Graphic Scenes: For As Long As It Rains.

The joy of sex. When it's done well, of course.

Welcome to KIOSK…nights! Okay, put the kids down for the evening, because we’re going to be talking about sex. FINALLY this newsletter sub-series lives up to its title.

Sex gets a bad a wrap in literature, and often quite rightly so. To describe something that’s often so full of nuance and feeling, invariably comes across clunky or cringeworthy when committed to words. It's no wonder it’s frequently beset by clichés and established euphemisms, because at least we know what the author is getting at, even if they are making our skin crawl.

Film has more success because it can be wordless, yet you can still follow the ‘action', be that nuanced or otherwise. The only problem is that they’re real people, both during the filming and afterwards in the world, so they should rightly get a say over how they are portrayed. Many an argument rages over genuine artistic intent versus what you actually see, but that is not a hornets nest I wish to kick.

The other difference is projection. When we watch other, very real people, that is a different experience. The edge that literature has is that it allows space for the reader to imagine the scene, or perhaps even picture themselves in the scenario. Again, comics can balance these things, it can be more gestural, showing not telling, and as a bonus, no one is being exploited!

Of course, exploitation can happen, but I’m not talking about comics that depict sexualised characters with the objective of selling a fantasy, here. It’s a fine line to walk though, because if your characters are turned-on by a situation, you kind of need the audience to be a bit turned-on as well, to connect them to the feeling. It shouldn’t feel like joyless documentation. However, I think when you waver over the line into the audience being MORE turned-on than the characters - to the level where that’s the whole point - then it becomes pornography.

But don’t worry, I’m not going into the merits and demerits of pornography (hand drawn or otherwise) because I’m not talking about titillating sex, what I’m talking about is good old fashioned ‘narrative sex’. Sex happens in lives, and if you write about lives, how do you do sex justice?

Examples are few and far between, but examples of good things always are. So today we’ll be looking at a scene from Zviane's For As Long as it Rains.

I’ll see you on the other side!

For As Long As It Rains. Zviane. (2014)

Okay, so a little bit of context. These three spreads come as the…er…’climax’ of an extended sex scene. But it’s not a ‘sex scene’ as such, becasue it’s just part of the narrative, that just happens to have sex in it. The story is about a couple having an affair and they have the opportunity to be incubated from the reality of that decision while house sitting, both getting to play at not being quite themselves, and being with each other, for, ‘as long as it rains’.

Sex plays a much larger role than it being ‘one of the things they get up to’, as at that stage of a relationship, it’s often integral, if not the whole point. So, our couple do very little apart from share little jokes and arguments and make food and music, and of course, have sex. However, there is more to it than that, the sex is genuinely narrative, revealing who they are in the way they engage with it and each other, and the result is far more than a ‘they get it on’ sequence.

In these few pages we see the ultimate connection of the two characters which the simple story has been building up to. And what a way to do it?! Finally breaking out of the panel structure, and even shattering the chosen medium of pen, replacing it with rough pencil, before flatlining across two pages (le petite mort, indeed) and finally returning to static focus. Literally bringing you back into the room.

There is nothing gratuitous about the sex in For As Long As It Rains, even though it is pretty graphic at times, and that’s the difference. You see far tamer representations that have a leery quality, whereas here it’s all serving the narrative AND retaining the moment’s inherent ‘sexiness’ (for want of a better word).

Of course, it’s all a question of taste, and sex is definitely an area that people can have very different reactions to, so, I’m obviously not speaking universally, but for me, I think this does a pretty good job of difficult thing.

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We’re done! If you’re interested in the full experience, For As Long As It Rains is published by Pow Pow Editions and available from them, or wherever you get your books.

As ever, thanks for dropping by, and next time we’ll talk about something else, eh? Sorry if it got a bit embarrassing back there, but don’t worry, you can have this coffee on the house spend the afternoon musing on your own favourite sex scene. You’re welcome.

Until next time.

Owen D. Pomery