When DC Comics earlier this year shut down its long-running Vertigo Comics imprint, which had recently rebranded as "DC/Vertigo," one of the casualties was a planned series about future sex workers, titled Safe Sex.
But now the hyper-erotic comic book has a new home at independent publisher Image Comics, and the first issues of the series scripted by kink writer Tina Horn—perhaps best known as host of the sex podcast Why Are People Into That?!—are now in comic book stores.
As AVN.com reported last year, DC/Vertigo promoted the series as "a dystopian thriller set in a future where the government regulates and controls sexual pleasure, leading to an underground resistance led by sex workers,” which as AVN.com scribe Mark Kernes noted, “sounds pretty much like what we're living through right now.”
On her own site, Horn describes the Image version of the comic, which features art by Michael Dowling, as a “queer leather sex worker rebel dystopian sci-fi action adventure.”
Her inspiration for the story came from “the ways that I have been further marginalized in American society than I already am for being a woman, and being queer, and also being out about sex work, and being out about being kinky,” Horn told the site Polygon, during her appearance at the recent New York Comic-Con.
But she was also eager to dispel the impression that Safe Sex is some kind of abstract political statement—at least not entirely.
“By the way, this comic is sexy and violent and has lots of explosions and fun interpersonal fights,” she told Polygon. “All this political subtext and lots of juicy entertainment.”
Though the comic has now moved to Image, Horn credits Vertigo editor Amedeo Turturro—the son of actor John Turturro—with “the vision and endurance” without which, she says, the book would not exist.
“I would do anything for the sluts, whores, queers, perverts, and punks who supported me through this process, by being friends and by doing their own work out there in this whack world,” Horn wrote on her site.
The comic even received plaudits from AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels.
“Safe Sex shoves its sparkly stiletto heel right in the face of anyone who has ever tried to keep sex workers down,” Daniels said. “Tina Horn’s work reminds us how important sexual freedom is to the American spirit.”
Artwork By Tula Lotay / Image Comics
