Description
Velvet Collar Adult Comic Issue #2: Rough Trade Secrets
Story
Five male escorts roll with the punches in life.
Blackmail forces them to be more James Bond than Don Juan.
Issue two of a nine-issue limited-series
Based on the lives of real male escorts and porn performers.
Starring Abel Rey, Scott Reynolds, Storm Wilde, Will Foster and Rica Shay.
About the Series
Each story and character in the series are drawn from real stories of male escorts and adult performers. They may not have superpowers, but they have charisma, nerve, determination to give their lives agency.
People who are sex workers rarely get a serious place in comic books. Their roles have traditionally been limited to victims, criminals, or as secondary characters with limited development. Their personalities, life choices and decision making are never fully realized.
While a rare selection of titles have had protagonists that are sex workers, they have been primarily female roles with limited agency. For example, in Chester Brown’s famous Paying For It, the author strips away any individual identifying features, personalities and human essence from the women he meets in his encounters. Velvet Collar puts the color and life back into the people.
Velvet Collar would be the first comic series to focus not only on the lives of modern adult industry workers, but specifically on male-identified individuals. Explicitly, these are experiences of professionals who have voluntarily participated in the industry as legally recognized adults. This is not the same as those who have entered sex work against their will (human trafficking victims and involuntary participation.) The work does not endorse illegal activity. This work talks about what actually happens with both adult industry members and the people they are involved with.
In consulting male escorts for this project, one professional had this to say:
“Most of us treat what we do as a job, like any other. We try to pay our bills and our taxes, and we plan for the future. We have people we take care of and little luxuries we want to enjoy.”
“I want your comic to become reality because I want people to know what our lives are like, and to have fun with it. Plus, the drawings are really fun.”
Ultimately, this series is about the relationships that male adult industry performers have with their audience, with their loved ones, and with themselves.
With art done in bold, vibrant colors and a dialogue with a natural rhythm, these stories come to life. We want to push the genres of political observation, queer male erotica, political observations and action adventure.
About the Art and the Writing
The author, Bryan Knight, was inspired by the real stories of modern male sex workers in America. His style has been influenced by descriptive prose masters such as Ray Bradbury and humorist observers like John Kennedy Toole and Mark Twain. This issue and series will be his first published comic project.
The artist, Dave Davenport, who has authored and illustrated individual titles and for series such as Hard to Swallow, and recently Damaged, has come to this project with confidence and enthusiasm. With bold watercolors, exciting line weights and panel layouts, and an excellent sense of visual and emotional pacing, he knows how to make art that will make you go ‘wow.’