Dear Sasha: I love comic book porn. However, I find most of the porno comics/graphic novels carried in mainstream comic stores to be pretty misogynist and a turn-off. Could you please recommend some good titles? Hetero, bi, lesbian, gay - I don't care what it is, just so long as it's hot action. » Porn Lorn

Dear Porn,
Rupert Bottenberg, who is an illustrator and comic book fan as well as the Mirror's music editor, recommends the Japanese comic Bondage Fairies. "Yes, it's about fairies… the diaphanous wings-and-bug-antennae type, not the Judy Garland box-set type," Rupert says. "And yes, there's all kinds of S&M/B&D action in there. But dig this, get past that and it's got this really cool kinda fantasy intrigue story going on, sprawling over many issues. What I like is that the storyline doesn't just set up the sex stuff, but the sex stuff is intrinsic to the storyline. In other words, a good read even if it didn't have sexy little nymphs tying each other up and shit."

Personally I didn't find the same structural complexities that Bottenberg did, (who, incidentally, I met over 15 years ago in a Russian lit class at Dawson, wearing a T-shirt featuring Maggie from Love and Rockets), but I dig it nonetheless. Bondage Fairies is published in North America by Eros, the erotic division of Fantagraphics. They distribute and westernize Bondage Fairies - making it read from left to right, translating it, and making it even more graphic.

Gilbert Hernandez, who did the brilliant "Heartbreak Soup" series in Love and Rockets (co-created with his brother Xaime Hernandez), made an independent collection called Birdland for Eros that's really sexy, with very powerful women. I would also recommend The Adventures of a Lesbian College School Girl by Petra Waldron and Jennifer Finch, Casa Howhard (hot shemales) by Roberto Baldazzini, and Small Favors by Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin about Annie, "a bisexual, masturbation-crazy nymphomaniac." I also enjoyed a collection called Little Ego by Vittorio Giardino, a beautifully rendered adult tribute to the turn-of-the-century comic by Winsor McCay called The Adventures of Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Rupert says you might have to trawl around Montreal at places like Millennium, Captain Quebec, Fichtre and Cosmix to find the above selections, but all can also be found online at www.thebeguiling.com, in my opinion, one of the best independent comic books stores in Canada. Dave Cooper's work also rocks the box, and if you can ever get your hands on a mini comic he did 10 years ago called Dave's Odd, Little Fuckbook, I guarantee a somewhat unsettling but totally unmisogynistic boner.

Dear Sasha: Multiple sets of friends, in multiple cities, under the influence of multiple combinations of drugs and alcohol, and I still have the same fucking paranoid delusion. I keep thinking that everyone else is trying to trick me into having an orgy. In actual fact, I would be fine with this, on some occasions I would be more than fine with this, were it not for the tricking. But then I always wonder if they really are trying to trick me into it, or whether I am just fantasizing. I would really appreciate some advice in helping to identify and come to terms with my own fantasies. I feel comfortable sleeping with individuals in just about any circumstances, but the group thing makes me feel embarrassed or awkward. » Want Them All

Dear Want,
Paranoid delusion, unfulfilled fantasy… such a fine line, no? Contrary to some people's orgy experiences, and other than this huge spontaneous make-out session I was part of in Grade 5 after school that got several people grounded, I have personally never been tricked into or accidentally attended an orgy. My experience with people who have group sex is that they don't generally need to dupe others into doing this, since there is a fairly large and indulgent community already at their fingertips. Now, if all of your friends are actually members of creepy sex cults with sleazy initiation practices, that's a different story, but since you consider them friends, why not ask? A good question to start is, "What do you guys think of group sex?" Then you can share your thoughts, too. And then maybe you can all have sex.

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