The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1293: True Stories of Adult Film Stars - Serenity, March 1995

Sorry. Tonight was an eat burritos and binge Outlander kind of night.

I'll say a bit about this tomorrow.

(Okay, just a bit. The second story is illustrated by Mike Wolfer. He really is very good at illustrating these kinds of tales. Tails?)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1291: True Stories of Adult Film Stars - Rebecca Bardoux, December 1994

Two things struck me about today's comic. The first, in the biography, is Ms. Bardoux's dysfunctional family life and her aimlessness in her early adult life and careers. According to Wikipedia, Ms. Bardoux entered the adult industry at 29, which leaves a decade between that and high school in which she tries to fit into the adult world. Though this is similar to the previous stories, of the weird girls who just didn't fit in, it's the first time the comics have so explicitly dealt with that young adulthood. Going into porn at 19 and going into porn at 29 are two very different things, with two very different perspectives. And I think we see this in the tone achieved in the biographical story.

The second thing  that struck me is that this comic is quite sex positive and queer positive for the era in which it was published. It's actually coming out at the same time as some other queer positive comics from Vertigo. In this issue, in the fantasy section, there's two moments of gay sex happening. And one of them is really just right there in the middle of a fairly large picture, clear as day. I will confess I was shocked to see it, and now I'm curious to see if it's due to Rebecca Bardoux's hand in the comic, or due to Daerick Gross's being the artist. I know he did some other work for Carnal Comics. I'll just have to wait to see if he's in any of the other's I've got.

So, some pretty sex positive messages, really throughout all of the comics, which, if nothing else can be made of these strange bio-comics, is a great thing. So many times adult comics are not solely sex comics, but violence ones as well. And I'm not talking about Michael Manning-style BDSM comics. I mean stuff like Faust or Razor, or the Vamperotica line. Perhaps that's why I'm enjoying these comics so much. Every story is sex positive, is written by someone who feels that sex is a valid and affirming vocation to which to devote one's time and energy. I can get behind that.

Sorry. ;P

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...