Erotonoir, pornographic representation, and transxploitation in Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss

ABSTRACT

Black Kiss (Vortex 1988–1989) is a comic book limited series created by Howard Chaykin whose first edition was marked by controversy, due to its explicit content revolving around violence and pornography. Black Kiss is characterized by a crime plot revolving around a few main characters, heavily relying on noir tropes and fast-paced sexploitation, spun by the quest for a mysterious pornographic reel. Besides the shocking factor, however, the comic book is arguably ground-breaking for its time for its deployment of an articulated trans female protagonist that brings forward issues related to gender representation, trans women fetishization and exploitation, as well as social prejudice and transphobia. Using the noir premises of the narrative as a guiding thread, this article examines the correlations between the articulation of a peculiar erotic noir setting, the graphic representation of sex, and how this early representation of queer trans sexuality is constructed – highlighting both its positive and its negative aspects.

KEYWORDS:

• Comics
• pornography
• violence
• trans representation
• queer representation
• sexuality

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge Howard Chaykin’s kind permission to use images from his comic book.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For the purpose of this article, the trade paperback published by Dynamite Entertainment (2010) will be used for reference; the volume collects the original issues 1–12 published by Vortex.

2 In Black Kiss II, the creator develops a sequence of short fragments that situate Beverly in different chronological contexts, from her origin as a vampire/succubus to the aftermath of the events narrated in Black Kiss. The 2013 collected edition (Image Comics) will be used for reference in the section examining Beverly’s vampiric nature and her exploitation of trans women.

3 In the chapter ‘Cherry One-Sheets and Xeroxed Polaroids Masculinity, Authenticity, and the Noir of Black Kiss’, part of his book dedicated to Chaykin’s comics, Brannon Costello (2017) examines Black Kiss’s neo-noir narrative, highlighting its function as a lucid depiction of Los Angeles as a locus where the emptiness of the popular culture industries is embodied, where authenticity and the fake intertwine and clash. His analysis points at Chaykin's preoccupation with the opposition between the ‘real' (connected to political agency) and the superficiality of consumer culture, and specifically on Black Kiss it leverages Cass’s role and masculinity, drawing on how he relates to the female characters in the comic book.

4 Among many, it is worth mentioning Dark Passage (Daves, dir. 1947), in which protagonist Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart) is wrongly accused of his wife’s murder yet provokes the death of two characters threatening him. Likewise, his relationship with Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall) is ambiguous: as Rosemary does for Cass, Irene helps Vincent through the plot’s ordeal without any practical reason or personal involvement in the case.

5 Scholarship on the sub-genre employs the term ‘lesbian’ to refer to sexual representations that at times fall under the more inclusive ‘sapphic’ umbrella term – which is also more correct in describing Beverly and Dagmar’s relationship. I use the collocation ‘lesbian vampire’ to refer to the tropes and character construction examined by said scholarship, whereas I use ‘sapphic’ to refer to the case study at hand.