With Chaykin's follow-up mini-series, Black Kiss II, finally hitting comic stores, I thought it would be a good time to (finally) get my post about the original Black Kiss up on the blog and out into the world. Black Kiss came out from Vortex Comic in the late 80s. Vortex was a Canadian publisher that also brought us Dean Motter's Mister X. The Vortex books were ahead of their time, in one way or another, and very cutting edge. Which is likely why a creator like Chaykin would be interested in working with them.
This post is based on the Thick Black Kiss collection of the miniseries that Vortex put out in the 90s.
Make no mistake, Black Kiss was very much a comic about sex in its many forms. I don't think this is a bad thing. The 1980s is when more mainstream comic books actively started moving away from the "comics are just for kids" mindset. Yes, the alternative comics had been there since the 60s, and Marvel Comics started lumbering towards an adolescence in the 70s, but for the most part mainstream American comics were still stuck in the 1950s. I think that the rapid growth of popularity for direct market comic stores helped this growing up of comics. Newsstands and drug stores would never have put a comic with a cover like the one shown here on their spinner racks.
The underground/alternative comics scene did help lead the way, and the creators coming up in the late 70s and 80s who grew up with both mainstream and underground comics were able to see that the two approaches could could be integrated. Also, by the time Black Kiss came along, the doors had been blown off of comics with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, as well as independent comics like Mister X or Chaykin's American Flagg (over at First Comics) had created a market for a more sophisticated approach to storytelling in comics (one that sometimes featured sex and sexuality as well).
[Note: It may be a bit confusing, but you will notice that I use "underground" and "independent" separately from each other. The reason for that is because I think the labels describe two entirely different types of comics that can overlap, but mostly have different agendas to them. Underground or alternative comics, for my purposes, refer to works like Robert Crumb's Zap! Comix, the work of Harvey Pekar, and comics like the Furry Freak Brothers that often had a more overt political or social agenda to them, or at least with more literary approach to their storytelling. Independent comics refers to comics similar in tone and storytelling to mainstream comics, just from smaller press publishers. Neither is really better than the other, they just both have fundamental differences to them that should preclude their being lumped together.]
This story definitely fits into Chaykin's seeming preference for a retro-styled world, with a nod to modern technology. Everyone in Chaykin's world dresses as if it were still the height of the 1940s. The closest example, outside of Chakyin's work, would be Bruce Timm's work on the old Batman cartoons. If you imagine the old Timm/Dini Batman cartoon with a heaping load of sex dropped on top of it you are part way to the visual feel of Chaykin's work on Black Kiss. This retro approach that Chaykin employs, I think, is one of the reasons why his comics from the 80s hold up so much better than so many of their contemporary books. By melding the vintage with the (then) current, he creates a timeless feel to his books that are able to transcend their time period and hold up better, over the long haul.
Chaykin wasn't one to shy away from sex in his independent work. American Flagg had a good amount of sexual content in it, however unlike Black Kiss sex scenes in American Flagg tended to "fade to black" when things started to get explicit. Not so in Black Kiss. Chaykin embraced sex in this book. One of the main characters, introduced in the first few pages works as a call girl (her outgoing phone message being a running "gag" in the story). Dagmar, the character in question, was also the first transgendered character that I encountered in a comic. Dagmar is friends and lovers with Beverly, a former low budget "blue movie" actress. There are also hints throughout that there is something different to the relationship between Dagmar and Beverly, however that is a fairly big spoiler for the reveal at the end of the story, so I won't be talking about that. I'm not sure if Black Kiss is going to be re-released or not, with the new mini out in stores, so I don't want to ruin the story for anyone. Ask me privately and I may tell you more about Beverly.
There is a lot of sex in Black Kiss. The first sex scene deals with a priest and a woman, who may or may not be a prostitute, dressing up a blind school girl.That is just the tip of the iceberg. By the end of this series, most of the characters end up having some sort of sex with each other. This may not be for everyone, but I think the sex in Black Kiss dances right up to the edge of having sex in the book for its own sake (which for some might make it pornographic) without going into being prurient.
Now, let's talk a little bit about Cass Pollack, the male lead of the story. You may remember him from other Howard Chaykin stories like Dominic Fortune, American Flagg, The Shadow, or Blackhawk. If Chaykin has a flaw to his work (and there are some who would probably say that he has plenty of them), I think that would be the fact that his male leads tend to all look and act the same, whether they should in the story or not. Chaykin obviously has a particular type of male lead in mind when he is writing, and keeps using that character. Some of this has to do with his preference for a retro feel in his stories, I think, but for me it is definitely a weakness to his story telling.
The plot of Black Kiss is pure Hitchcock, revolving around a McGuffin of a lost pornographic film from Beverly's past. A lot of people want to get a hold of it, and Beverly and Dagmar manipulate Cass into recovering it for them. Really, the main purpose of the film seems to be to get everyone into the same place for the big reveal of the truth behind Beverly. I assume (from what I have seen of the first issues of Black Kiss II) that this reveal is going to play a big part in the plot of the new mini. With a few pages, Chaykin completely turns the story on its ear, changing a fairly straight forward old school Noir story into something, well, different. For me, that turn around in the plot is a big part of what redeems the comic from mediocrity and elevates it above being just a sex comic. Black Kiss features some of Chaykin's best writing from this period, I think because of the fact that he was not writing someone else's characters and was free to write the story that had been in his head for so long. I could be wrong.
Is Black Kiss worth tracking down? Yes, definitely. I don't know what the back issues are going for on the secondary market these days, but I would say that they are worth the price of tracking down. Outside of American Flagg and Cody Starbuck, this is Chaykin writing the kind of story that only he can do, without the restraints of working on characters owned by others. The violence is heavy, and so is the sexual content. If those things bother you, this isn't the comic for you. If you are a fan of Noir story telling, and like twist endings that turn a story upside down, this is probably the comic for you. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but it features some damn good comic story telling that has held up remarkably well for it's age.
This post is based on the Thick Black Kiss collection of the miniseries that Vortex put out in the 90s.
The underground/alternative comics scene did help lead the way, and the creators coming up in the late 70s and 80s who grew up with both mainstream and underground comics were able to see that the two approaches could could be integrated. Also, by the time Black Kiss came along, the doors had been blown off of comics with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, as well as independent comics like Mister X or Chaykin's American Flagg (over at First Comics) had created a market for a more sophisticated approach to storytelling in comics (one that sometimes featured sex and sexuality as well).
[Note: It may be a bit confusing, but you will notice that I use "underground" and "independent" separately from each other. The reason for that is because I think the labels describe two entirely different types of comics that can overlap, but mostly have different agendas to them. Underground or alternative comics, for my purposes, refer to works like Robert Crumb's Zap! Comix, the work of Harvey Pekar, and comics like the Furry Freak Brothers that often had a more overt political or social agenda to them, or at least with more literary approach to their storytelling. Independent comics refers to comics similar in tone and storytelling to mainstream comics, just from smaller press publishers. Neither is really better than the other, they just both have fundamental differences to them that should preclude their being lumped together.]
This story definitely fits into Chaykin's seeming preference for a retro-styled world, with a nod to modern technology. Everyone in Chaykin's world dresses as if it were still the height of the 1940s. The closest example, outside of Chakyin's work, would be Bruce Timm's work on the old Batman cartoons. If you imagine the old Timm/Dini Batman cartoon with a heaping load of sex dropped on top of it you are part way to the visual feel of Chaykin's work on Black Kiss. This retro approach that Chaykin employs, I think, is one of the reasons why his comics from the 80s hold up so much better than so many of their contemporary books. By melding the vintage with the (then) current, he creates a timeless feel to his books that are able to transcend their time period and hold up better, over the long haul.
Chaykin wasn't one to shy away from sex in his independent work. American Flagg had a good amount of sexual content in it, however unlike Black Kiss sex scenes in American Flagg tended to "fade to black" when things started to get explicit. Not so in Black Kiss. Chaykin embraced sex in this book. One of the main characters, introduced in the first few pages works as a call girl (her outgoing phone message being a running "gag" in the story). Dagmar, the character in question, was also the first transgendered character that I encountered in a comic. Dagmar is friends and lovers with Beverly, a former low budget "blue movie" actress. There are also hints throughout that there is something different to the relationship between Dagmar and Beverly, however that is a fairly big spoiler for the reveal at the end of the story, so I won't be talking about that. I'm not sure if Black Kiss is going to be re-released or not, with the new mini out in stores, so I don't want to ruin the story for anyone. Ask me privately and I may tell you more about Beverly.
Now, let's talk a little bit about Cass Pollack, the male lead of the story. You may remember him from other Howard Chaykin stories like Dominic Fortune, American Flagg, The Shadow, or Blackhawk. If Chaykin has a flaw to his work (and there are some who would probably say that he has plenty of them), I think that would be the fact that his male leads tend to all look and act the same, whether they should in the story or not. Chaykin obviously has a particular type of male lead in mind when he is writing, and keeps using that character. Some of this has to do with his preference for a retro feel in his stories, I think, but for me it is definitely a weakness to his story telling.
Is Black Kiss worth tracking down? Yes, definitely. I don't know what the back issues are going for on the secondary market these days, but I would say that they are worth the price of tracking down. Outside of American Flagg and Cody Starbuck, this is Chaykin writing the kind of story that only he can do, without the restraints of working on characters owned by others. The violence is heavy, and so is the sexual content. If those things bother you, this isn't the comic for you. If you are a fan of Noir story telling, and like twist endings that turn a story upside down, this is probably the comic for you. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but it features some damn good comic story telling that has held up remarkably well for it's age.
