Thursday, August 02, 2012

Lust by Ellen Forney

Like many papers, Seattle's weekly -- I think I'm supposed to say "alternative weekly," though there's no established industry of stodgy weeklies for those alt-weeklies to be the alternative to -- The Stranger has personal ads, in which its lovelorn or just horny readers try to find each other for mutually beneficial activities. Unlike other papers, though, The Stranger has Ellen Forney (cartoonist and teacher of cartooning, author of Monkey Food, which I just realized I read and reviewed a couple of years back) illustrating one of those ads -- from the LustLab section, where strangers anatomize in explicit detail their sexual needs and wants to find just the perfect kinky partner -- every week.

Lust collects a whole bunch of those ads, along with five interviews that Forney did with some ad-writers. And I will warn you: a number of the ads and folks in here are certainly kinkier than you are, no matter how kinky you are -- kink isn't a linear spectrum, and there are folks here off in various directions, seeking their very particular nirvana. Assuming you can handle the idea of other people having sex in ways you don't think you would enjoy, Lust is cute and fun -- each of Forney's illustrations is like a little advertisement or calling card (like those cards that used to paper London) for that person's desires, with a clean, illustrative style that varies a lot for the different pieces.

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