It's rare that I have an adult comic up here for review that I don't have to hide behind a break. Well, really, I don't have to hide any of them behind a break. I've always found the societal propensity to be embarrassed of sex but completely accepting of violence mystifying. And the trouble is that in accepting violence and in linking sex to shame, we link sex to violence.
So we're going to go from Canadian underground science fiction to porn star biographies. Strangely, this is not that big a leap, as both grow from the undergrounds of the 60s and 70s. Biographical, and autobiographical, comics are a big deal in the world of literary graphic novels. Many of the most lauded GNs are biographies - Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, or Art Spiegelman's Maus, for example. We tend to give biography, rightly or not, a certain benefit of the doubt. It is a testimony in many ways, and testimonies carry with them the air of the sacred.
But what about testimonies from decidedly less-than-sacred (at least by traditional standards) lives? What about the stories of porn actresses? Well, it turns out that, in the mid to late 90s, Re-Visionary Press did just this, and produced autobiographical works on over 40 popular porn actresses. And I say "autobiographical" because each comic was co-written by the stars themselves.
The comics are, generally, middling. They're not making any artistic leaps, nor are the stories anything that we haven't really heard before. I've not read all of them by any stretch, but the common theme seems to be one of not fitting in in their small town lives and finding themselves in the world of adult entertainment. I'm sure that the stories have been sanitized, sometimes to a great extent. There is virtually no mention of any violence, sexual or otherwise, in any of the issues I've read thus far, and this, sadly, seems extremely unrealistic to me. That said, there do seem to be some very real moments in the stories, very often of friendships with other actresses, and, at least a few times, of discovering a facet of their affectional orientation that they hadn't had the chance to explore previously. Though ostensibly inspired by an industry that exploits women, the stories of the relationships between women in this industry are quite nice. And, often, very queer, which is something I'm always on the lookout for.
Today's issue is, I think, the first in the series. The whole issue is biographical, an in depth story of Ms. Millions' path to her place of fame in the industry. I'll admit, I remember her from some of the old video tape porn I may or may not have rented as a younger man. She had a very ferocious attitude. I worried sometimes for her male companions. Having read the comic, however, I see things a bit differently. Ms. Millions, according to her bio, sees her work as an artistic performance - not necessarily one that resembles real life, but one that, perhaps, comments on it? I could very well be reading too much into pornography, but is it really so odd to think that someone could see sex as a medium of artistic expression? I like to think of all sex as, in some ways, an artistic work performed by 1 or more people.
We're going to do a week or so of these comics I think. As far as I know, this issue is the only one that is fully biographical. The majority of the series also include a fantasy story, also co-written by the stars themselves. When I teach biography to my students I ask them to think about who produced it, why they did, when they did, all of those contextual questions that key us into the fact that a biography is not truth. Nor is an autobiography - it, like history, is still a single perspective on a series of events, specifically the events of someone's life. I know that we can't really trust a biographical comic like this, any more than we can trust any biography. But I also think that they're stories that, potentially, haven't been told anywhere else, about performers who, despite the shame associated with their trade, have probably touched more of us, more intimately, than most other media stars.
More to come...
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