The official site of artist Michael Kirwan. It’s mostly gay stuff of the beefy persuasion (think a slightly more cartoony Tom of Finland), but you’ll also find a mix of fetish pics as well as stories and rants on various subjects. Worth a look.

Since this is, inarguably, a male-dominated world, femdom stories often begin by taking us away to an uncharted island of women, or a planet of Amazons, where “normal” social hierarchies can be imaginatively inverted. In the two-part comic Mistress and the Maggot (at least I assume there were only two parts, I’ve never seen any more), the fantasy is set in the future. Specifically, the year is 2525 and all of the plant life on our once-green planet has died because of the hole in the ozone layer. This has led to widespread cannibalism. “But,” as the narrative informs us, “cannibalism is an act of diminishing return. Man was eating himself out of existence.” According to the new anti-Malthusian mathematics, since each “surviving citizen” (of what?) needs to eat 10-12 adults a year to survive, the population is declining by nine-tenths a year. And yet, despite the grim numbers, some kind of social order still seems to be functioning. There’s even a tribal economy in the larger population centers like Old Chicago. The currency is the kribnic, though most things seem available for barter.

The dystopic visuals have a distinctly ragged look. And I must say I kind of like the fact that Mistress (Amy Starkweather, in a previous life) is not very attractive. Her face in particular seems haggard and worn. Yes she’s got the big tits, but they tend to flop around a lot and take strange amoeba-like shapes. And while her sexy deaths-head bikini outfit is certainly fetching, it’s also a reminder of the grim reality of the wasteland she wanders with her pack mule Maggot. These aren’t the air-brushed figures of a futuristic pornotopia. As noted, Mistress’s tits are uncontrollably natural. Maggot’s cock is uncircumcised. And wiry pubic hair seems to sprout like weeds between every character’s legs. Which makes sense (what would they be shaving with?), but since when has realism ever been a selling point for adult comix?  Especially ones set in 2525.

The writing is functional, with a bit of humour thrown in with the over-the-top metonymy for pussy. Mistress has a “velvety honey-hole,” a “bedewed nook,” and a “nest of feminine mystery,” while an Asian sex slave’s hole is an “enigmatic oven of exotic pleasures.” There is also something wry and socially conscious about the story’s environmental message, especially given the dark twist ending (which I won’t give away). The femdom angle is taken to an extreme that is only possible given the post-apocalyptic environment. Mistress is a female mantis or black widow, eating her men literally. Cocks are sliced off and go flying through the air looking like so many sausage parts. And she even has one attached to the hilt of her sword, in case you miss the obvious phallic symbolism of the bad ass babe with a two-handed cleaver. This is one mistress who doesn’t need a strap-on.

I don’t know anything about Don Lomax, who is credited with the story and art. There was a Don Lomax active in the 80s and 90s in the alt-comic scene, but I’m not sure if this is the same guy. In any event, there don’t seem to be any other adult comics done under the same name. Which is a bit of a shame. Though I wouldn’t consider this title to be a classic, it does have a distinct vision as well as an intelligent and interesting storyline. Personally I didn’t find the violence to be all that erotic, but I also don’t think it was meant to be. Apparently the world’s population, in addition to going hungry, has also gone sterile. That’s not a necessary plot point — though it saves us having to look at panels of spoil rats eating babies a la Cormac McCarthy’s The Road — but it fits with the asexual nature of the action. Mistress and Maggot are a horny couple, but also seem at times like they’ve been married too long and take each other for granted. And I was never entirely sure why he was so dedicated to her. On the other hand, the fact that I’m discussing them as though they’re real people shows the surprising level of depth they achieve as characters.

Guido Crepax’s updating of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novella Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz) , which was first published in 1984 as Venere in pelliccia, is a truly bizarre work of artistic crossover. The title announces it has been “adapted from a text by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.” It is not a simple illustration of the original then, but a new interpretation.

Crepax (Wikipedia entry) was an Italian comic artist who died in 2003 but came of creative age in the psychadelic period, a clear influence on much of his work. He was also fascinated by classic S&M literature, doing graphic versions of Justine, Emmanuelle and Histoire d’O. With his version of Venus in Furs I sense someone very comfortable with taking liberties with the text. In some ways this is obvious. Over a hundred years after its initial publication, the story was in need of several further turns of the screw. Hence the sodomy by the monocoled Major, the rite of cross-dressing that precedes it, and Severin’s “torture” at the hands of the three African women (at least they are African in the novella, they are of indeterminate origin here).

Other changes are the result of differences in the nature of the media. Sacher-Masoch wasn’t a particularly windy author given his period, but given how much abridgement is required in the condensation of text to a graphic format a lot of important stuff is dropped. Indeed, only the final section of the novel is presented by Crepax, leaving out all of the initial courtship between Severin and Wanda. Much of the philosophizing is also dropped, including the opposition between a Northern/Christian sensibility (cold and dutiful) and a Southern/pagan one (piquant and hedonistic). It doesn’t much matter then that the Greek in Sacher-Masoch is transformed into Sandor the Prussian officer by Crepax, an alteration that would sink this pet theory entirely.

And finally there is stuff that has been added that is entirely new, like Wanda’s decadent reading list (Ibsen, Huysmans, Baudelaire, etc.) or Severin buggering himself with a chair leg. The aestheticism may be read as a transposition of the novella’s emphasis on painting and sculpture, but I’m not sure if the latter scene is true to the spirit of the original. It is, however, a bold and inventive twist.

The artwork emphasizes the line, most obvious in the visible sound-waves coming from the instruments of the Joseph Joachim String Quartet as they play Opus 10 by Claude Debussy. When it comes to it, the sex is surprisingly non-explicit. Crepax is more interested in sketching the mood of a scene and making use of echoing images like the keyhole/pussy rhyme and the furs Venus wears and her bush (the picture of her standing with the foxtail falling between her legs is a nice touch). I didn’t do a count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Severin’s (flaccid) dong is actually depicted more times than Wanda’s crotch. Which tells you something about where the real focus of attention is with this fetish.

Because Crepax disposes of the background story he only briefly deals with the key problematic of the fantasy of female domination. The crux of it is this: Women become cruel mistresses in order to satisfy men, not for their own pleasure. Now of course all fantasy involves a bit of role-playing, but the sense of a submissive male still being his mistress’s “boss,” still directing every part of the action, is hard to get around. This is something Wanda admits to in the book. She is doing it for Severin. Even her letter to him confesses that it was all an attempt at “therapy.” The same was true, apparently, in Sacher-Masoch’s own life. His wife found dressing up in furs and dishing out Leopold’s punishment after a hard day’s homemaking to be a tedious chore, complaining that the furs he bought for her were so heavy they hurt her shoulders. (Crepax cleverly shows the contract in his version as signed by “Severin Sacher-Masoch.” In the book, of course, he is Severin von Kusiemski.)

Like I say, sexual fantasy is all about some kind of role-playing. But if even within that fantasy it is acknowledged as role-playing then there is something self-defeating in it. I think this is what the famous conclusion of the novella, reproduced by Crepax as Severin’s thoughts from the analyst’s couch, is getting at. A man dominated by a woman in a society where women are inferior is a prostitute, an absurdity, or, most likely, both. Severin’s disillusionment is more clearly expressed in the book, where a framing narrative makes it clear how completely he has been “cured” of his perverse fantasy. The book also makes Wanda’s backsliding into a romantic attachment to Severin a little more understandable. In Crepax her behaviour is confusing because we don’t know who Wanda was before she became Venus, and by what steps she was brought along to adopt this role.

I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of Crepax’s artwork. His faces seem distorted through a kind of Mercator-projection distortion and his bodies are a little too minimalist for me. But his Venus is an intelligent response to a classic that really does make us see the original in a new way, creatively adding to our appreciation of both.

Carnivora is the fourth of the eight-part Druuna saga. After Morbus Gravis I and II I thought I had a general idea what was going on. But by the time I got to Carnivora I was starting to flounder. Of course when I first read it I might have been distracted by all the “good parts” so I didn’t pay much attention to the first page, where the Doctor (Serpieri’s self-portrait) goes into his philosophical musings about what’s happening on board the ship. Then when I went back over it to try and get a better understanding of the plot . . . I found these digressions no help at all.

Apparently the ship is passing back and forth over a barrier, or more properly membrane, between “two dimensions of temporal existence” variously identified with order and chaos, good and evil. Which has the effect of confusing the hell out of everyone.

Unfortunately, the complexity of the plot leads to a problem. The thing is, great artwork can only carry adult comics so far. What also makes comix erotic, in fact I would argue the most essential ingredient, is a strong story and interesting characters. Without a compelling narrative context what you’re left with is a book of pin-ups, the graphic equivalent of those Andrew Blake movies where nameless characters wander in and out of the rooms of opulent mansions for musical couplings. In the first books of the Druuna series the sex had context. But here Druuna, though still a fascinating creation, is left too much on her own. Sure she’s insatiable and driven by perverse desires to be dominated and hurt, but who is fucking her? Who does she even think is fucking her? I don’t know and I don’t think she does either. Meanwhile, there’s quite a lot of talk but little is said. Imagery, like the imaginary ancient wall between realities, becomes more purely symbolic, less dramatic.

Carnivora, as the title implies, is also a creepier book than the earlier ones. The Alien (or really Aliens) borrowings of humans caught in a web of tissue and being eaten alive is particularly grisly. All of this grotesquerie is of general thematic relevance (the mutability of forms) though it also begins in this book to morph into what becomes a more prevalent theme in the later books, that of the doppelganger or double. But of course there is no duplicating Druuna. The “real” Druuna is so much sexier than her evil clones. Which is a weird but true comment on reality and the simulacrum.

Sprawling Japanese site (don’t worry, they have an English version) featuring galleries of women with enormously inflated mammaries. Give yourself time to browse around, as just about every different style of artwork imaginable is on display so you’re sure to find something you like. Unless you’re not into boobs at all. Which just makes you weird.

Enchantae is a magical, medieval-themed world of floating “cities in the sky.” Taller buildings look like mushroom-headed dongs and there is a temple (to the Goddess of Lust, of course) shaped like a woman’s hindquarters. You enter the pink door of the temple doggy-style.

Enchantae is also the name of a website, and serial comic, created by Spanish comic artist Jordi Bayarri (Wikipedia page, but it’s in Spanish). The way it works, each episode or chapter has 12 full-colour pages. Every month a new episode is published, divided into four weekly updates. When I visited the story thus far consisted of 21 episodes. The price is US$9.95 a month, which is very reasonable for original work of this quality.

As noted, Enchantae is a fantasy swords-and-sorcery sort of world. Presumably the cities are kept floating in the air by some kind of sexual energy, as that seems to be the main source of power. When the heroine needs a weapon, for example, she “charges” a dildo with orgasmic current (the old-fashioned way), which has the effect of turning it into a glowing sword. Luckily our heroine, the comic’s main character, is Nerita, Supreme Priestess of Anoa, the Goddess of Lust. Which means she knows how to charge a magic dildo.

The fantasy context means that the interracial angle is transposed to sex between humans and mythical creatures. The trolls (all male) are basically Enchantae’s blacks — hulking servants and plantation workers who live in segregated ghettos and have limited civil rights. Imps are the green-skinned female equivalent. Despite this racist segregation, and the feudal social structure, Enchantae is imagined as a happy place because it embraces the tenets of free love. Everybody is horny all the time, and their favourite way to spend their days is . . . fucking.

Indeed there are strict rules against not fucking. In one of the best episodes Nerita is forced to take a shortcut through “Fellatio Alley.” The alley is so-named because any woman stopped in it by a man has to get on her knees and start blowing. If she doesn’t she is slapped naked in the stocks and publicly serviced (or raped, take your pick) by any guy who passes by. Though it’s not at all clear that this is really a punishment.

Nerita’s shortcut gets the story moving because it is in Fellatio Alley that she receives a strange medallion from a troll. I can’t tell you any more about what happens aside from the fact that it involves Nerita and her freckled understudy Peka (a sexual machine who even wears Nerita out) trying to uncover the mystery of the medallion while an apparently evil wizard plots some kind of global domination.

I liked the story. A good mystery always lends strength to the narrative. And I liked the art. It’s very comic-book style, with lots of bright solid colours and heavy drafting. Which makes the cumshots, for example, extra creamy and goopy looking. And the costumes are especially good. The cape-and-thong combo works perfectly.

There are two versions of the comic available, in Spanish and English. As these things go, the English translation seemed pretty solid. What mistakes I noticed were barely more than typos. The only part where I got really confused was in trying to figure out the relationship between Nerita and her favourite stud Jator. She is angry that he is fooling around behind her back with the Queen. But in a place like Enchantae that doesn’t seem like such a dire offence. Does Nerita expect him to be monogamous? When she’s out slutting around and breaking all her religious vows with whatever cock gets waved in her face?

There is, of course, a lot of explicit hardcore sex, with an emphasis on anal play. Even the men get the prostate massage. As a rule, every episode is built around at least one extended coupling. And I have to say Bayarri does a terrific job of mixing things up so that there is a lot of variety. There’s a danger in a serial like this for the story to just devolve into one sex scene after another, but so far that’s being avoided. Still, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind if the story got away from the sex for a while and concentrated on aspects of the plot that could be used to build up more dramatic tension and mystery. This would make the sex scenes even stronger, I think.

Bottom Line: Great deal at this price.

As you know, I started this site because of the dearth of information and space for discussion of adult comics online. Well, that’s starting to change. Just launched this month is Pornographika, an adult comix blog created by Sean Patrick Morgan. Updates will include reviews, interviews, and feature galleries, as well as an ongoing comic drawn by Sean. Sean is one of the few adult artists I can actually say I’ve met, and he’s a great guy. So you should definitely go visit his site!

Update: Pornographika has shut down. Damn!  

Cathexis is the name of Michael Manning’s 1997 collection of artwork and short stories taken from the pages of Zero, Ukiyo X, Spiral and  Bonesaw. Before  doing a bit of background for this commentary I thought Manning had just made the word up. But  no! Apparently it was coined by Freud, who defined it as a charge of (primarily sexual) energy. He also referred to the “anti-cathexis,” which is a force that represses this energy.

Not that this will contribute a whole lot to your understanding or enjoyment of these stories. Manning is off doing his own thing here, again. As usual, the emphasis is on the mutability of forms. Strange beings appear like grotesque frieze-work. Women with serpent heads. Anthropomorphic dogs. And of course plenty of she-males or androgynes. The name “Circe” comes up a couple of times, and there’s no doubt that horny and perverted mage is a presiding deity throughout.

It’s a highly textual collection as well. Many of the stories aren’t comics at all but illustrated erotic fictions. And there is also a cinematic feel to it, especially noticeable in the paneling that’s done to imitate a static representation of film frames in the “Audio Frequency Book of the Dead” sequence (a story I couldn’t figure out at all).

Looking at it thematically, which may be the only approach available for such a weird assembly, I found the most striking thing about Cathexis to be the fixation on self-referential sexuality. I don’t just mean the iconic Manning image of circular self-fellatio, here strikingly reproduced at the climax of “Hand of Glory.” I mean rather all of the references to orgasmic individuals and couples watching themselves on film, or especially in a mirror: “Her legs were spread wide for the mirror on the opposite wall and she had put a pillow under her ass so she could see herself better.” As I noted in my comments on Hydrophidian, this presentation motif goes hand-in-glove with bondage aesthetics, putting the body on display as an object. Here however it seems more self-regarding.

The art, as one should expect from such a collection, presents a wide variety of styles. There is more experimentation than you see in the later graphic novels. The linear, blocky style of “Red Time Overload” in particular seems to have been abandoned. Effective for the kind of story it is, it doesn’t suit his erotic material.

Not comics, but a collection of some high-brow erotic drawings. You have to subscribe to get the vintage movies and photography, but the artwork exhibits seem to all be free. For the true connoisseur.

Story: The further trials and tribulations of the four abducted cheerleaders, now separated from each other.

Review: This title is the sequel to Cheerleaders Hell and Cheerleaders Horror Party, and it doesn’t look like the saga is going to be ending any time soon. One of Fernando’s favourite themes is the chase (his other multi-title series is Woman Hunt), which makes for an easy way to keep the narrative feather in the air. A girl escapes, she is tracked down, re-captured, imprisoned, she escapes again, etc., etc.

What I find interesting about this book is how much story there is. Each page is filled with dialogue. And this isn’t just trash talk either. It helps us to understand what’s going on as we jump around the different sub-plots. No question this could be a really confusing comic. But I found I was able to follow things pretty well even the first time through. The only problem with multiple story-lines is that there tends to be one thread that is of more interest to the reader than any of the others, so you find yourself skimming ahead to those parts. But that’s an issue people have with DVDs too.

Otherwise I thought this was a strong title. Lots of playing dress-up. More violence than I care for, but the piercing is quite well (and surprisingly realistically) drawn. Certainly Dogface is the most interesting of the villains.

Favourite Panel: Top of page 20. That’s an incredible perspective line formed by Chris’s spread legs. And I love the way the foregrounded high heel seems to almost jump off the page and poke you in the eye (though I have to add that her arms are drawn way too short). I think it’s hard to draw bondage well in comics because the pictures have a tendency to become too posed and static. In this frame you can really feel the tension in her body.