Housewives at Play isn't your mom and dad's vintage romance comic!
Written: May 10 '08 (Updated May 10 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Rebecca's fantastic drawings, her sense of humor
Cons: No coherent storyline, the sex sometimes is kinky and rough
The Bottom Line: Rebecca's Housewives at Play series of "adult comics" is a very untraditional and lusty take on the once popular romance comics of yesteryear.
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| alexdg1's Full Review: Rebecca - Housewives At Play: Lez Be Friends |
If you are old enough to remember the 1950s or the early '60s, you probably have at least a nodding acquaintance with romance comics, a genre created mostly by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon to tap into the postwar boom of young adult readers of both genders.
Because such titles were written and drawn by men, they tended to explore such topics as extramarital affairs, women's roles in the workplace, and even divorce from a somewhat conservative perspective. And, of course, since comics were intended primarily to entertain, some of the stories in such titles as Young Romance and Teen Romance were fluffy and very unrealistic.
The romance comic genre was fairly popular until the 1960s, but two factors combined to consign it to the dustbin of publishing history - the Comics Code of 1954, which resulted in heavy self-censorship, and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which made the stories seem archaic and almost Victorian in tone.
The romance comics - I managed to see a few when I was younger - did have very good artists doing the illustrations, and while the characters - both men and women - were specimens of an idealized world where no one was plain-looking, the quality of the renderings was always top-notch.
It's this tradition of idealized-rendition of characters, particularly female characters, that the artist known simply as Rebecca taps into in her otherwise non-traditional series of adult graphic novels Housewives at Play, which goes farther into the lusty fantasy world of married women than any issue of Young Romance ever dared venture.
Although Rebecca takes a different approach to storytelling by doing away with certain comic book conventions, Housewives at Play: Lez Be Friends does have a cast of characters - 40-something housewife Cathy Mitchell and her close friends Beth and Patty - who do more than just exchange gossip or tend to their kids while their husbands are at work and the older children are in school or at soccer practice. Way more.
In addition to the very graphic depictions of sex - most of it "girl on girl" action, Rebecca's Lez Be Friends eschews the other conventions of romance comics.
For instance, there isn't a traditional panel-by-panel progressive storyline or set of stories. Nor are there panels with dialog balloons that verbally express Cathy, Beth, and Patty's thoughts.
Instead, each of the 64 pages features a beautifully-done pencil drawing of two or more women in Sapphic situations, some gentle and loving, some of them, well, quite kinky.
Of course, this being a graphic novel, all the women tend to be stunningly gorgeous, almost as though Playboy Playmates in their late 30s and early 40s had posed for Rebecca. In some ways, it's almost like an X-rated version of The Stepford Wives, only these aren't empty-headed "fembots" engaging in hot and heavy lovemaking, but rather fantasy-inspired (and inspiring) MILFs.
Although I don't recommend Housewives at Play: Lez Be Friends to everyone, I must say that Rebecca isn't only very imaginative and has a certain dark wit, but she is also a very talented artist. I was taken by surprise by the fact that she eschewed the "normal" comic book format, but I'm still impressed that her one-page glimpses at the lusty adventures of Mrs. Mitchell and her friends do convey the spirit of a moment in a single pencil drawing.
This is, of course, not the kind of "comic" any responsible adult would want their kids to see, and it's definitely not for everyone, particularly readers who are against same-sex couplings.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
alexdg1
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Member: Alex Diaz-Granados
Location: Miami, FL USA
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