The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1300: Avenue X, December 1994

I can only assume that had I read the previous issue, published 2 years before this one, I'd have any idea whatsoever what was happening here. I've enjoyed Fauve's work in the Carnal Comics line, but here she seems somewhat unfocussed. That said, the middle insert, a colour 3-page intro of a Charlie's Angel's-style team, is pretty fantastic.

One cool feature of the comic is that it's bi-lingual. There is a translation page for the Spanish at the end of the comic, but not in the comic itself. It makes for a nice, off-putting feeling when you're only understanding part of what's being said. Considering the action takes place in a strange vampire club, that off-putting feeling is quite appropriate.

This comic is strange. Not only was it hard to read, but there's a bit at the end where the creators offer thanks to people, and Fauve's comes across as being embarrassed of her work with Carnal Comics. It's a pity that someone would feel bad about work that's actually pretty great.

There is one nice text feature, that reads thus:

"Men and women unite to create a more fun world! Stop the oppression of women throughout the world! Hemp users are not criminals! Gay Pride! Don't be a homophobe it's not fun! Shelter is not a privilege. Instigate and demand good housing for all! Life will be more fun!!"

A naive articulation, perhaps, but an essentially good one. And, give the publication date of 1994, quite forward thinking.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1292: True Stories of Adult Film Stars - Kimberly Kupps, February 1995

This comic fell a bit flat for me, which is a purposefully used euphemism given the endowments of Ms. Kupps, the subject of today's biography. Even the fantasy sequence, guest-starring Nightingale, Carnal's own superhero based on adult film star Bonnie Michaels, didn't really do much. Nightingale has turned up before, in the Demi the Demoness comic I read earlier this year. She seems to function like an erotic version of the Sandman, helping people through the dreams they have, often of the wet variety.

So we'll read one more of these tomorrow, and then I'll take a break. I'm finding them fascinating, but as with anything, too much becomes too much.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1290: True Stories of Adult Film Stars - Blondage, December 1994

There's one part of the adult entertainment industry in the late 80s and early 90s of which I was totally unaware, and that's the part where the stars actually toured doing shows at strip clubs across the United States. Today's comic is the story of a duo, Janine and Julia Ann whose start in the adult film business came through a touring partnership. As I noted the other day, I do a bit of research, if I can, into the life and work of the featured stars for each issue. It's that little grain of salt with which I'm taking the stories. Things didn't go well for Janine, sadly, though both women have been active in the industry as recently as 2004. There's something to be said for doing what you love, perhaps?

Unfortunately, the story kind of fell flat for me, especially considering the caliber of the previous couple. But I'm wondering if perhaps this is the sort of comic that appealed to the people who were actually involved, as fans, with the industry at the time. If you were a fan of the duo "Blondage," if you knew who both were from their films, perhaps a comic detailing the genesis of their partnership would be interesting. For myself, not so much.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1288: True Stories of Adult Film Stars - Aja, October 1994

Regardless of how you might feel about the content of adult comics, you have to admit that that is a beautiful cover.

Beginning with today's issue, the True Stories series co-features a fantastic adventure also written by the featured star. Aja's plays on all the old jungle girl tropes, and that cover is a classic example of the sort of early paperback art that exemplifies the genre.

The stories themselves don't really live up to the cover. As I noted in yesterday's post, most of the stories are middling at best. That said, today's story actually touches on how the decision to become an adult film actress affected Aja's marriage, and she doesn't paint the industry as always fun and sunshine. This kind of verisimilitude tends to lend an air of authenticity to biography, I find. The jungle girl story is silly and full of sex, but I really do think this is one of those cases in which the cover makes promises that the content can't keep.

Can you tell I love that cover?

But there's something else. In reading these comics, I've of course looked up some of the work of the featured performers. What I found when I looked up Aja was that she died in 2006 at the age of 43. That's all it says on the Wikipedia page, and on the obituary. This got me thinking a bit more about the importance of these comics. Sex workers continue to be a much-maligned demographic in our culture, as they were at the time that Aja was performing. Carnal Comics here offers a voice to that maligned demographic, a chance to tell their story. I am curious as to how sanitized these stories have been made. I read another of the publisher's comics last night that featured the story of star Savannah, who died at 23 quite tragically. And there was some dark stuff in that story, touching on the perils of drug abuse in the porn industry. There's a very strong girl power vibe coming from these stories that clashes quite jarringly with the way in which the porn industry has been painted in mainstream media, as a den of drugs, drink, and abuse. But then there's stories like this one. As usual, I'm sure the truth lies somewhere between.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1287: True Stories of Adult Film Stars - Tyffany Million, September 1994

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...