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May 25, 2018

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1185: Ms. Fantastic #1, 1992

https://www.comics.org/issue/338982/

I've probably waxed lyrical about Phil Foglio's Xxxenophile at some point or another in this project. It's definitely one of the erotic comics that I use to set the bar for others in my collection. Foglio's little stories evince a great joy in sex that is both inspiring and arousing. And they're really, really funny. Ms. Fantastic comes pretty close to achieving the same kind of feeling, not least because the art styles are very similar. Today's comic is a little less explicit than some of the adult comics I've looked at, and creator Dennis Stahl addresses this in the closing text piece, noting that "[s]ex is just one element of the whole" in the comic. There's also a heavy dose of satire of the superhero genre, which I always love to see. And, surprisingly for an adult comic of this era, some fairly explicit moments of Feminist thinking. Mr. Stahl obviously has a good head on his shoulders, and understands not only the tenets of the superhero genre that he skewers quite expertly, but also the problems of female representation not only in superhero comics, but in culture more generally.

I've a couple more issues of this series that I'm quite looking forward to reading, but we'll leave them for a later date.

More to come...

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