Webcomics Wednesday (on Thursday): Chester 5000 XYV

First, as you can see from the title, this review is NOT being posted on Wednesday.  Our Internet access at home has been down since Tuesday evening, so I’m writing this from a coffee shop near the house.

This week, I want to cover a comic that made me blush when I first started reading it.  Chester 5000 XYV is an erotic Victorian-era steampunk comic lovingly drawn by Jess Fink, whose webcomic work also includes the autobiographical “Kid with Experience.”  Chester 5000 XYV was picked up for publication this year by Top Shelf comics, and is available now, once again proving that those talented few who pay their dues in webcomics CAN break out into the print comic industry as well.

The star in this strip is the artwork, which is fluid and evocative.  There’s little to no dialogue in the series, with communication between characters taking place entirely through body language and… well… sex.  In spite of the lack of text, Chester contains some wonderfully intimate and insightful portrayals of Western Culture’s hang ups about sexuality.  In the first few pages, we meet a man who fears for his relationship due to his inability to completely satisfy his lover’s sexual appetite.  Using his skill in robotics, he builds a toy for her (the eponymous Chester), a robot who takes on a life of his own and inevitably falls in love with the woman he’s been built to please.  What follows is a tale of love, jealousy, and redemption that could be read as an allegory for the apparently common male fear of being replaced by sex toys (common according to Google, at least, although I’ve never experienced it).

One of the things that I find so enjoyable about Chester 5000 XYV is that it provides a very liberated, feminine perspective on sex.  In fact, even though the strip is named after the male robot character, the real protagonists here are the women who, contrary to what popular American culture still seems to tell us is acceptable, take the lead in the sexual relationships established here.  However, these are not the stereotypical “dominant” women most often portrayed in the media – manipulating and emasculating the men around them – they are simply women who know what they want, physically and emotionally, and aren’t afraid or ashamed to pursue those desires.  Sadly, the erotica and pornography that is most commonly available (even the stuff supposedly intended for women) portrays quite the opposite, often justifying and even glorifying sexual assault, with leering, dominant alpha-male figures imposing their sexual will on submissive women, who don’t even know that they want sex until they’re forced into it.  Fink actually seems to respond to this in a hilarious role reversal, featuring “Chesty 5000 XYV,” the overly aggressive female counterpart to the suave and sensitive Chester.

Having finished the first storyline, Fink is now in the middle of a new tale set in the same world.  While it’s hard to say where she’ll take us this time, based on what she’s given us so far, I can only assume it will be an enlightening and hopefully further liberating journey of sexual discovery.  If you’re in the mood for something sexy that won’t make you feel dirty, I highly recommend this comic (and I’m in good company it seems, as fellow Top Shelf artist Alan Moore is also a fan of Fink’s work).

PS – I’ve left the more graphic scenes from Chester 5000 XYV out of my review, not as an act of censorship, but because I’d much rather you see the really sexy stuff in context!  Go check it out, yo!