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Off the Cape: Chester 5000

By | June 7th, 2011
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Continuing our look at the latest slate of Top Shelf releases, today I take a look at the Victorian robot erotic comic Chester 5000 from Jess Fink.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Find out what I thought after the jump.

Erotica is something that is difficult to tackle for both comic creators and for comic fans. For creators, you face the prospect of your work being marginalized as “porn” or, in the worst case, being ignored altogether even if it is something you put your heart into. For comic fans, it seems that there is something oddly taboo to this genre and it can be so offensive to our puritanical ways that we simply do not touch it (which I say is odd because the mainstream form of comics are hyper sexualized in every way possible – see: Emma Frost).

So creators rarely make it and fans hardly touch it.

Yet here I am reviewing a high profile print release of Chester 5000, an erotic web comic from Jess Fink.

Fink closes this release with “a thousand thank yous,” including “to all the amazing erotic artists who have influenced (her), who make dirty art and fight against the ridiculous notion that anything sexual isn’t art at all.”

This thought is a good place to start, because Chester 5000 is undoubtedly a piece of art, and a damn fine one at that. While some comic fans will dismiss it because of the overt sexuality that fills its pages (often between robot and woman), I think that more reflects the reader than the work. Chester 5000 isn’t a story about sex, it is a story about love and the role of physicality in that intangible concept.

If you look at it in plot form, it’s about an inventor who simply does not have the time and patience to satisfy his wife/lover anymore, as he wants to focus on his work and she wants to continue the passion that they enjoyed previously. Thus, he creates a steam punk sex servant named Chester 5000, designed to satisfy her every need. What carries on from there examines the role of your heart in the realm of the bedroom, and Fink does so in a emotionally subtle and touching fashion.

Chester 5000 is a book filled with sex, and occasionally hilarious sex at that (Chester 5000’s upgrades he makes upon himself are depicted in hysterical detail by Fink), but the sex throughout all exists in service to the story and the emotional quadrilateral that forms between the inventor, his lover, Chester 5000, and a woman who enters in the second act. I have to admit even with fully understanding that concept, there was an underlying level of discomfort that nagged at me throughout thanks to the reservations that have been instilled in me in my life previously. If you find yourself the modest type who cannot find a good story in something that heavily features sex, you should probably stay away from this.

It would be a shame though, because this story is very romantic and wordlessly executed by the incredibly talented Fink. She does a lot more than draw “fantastic boobs” no matter what Tom Hart says, and her art carries the story throughout. There is a lot of subtlety within it that turns the sex depicted on the pages into making love, and there are some moments that are just splendid thanks to her execution (like the first time the female lead realizes what is in Chester 5000’s chest plate). Granted, she does draw fantastic boobs, but pretty much everything is beautifully rendered in her unique and fluid style.

It’s beautifully laid out as well, with many pages really embracing the Victorian time period of the story with sweet embellishments to the panels. These panels make the sexual moments more intimate and take the reader more into the scene, and it adds to the reader experience significantly.

With that said, as much as I enjoyed the story, there were some parts where I wished there was a bit more non-sexual development of the characters. While I do feel like the relationships reach their final points in a way that works very well, at times I wished for more. I don’t know what that is, but there was a small, unknowable hole there for me that I was waiting to get filled.

But that is a small gripe in a book that is tremendously executed. Chester 5000 is proof that the genre of erotic comics can be a land of vibrant and emotionally resonant storytelling, and if you find yourself open to the possibility that a comic that features a lot of sex between a robot and a woman can be good, I highly recommend this book.


//TAGS | Off the Cape

David Harper

EMAIL | ARTICLES


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