The 40 Years of Comics Project - Weekend Edition

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In an effort to not make me hate writing completely, I think my weekend comics will be blogged this way. Just a short note and some thoughts I had on each one.

Day 2419 - Generation Gone #1 by Ales Kot and Andre Lima Araujo. A cool concept, which I've come to expect from Mx. Kot. They are a writer that wears their Grant Morrison influence on their sleeve. Like me with Marillion or Ween. 3 hackers steal some code that causes structural changes in their bodies and gives them superpowers. And they're angry young people.

Day 2420 - Porn Star Fantasies #7 by Xenia Blue, Crystal Gold, Paradise, and Chuck Bordell. This series reprints the fictional stories that are back-ups in the "True Stories of Adult Film Stars" series. I don't know how much of the "True Stories" series is actually true. I like to think that most of it is, if embellished for creative reasons somewhat. The biographical pieces, almost to a fault, tell the stories of women who really like sex, but are told that it's not okay for young women to like sex. And then they discover the porn industry and their own power. I'm sure there's some shady as fuck stuff that is left out, but the takeaway is that, if true, each of these women entered this industry not because they were abused or broken, but because they were people who loved sex in a world that told them that women shouldn't.

Though maybe I'm being a bit too optimistic in that reading.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1169: Carnal Comics #1, August 1995

Another cover that doesn't need covering...but only just.

The cover of today's comic is definitely designed to draw in readers - who doesn't want to see hot girl on demon girl action. There's also a four-breasted cat-goddess who gets in on the fun.

But the more interesting part of this comic is the first story, written by adult film star Tracey Adams herself, and offering a short autobiographical sketch of her life and her time in the adult film industry. I can't think of many other times that I've seen this kind of tale being told - perhaps from an outside perspective, but rarely from an inside one. I'm not familiar with her work (or if I am, I don't specifically remember her), but her attitude toward the industry is interesting, given the era within which she was performing (primarily the Eighties and early Nineties):

"I was always conscious of how women were treated. I stayed away from anything forced or degrading...We were really having sex, all of us, not just the guys. Power and intimidation should have nothing to do with sex."

I've checked on the GCD to see if any of Re-Visionary's other adult comics contain testimonials like this one - I think they're pretty important documents, really. They also demonstrate the utility of comics as ways of telling very personal stories. Of course, we've seen this in the figures of people like Art Spiegleman and Marjane Satrapi, but there's definitely space in the bio/autobio comics world for many different stories, not just those of people surviving adversity, but also of people surviving and thriving in an industry that is not known for its thoughtful nature.

I quite liked this comic. It was kind sex, an interesting biography, and a cool little dream sequence sex story.

More to come...(a phrase that means so much more while we're looking at adult comics!)