How does a nice girl like me end up in a place like this? Or, I got nabbed in a porn comics raid!
UPDATED
So, nothing says “Welcome to Marvel Comics!” like getting your first gig picked up in a raid.
I should have been prosecuted for crimes against draughtsmanship, not porn, because no rational person is going to see TEH DIRTY in these offerings from Swords of the Swashbucklers.
For the complete back story of my tiny moment in comics history, check out this fascinating series of blog posts by Steve Bissette entitled FORGOTTEN COMICS WARS. It’s the best comics blog reading. Mavbe not EVAH, but certainly the best over the last weeks and weeks. Really.
The posts include internal correspondence, legal papers, and all the inside info on the infamous Friendly Frank’s comic shop raid, an extraordinary event which changed the course of comics history.
No, really.
I promised Steve I’d post my own contribution to the offending material. And here it is.
OH MY GOD! Lock up the children! Turn away! Turn awaaaaaayyyy!
You’re still looking. You sinner.
LOOK! LOOKIE! LOOK! THE PORN! THE PORN! WOMEN LOOKING DEEPLY INTO EACH OTHER’S EYES! THEY’RE DEERTY DEERTY GIRLS!!!
But it’s OK, one of them dies for their sins.
Steve Bissette’s blog contributes his interesting and entertaining excursions into comics history every week. I highly recommend you bookmark.
The Friendly Franks raid was so long ago, even I don’t recall the ending of the story. So, I look forward to Steve’s next installment with great anticipation.
I remember little about my involvement in all of this except I was utterly perplexed that this book was considered porn. Looking at it after all these years, I am even more perplexed how I ever got another job in comics after this. My God, this book was bad.
I simply must thank Marvel Comics for giving me another chance. My work got better.
Happy birthday, Steve.
CLICK HERE to return to my webcomic, which has far more interesting pages than this tepid Swords of the Swashbucklers stuff.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:11 am
I’m so happy I don’t live in the USA. No offense..
March 15th, 2010 at 1:20 am
Hmm. What was I doing in December 2006, during my senior year of college? Working every Saturday, alternate Sundays, and occasional Fridays at a comic store. I’m glad it was in the relatively more open-minded community of Westwood, CA.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:16 am
oh wow yes. Why there is a CBLDF, and why it is still necessary to exist.
Sigh.
March 15th, 2010 at 7:43 am
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
Oh, a poor, innocent farm girl, seduced by the big city pornographers of four color filth! If only she had worked for Treasure Chest, or Classics Illustrated, or even Big Boy, Miss Doran would have been spared a life of debauchery, of drawing scantily clad men and women, some with *gasp* nipples!
Let this be a lesson to all art students! Avert your eyes from nudes! Celebrate the beauty of life around you while avoiding the disgusting, the shameful, the ugliness of the world around you! Do not succumb to the sordid pleasures of the flesh. Follow not the rutted path of the voluptuary, as that path leads only downward to the depths of depravity and sin!
[Rushes to nearest comics shop to peruse the issue.]
March 15th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
The only thing that really gets me about this page is that the colorist was very confused by what I had drawn in that last panel. That’s a mess.
My dad just called to bellow “PORN QUEEN!” at me on the phone. He’s such a kidder.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Oh, Torsten! Really? “The rutted path of the voluptuary”? Really? “Rutted”.
HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHEHEEHEHEEEEEEEEE!
Yes, I’m 12 and my mind is in the gutter.
March 15th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
[...] doing a great series of retrospectives on a comics controversy from 1986/1987. I came across it via a link to Colleen Doran’s blog, where she discusses her role in the controversy. Bissette has several (prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4) posts up currently, all of which are worth reading. [...]
March 15th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
On the other hand, you got a cover there featuring a naked chick, legs spread, with loads of white “foam” dribbling out.
Dr Wertham taught me well: I know how to look…
March 15th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
BWAHAHA!!! I must be dim. That never occurred to me.
March 15th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Musings:
Now that people have had a look at this “porn,” I hope this brings some context to what we were all up against back in the day. I’ve seen a few comments about Steve’s series on the net about stuck up artists not knowing their duty by the readers, producing porn disguised as art, driving away readers with our Teh Evil. Blah and blah.
Um. Whatever.
I can’t see how any rational person could possibly classify this as porn.
Which is the point.
Just a few irrational people can make our lives in this industry pretty freaking miserable.
And to claim that it is only the retailers and distributors who pay, and not the “artistes,” is dopey as well as ignorant. Perhaps they have never heard of Michael Diana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Diana
I spent years dealing with a small cadre of nutters who were determined to have A Distant Soil banned.
And since every major complaint I ever got was PRIOR to 1996, I leave it to you to figure out what the hell they were complaining about. A Distant Soil #4, for example, was nabbed in an Ohio raid in 1994. That would have been around the pages posted in April of 2009. Look all you like. There’s no porn there.
Nutters even tracked down my family to harass them. They demanded retailers not carry my work, and demanded distributors not carry my work. They sent me vicious and threatening mail, and wrote to comics industry magazines. They tracked down my editors at other companies to complain about me, and ran up thousands of dollars in legal bills to deal with them. All of this was done by no more than about 10 people, but they caused a lot of damage.
Tell me how this spoiled “artiste” paid no price for the content of my work.
I paid big. For almost two decades.
And I still have no idea just what the heck they were going on about, except the major complaints went along the lines of, and I quote:
“homosexuality and lesbianism”
“graphic hand holding and cuddling”
“implied pillowing”
And one indignant complaint that Liana was having a romance with Minetti who was a much older man and not her husband.
I shit you not.
For those who have not read my book, this scene isn’t in it.
There is even a review on my first volume on Amazon that mentions a rape scene. Which isn’t in the book, either.
March 15th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Interesting post Colleen- but whats with all the hate on your old art? I think it looks great – nice fluid clean lines, some of the panels remind me of Kevin Maguire or P. Craig Russell’s best work. I was actually surprised it was from the 80s as it seems quite sophisticated for back then.
Sure the last panel is a bit confused, but as you say yourself thats down to the colorist, not your work.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:07 am
This is a very kind thing to say!
These panels are not really representative of the rest of the book. They are the best pages. They also happen to be TEH PORN pages which got me in trouble, so that’s why I posted them.
Frankly, the rest of the book is so bad, I spent most of the day howling in pain from the sight. It is truly awful.
Lousy composition, no backgrounds and awkward figures. Grim!
My next few jobs for Marvel were a big improvement. I really am amazed they hired me again!
March 16th, 2010 at 12:25 am
“graphic hand holding”?
Just when I thought I’d heard of every kind of porn there is..?
March 16th, 2010 at 12:43 am
I am almost positive I have this letter in the attic in my Nut File.
If folks are interested, I will pull some of this stuff and post excerpts.
I used to be afraid of my own mailbox. I never knew what was going to show up.
I simply must post angry Jesus. It’s a nice picture of Jesus yelling “THINK” at me. It was sent by a small press cartoonist who didn’t like the content of my work, and spent a couple of years lecturing me about it in nice letters I bet his pastor wouldn’t appreciate. So un-Christian.
Then the cartoonist followed up with his hand drawn pics of angry Jesus.
Good times.
I dunno, I think “implied pillowing” has one way over on “graphic hand holding”.
I am not really sure what “implied pillowing” is supposed to mean.
I figure the mere presence of children is a sort of “implied pillowing”.
March 16th, 2010 at 3:06 am
omg yes, yes, I would like to see Angry Jesus.
and I second the “graphic hand holding” comment. And “implied pillowing”… I keep seeing a slumber party pillow fight getting slapped with a big “censored” sticker across it. Implied pillowing to me would be a few scattered goose feathers…
March 16th, 2010 at 3:09 am
oh and when you post Angry Jesus we can have a contest to see who can identify him just by the art style
March 16th, 2010 at 8:54 am
If Linda Barry can be “Funk Queen of the Universe”, I see no reason why you cannot be “Porn Queen of Comics”.
Be sure to add “porn queen” to your bio… Somewhere in the middle, to see if anyone reads it.
Please post the Angry Jesus… would it be wrong to make a t-shirt?
And don’t forget… that evil slattern on the cover is nekkid in a bubble bath, AND drinking beer! On a Marvel Comic sold to kiddies on a spinner rack at the local 7-Eleven! “Have you no shame?” (Somehow I missed this when I was a kid… so I read “The One” instead. I imagine there’s some teen out there reading The Pro. “Hey, I liked Power Girl, I wonder what else they’ve done?”)
March 16th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Damn, if being nekkid in a bubble bath with a beer and scowling is pr0n, I’m in trouble. That’s how I destress from work! Sheesh.
March 16th, 2010 at 11:54 am
OK, here’s angry Jesus:
There is another version of this in my files somewhere which came complete with crown of thorns and blood trails made with red marker. At least, I hope they were red marker.
Jesus looks at me and admonishes me to THINK, and I look at him and think, “Dude, get that prickly thing off your head.”
March 16th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
hm, I don’t see angry… kind of spacy, actually, with the one eye being bigger than the other. That’s never a good sign.
Oh, wait, no, that’s just bad technique. My bad.
wait, did you say you have ANOTHER version of this? Dude sent you TWO of them?
I’m sorry, but Jesus doesn’t say “think” he says “believe” which is two whole different things. Not mutually exclusive, but different.
Aretha Franklin says “think”
March 16th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
[...] walk down history lane. For easy linking purposes, here's part one, two, three and four. (link via Coleen Doran, who does a little bit of reminiscing [...]
March 16th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Implied pillowing? Is that like the scene in “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”?
“Where’s your other hand?”
“Between two pillows.”
“THOSE AREN’T PILLOWS!!”
March 16th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I dunno about anyone else, but I reckon that if ADS has a fault it’s that there’s not enough porn..! I faithfully — and not a little sweatily — await the collected director’s cut version with all the… ahem… “extras”.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
You’re not alone.
I was reading a website post by some teenage girls about my work, and I guess in this age of hardcore yaoi, A Distant Soil is pretty mild stuff.
They complained bitterly about the dearth of romance and sex. In fact, they didn’t even think romance was a proper descriptive for the book.
And to think back in the day, the constant complaint was there was TOO MUCH romance and sex.
YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!
March 16th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Remember… this is circa 1984… when sexality was something people did in dark bedrooms, and one didn’t talk about it, let alone WRITE about it. Comics were for kids. While the blue (ha!) lady barely hews to the Code regarding nudity, I think the alcohol is probably not kosher. I bet the original sketch had her smoking a cigar, but was edited out. And I hope that is a male attendant in the background…
Not enough sex in ADS? No problem… Ms. Doran has done other spicy saucy sex comics. I’ll have to peruse my copies of XXXenophile to see if she did anything there… Dirty job, yes…
March 16th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Blech.
I hear it’s online now. Haven’t seen it.
I did a couple of erotic jobs, but they are not worth remembering. I think I only did them to show the fools who kept complaining how filthy ADS was just what filthy was supposed to look like.
And oddly enough, I didn’t get many complaints about the content in ADS ever after.
March 16th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Found it! Volume 1, first story. A new definition of “cyber sex”! To truly appreciate this work, I must study it closely… don’t worry, I won’t go blind… I use a microscope.
Also stories by Ruth Thompson in the same volme. And somewhere buried deep in my archives is the card game… nobody ever wants to play with me… *sniff* I play well with others… share my toys…
March 17th, 2010 at 12:56 am
Oh….1984? No wonder…. Big Brother was watching you…
Don’t you love that now something that was considered scandalous back then is now tame, sweet and as romantic as graphic holding hands could be?
March 17th, 2010 at 1:32 am
You’re absolutely right! I need to look at the bright side instead of whining!
You have a very positive attitude!
March 17th, 2010 at 8:46 am
When I started junior high (grade seven) in the Fall of 1982, people were cracking jokes about herpes. By the time I had graduated in 1988, the school board had implemented sex ed. I remember scanning a copy of the Communist Manifesto at the university library, hoping that no one would spy me reading it. (This was in Omaha during the Reagan Cold War, and “ground zero” AKA the Strategic Air Command was just ten miles away, as the Bomb drops. People were arrested for protesting in front of the air base.)
Both comics and sex were marginalized back then. Now each has its own section in Barnes & Noble.
So things are getting better… but vigilance is eternal.
…
Ms. Doran, I will not mention your adult work again, nor ask you to autograph it. Swashbucklers? Hell yeah, that’s historic, it is! (Of course, I will then make a donation to the CBLDF.)
March 17th, 2010 at 10:12 am
LOL! Well, it doesn’t matter if you mention them, it’s just that I am deeply ungracious about what I consider my bad work! I can barely remember Xxxenophile, except I think I just inked like 6 pages or something. Not much of a contribution. Some of the trading cards were OK. I think Xxxenophile and that Harem book were the only two adult gigs I did. And I enjoy talking about them almost as much as Neil Gaiman enjoys talking about his Duran Duran biography.
There was one black and white job in the harem book I thought was good. The book was not so good, and the reproduction was terrible, but I am pretty sure Allan Harvey bought the original art.
And I had already agreed do a second – color – short story before I read the script. Which I hated. Could not get out of the contract. The art reflects my dislike of the material. It’s lousy.
March 17th, 2010 at 10:27 am
A more innocent time:
You know, when I was a kid I looked at books with titles like GIANT SIZE MAN THING and never noticed a thing.
March 17th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
I forgot about the XXXenophile thing. Wow. Used to have all of those, till I realized there would never be a guy x guy story. I thought that was weak.
It’s almost as much fun as the show Zumanity in Las Vegas. Cirque du Soleil’s adult cabaret show. There’s a transvestite host, nakid girls in a fishbowl, bondage, rubber dildos flashed at the audience, men and women baring (almost) all, you name it… and the show stopper is still the two guys kissing–yes, just kissing. Macho guys in the audience will drool over the two hot girls in the fishbowl, and walk out when the two hot guys kiss. Weak, weak, weak.
March 17th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
(oh and btw, just reread the pages up there, I haven’t read SotS for ages… and waitaminute, this advanced alien race never heard of birth control, or sterilization? If you’re going to be childless to rule, you’re just going to say “don’t do that” and expect that to work out well? Yeah, wow. The 80′s. “Just say no” to men. Amazing.)
March 17th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
This is a very silly book. My art is very bad, and was not improved by Ricardo Villagran’s inks (lovely man, by the way). Nothing would have improved my pencils except a better penciler. I did a terrible job.
That said, the story was written by Bill Mantlo, whom I love more than life itself. After a career in comics, he decided to become a lawyer, and he gave me legal aid when an early publisher of A Distant Soil tried to claim copyright, trademark, and tried to claim they created A Distant Soil without any help from me.
Later, Bill was in a terrible accident, and is now completely disabled.
But man, if you can track this book down, it is worth it for the LULZ.
That this was picked up in a raid as TEH PRON is just beyond ridiculous. The most offensive thing about it is it’s just a bad comic. Mostly due to me.
If I were drawing it today, I am sure I could have given the girls a lot more vavavoom for people to complain about.
March 17th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
The really sucky thing about this whole situation is all the porn spammers trying to flood this comment thread.
March 17th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Yes, ’twas me. I have the original art for the Harem book. And the cover rough too. What can I say? — I like what I like…
March 18th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
[...] I wrote in my last post that most of the major problems I had with censorship and harassment were due to no more than a handful of people who spent years trying to get my books banned, and writing finger-wagging letters about my personal behavior. [...]
April 28th, 2010 at 12:01 am
[...] And so, it is with great regret that I post this picture of Emeris, a character of dubious character. As this post is kinda NWS, I hope this doesn’t get anyone in trouble. IMHO, it doesn’t exactly scream porn or anything. But you know how touchy some people are. [...]
May 1st, 2010 at 9:41 pm
[...] perfect, this story wouldn’t have stood a chance of getting published. In an era where the relative innocence of implied pillowing drawn by nice people caused an uproar, showing the strangulation murder of a prostitute by a psychopath would have been… well, [...]