Magnus, an adorable cartoon about two gay dads, their son and their pet mastiff.