Black Kiss is a twelve-issue hardboiled erotic comics American comic book limited series written and drawn by Howard Chaykin, which was originally published in 1988 by Vortex Comics.
The series' explicit sex scenes and the inclusion of transsexual femme fatale Dagmar Laine saw Black Kiss labelled among the most controversial comic series of the late 1980s. A sequel series, Black Kiss 2, followed in 2012.
Chaykin wrote a four-page outline for the story some years before under the working title Smoke Dreams, expanding it to full script in 1987 after leaving DC. He labelled the series as an "erotic horror" and noted that this put several publishers off producing it, going with Bill Marks' Canada company Vortex Comics when he didn't balk at the contents.
Chaykin told Amazing Heroes: -
Despite this he felt there were elements of comedy in the storyline. Later, he described his thinking behind tackling such controversial topics: -
Chaykin would later acknowledge the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the novels of Alan Furst and Raymond Chandler and his own experiences living in Los Angeles as influences on Black Kiss. He also claimed Dagmar was partly inspired by " drag queens" he had worked alongside at an art studio, and an encounter with a "transvestite doppelganger" of a previous girlfriend on Madison Avenue, while much of the architecture was based on real properties in California - particularly Glendale, while sex scenes were modelled on stills from Adult Video Review.
Partway through the series' initial publication, Chaykin told Heidi MacDonald he was pleased with the strong initial reaction to the book, and felt that it got doing a sexually orientated book "got it out of my system", taking a shot at his peers by noting "I have more than one idea". He called it "the most vilified comic book in the country right now" but defended the book's salacious nature by noting that if readers "can find anything to jerk off to in that book, I'm astounded.". Chaykin also claimed he had received further offers to work on other erotic comics, which he dismissed because he was "tired of reading sex stuff by guys who have never had a date". Vortex reported the title was selling around 50,000 copies an issue; Marks claimed this made it the third-best selling independent title on the market (behind Mirage Studios' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dark Horse Comics' Aliens), though as The Comics Journal pointed out this was due to Marks using his own definition of 'independent' that conflicted with that used by most others in the industry.
Following the conclusion of the series' initial publication in 1989, Vortex repackaged it as a three-part mini-series called Big Black Kiss, reprinting four chapters a time in a 48-page, $3.25 format. The series did attract legal attention. In 1989, customs officers in New Zealand seized imported copies of Big Black Kiss on grounds of indecency; at the time law in the country regarded all comics as children's literature and made no account of material intended for adult readers. Following a raid on London comic store Edge of Forever saw several titles seized under the Obscene Publications Act 1964, British police identified Black Kiss as "unacceptable in any format".
The series was collected into trade paperback format several times, including Thick Black Kiss from Vortex in 1993 () with an introduction by Sam Hamm and a 2002 edition released by Eros Comix (). In 2010, it was collected again by Dynamite Entertainment. Interviewed around the release of the Dynamite edition, Chaykin noted that the book's various reprintings had made it one of his most profitable works.
Laine and Grove then get Cass Pollack, a jazz musician and ex-heroin addict who is on the run from the American Mafia, to steal the reel in return for them providing Pollack with an alibi. Pollack is also on the run from the police, due to the Mafia killing Pollack's wife and daughter and Pollack being the only suspect.
Laine and Grove (who look virtually identical) provide Pollack with a lead as to where the reel is after the death of Father Murtaugh. This takes Pollack first of all to an occult bookshop called "The Oath of Incannabulata" where he steals a copy of a book about the mysterious "Order of Bonniface". After the bookshop he ends up in a funeral home called "Tanas" where he finds a number of celebrities indulging in bizarre rituals.
Going through Murtaugh's possessions, Pollack finds an invitation to the next meeting of the "Order of Bonniface". He attends this and discovers the Order was formed at the beginning of Hollywood's movie era and that they worship Charles 'Bubba' Kenton, a 1920s film star who was also married to Beverly Grove. He discovers that Kenton forced Grove to give their daughter Sophie up shortly before Kenton became a vampire. After becoming a vampire Kenton forms The Order of Bonniface and turns many of his followers into vampires, including Beverly Grove. This gives Grove the chance of revenge over the loss of her daughter and she switches Kenton's alarm clock so that he wakes during the day and dies in the sunlight.
However The Order want the reel of film as it shows Beverly Grove and Bubba Kenton together in a pornographic film which shows that Grove is much older than she claims to be to the world. They hope she can turn them into vampires and therefore give them eternal youth.
However one of The Order, a young woman called Magda, wants Grove to only make her a vampire. This is because she is Grove's granddaughter, in addition to the nun who stole the reel from Father Murtaugh earlier in the story. Pollack becomes caught in the middle as everyone around him attempts to win, leaving Pollack in a position where he seems unable to survive.
Matt Fraction would later praise the series, seeing it as a logically absurd extension of "exploiting all of the totemic sex fetishes the comics world had loved him for to date: big asses and hiked-up skirts; garters and blow jobs", describing Black Kiss as "poisonous and bitter, an absurdly funny sucker punch demanding to be spat out." Reviewing the 2010 collected edition for Slings & Arrows, Frank Plowright felt the series would never achieve its deserved acclaim due to its sexual content, feeling that behind this there "is a well-thought out plot that swerves away from expectation and contains some great sequences". Lars Ingebrigsten was less effuse, feeling Chaykin's flashy storytelling was used to compensate for a weak plot.
Publication history
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