DOLL
Doll
Rip Off Press (1989-1992)
Guy Colwell created this adults-only series, which somehow manages to be sleazy and highbrow at the same time. Its star character is a sort of life-sized, robotic sex-slave—“a real live doll.” Doll is loaned out by two psychologists to be a sex-surrogate for their patients.
Now comes the really weird part: Colwell uses the rather graphic sex scenes as a metaphor for more “normal” male-female relationships. In the midst of sex scenes with Doll, the patients will carry out monologues wondering whether all male-female relationships are based on dominance, whether women have been perversely socialized to demean non-dominant men, etc. In short, it’s the sort of discussion you expect to find in a women’s studies class, carried out in what otherwise would be a sleaze-mag. To say the least, it’s an interesting juxtaposition.
Doll is celebrated cartoonist Guy Colwell’s (Inner City Romance) darkly satirical take on patriarchal ownership, dehumanization, and sexual objectification. When an artist crafts a lifelike sex doll for a disfigured, middle-aged virgin, it soon takes on a lurid life of its own. Like an erotic Frankenstein’s monster, the mannequin brings out the basest instincts in each person with whom she crosses paths.
