My wife Julia Gfrörer’s forthcoming book World Within the World got a great review in the New York Times, which rules, and it mentions me and my contributions to the bok, which is an unexpected bonus. Go read! (Gift link!)

But the erotic thriller is truly defined by the second half of its sobriquet. Such stories typically revolve around a femme fatale—sometimes calculating, sometimes unhinged, always dangerous—and the poor sap who’s both lucky and unlucky enough to be fucking her. Sometimes, as in The Last Seduction (1994), the dangerous woman gets away with it and the patsy is left wishing he’d never met her. Other times, as in the original Fatal Attraction, the monster gets what’s coming to her and the status quo of the family man she led down the path of sin is restored. (In rarer cases, the villain is an outside force not represented by the female half of the sexual dyad—Body Double, say.) In all cases, erotic thrillers use tension and suspense to build to a good-versus-evil resolution, and no matter which side comes out on top, sexuality is on the side of sin.

Yet there’s an adjacent genre that does away with those conventions, as easily as Catherine Tramell bumps off her lovers: a genre of tragedy. In these films, sexuality pervades, not as a troublesome interloper, but as an all-consuming directive; like hunger, it is dangerous only when thwarted. It refuses to be relegated to the shadows. Like buried trauma, sex demands an audience. The perennial discourse of the plot-relevant sex scene—does it or does it not exist, and should it?—can find no footing here: sex is the plot, and it does so much more than titillate. It communicates. There is not just the soft-focus romantic lovemaking we’ve come to expect on-screen; there is also fucking for anger, shame, sorrow, and all the ugliness of which we fear to speak in the light of day. There is transgression and discomfort. There are real taboos hard at work between the sheets.

What there aren’t, though, are thrills. These sex tragedies are downbeat, enervating to the last frame. Call this genre the “erotic bummer.”

Like their erotic thriller cousins, these films combine sex and death too, but the balance is shifted. Sex is prioritized in the plot, drives the plot, often becomes the plot, so the erotic component is stronger than ever. But the violence inherent in erotic thrillers is transmuted into something morbid rather than thrilling. It’s as if the characters’ growing appetite for ever-intensifying sexual intimacy devours them until there’s nothing left. No mind games, no cat-and-mouse chases through expensive apartments, no fundamental battle of good versus evil; the erotic connection between the characters is beyond good and evil, and is itself their undoing, leading inevitably to tragedy, isolation, and death.

Unlike the erotic thriller, which, until its recent revival, was essentially a discreet Hollywood phenomenon that existed from Reagan through Clinton, the erotic bummer manifests itself in a much wider range of modes, styles, countries, and time periods. This ad hoc genre spans from European art films of the 1970s (The Night Porter in 1974, Last Tango in Paris in 1972, the French-Japanese co-production In the Realm of the Senses in 1976) to erotic-thriller-adjacent Jeremy Irons vehicles in the ’80s (Dead Ringers, Damage) to turn-of-the-millennium period-piece Oscar bait (Atonement in 2007, The End of the Affair in 1999, The English Patient in 1996) to stylish psychological horror (Possession in 1981, Mulholland Drive in 2001) to divisive 21st-century art-house fare (The Brown Bunny in 2003, The Piano Teacher in 2001, Antichrist in 2009). In addition to jettisoning the erotic thriller’s default neo-noir template of murder plots and their resolution, the erotic bummer is less dependent on violating the specific sexual mores of “Morning in America” and its aftermath. Forget AIDS, NC-17, the Parents Music Resource Center: the erotic bummer posits that anyone, at any time, can fuck themselves to death.

My wife Julia Gfrörer and I wrote about a genre of horny, depressing movies we call “the erotic bummer” for our debut at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

I’m happy to report that Julia Gfrörer and I once again have copies of our horror/erotic/gothic comics and art anthology Mirror Mirror II available for sale at her Etsy shop. It’s an absolute murderer’s row of artists; if you like our sensibilities at all, you’ll like this book. 

With work by:

Lala Albert

Clive Barker

Heather Benjamin

Apolo Cacho

Trung Lê Capecchi-Nguyễn

Sean Christensen

Nicole Claveloux

Sean T. Collins

Al Columbia

Dame Darcy

Gretchen Felker-Martin

Noel Freibert

Renee French

Meaghan Garvey

Julia Gfrörer

Simon Hanselmann

Aidan Koch

Laura Lannes

Céline Loup

Uno Moralez

Jonny Negron

V.A.L.I.S. Ortiz

Claude Paradin

Chloe Piene

Josh Simmons

Carol Swain

Julia Gfrörer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, and I proudly present All Fucked Up, a smutty fanfic zine about Road House. I’ve got three stories in it myself. You can buy it here!

Make aristocrats short again: GUILLOTINE t-shirt by Julia Gfrörer (buy it here)

Julia Gfrörer has launched a new collection of t-shirts and other garments and items called Choleria, featuring some of her favorite medieval and early modern prints. The store is also full of information on the meaning, context, and artist behind each design. Go.

The 207th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday,  Feb. 13, 2018 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, Kellen Auditorium (Room N101), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. 66 Fifth Avenue (off the lobby). Free and open to the public.

Julia Gfrorer on “A Void Does Not Exist.”

Gfrorer discusses the effect of leaving negative space in a work and how useful a tool it can be for controlling the emotional tenor of a story. People have an instinctive dread of emptiness (“horror vacui,” “nequaquam vacuum,” “nature abhors a vacuum”) which means as creators we tend to avoid it, but for a reader it can also be soothing, hypnotic, sensuous, and magnetic. A void isn’t necessarily a “nothingness”: something happens because of it. She will give examples from her own work as well as work that’s influenced her.

Julia Gfrörer is a writer and cartoonist. She graduated from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA, and now lives on Long Island. She has published several handmade comics under her own imprint, as well as two longer graphic novels, Laid Waste and Black Is the Color, with Fantagraphics, a leading independent comics publisher. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, including Cicada Magazine, Arthur Magazine, Kramers Ergot 9, and two volumes of Best American Comics. She recently translated and illustrated excerpts from a medieval French heraldic text for 2dCloud’s MIRROR MIRROR II anthology, which she co-edited with her partner, writer Sean T. Collins.

This starts in like 20 minutes! If you hustle you can make it, NYC!

“In a year that many have found bleak and depressing, Mirror Mirror II managed to channel this energy into one of the most riveting visual experiences of the year….the best horror comics anthology available.” —Phillippe Leblanc

“This book should win all the design awards for 2017. It’s as magnificent as the contents are (purposely) horrific.” —Heidi MacDonald

I’m honored to that Mirror Mirror II made the Beat’s Best Comics of 2017 list twice over, once courtesy of Phillippe Leblan and again via Heidi MacDonald. Perpetually grateful and glad so see this book reaching people. Buy it here.

Mirror, Mirror II, edited by Sean T Collins and Julia Gfrorer, published by 2D Cloud
I’m not going to lie, this one really messed with me. If I were listing comics that challenged me the most in 2017 (which Alex Hoffman has done in the past), this would have been number one with a bullet. I wasn’t sure what to think when I first finished it. Did I like it? Is it the kind of anthology that can be liked? Collins and Gfrörer push to the very edge without going over it, with stories that show the strong link between eroticism and horror. It’s really unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Rob McGonigal named Mirror Mirror II one of his favorite anthologies of the year at Panel Patter. Can’t beat a lede like that.

I’m pleased to learn that Mirror Mirror II, the comics anthology I co-edited with Julia Gfrörer for 2dcloud, has made the Honorable Mentions for PW’s annual graphic novel critics poll! If you want to see what it’s all about, buy it here or at the retailer of your choice.

MIRROR MIRROR II edited by Sean T. Collins & Julia Gfrörer

Darkness is as intimate as a caress and as distant as history in this chilling anthology of horror comics….This collection doesn’t just feel haunting; it feels corrosive.

Mirror Mirror II, the comics and art anthology I co-edited with my partner Julia Gfrörer ( @doopliss ), was named one of the 10 Best Comics of the Year by The Verge. As always, I’m so pleased to learn how this book has reached people.

Go and read. I’m just so, so happy this book has found its way to people who get so much out of it.

Mirror Mirror II is a sexy, creepy book which is daring in the topics it addresses, its creators eliding conservative platitudes or easy explanations for parts of human behaviour which psychologists have spent decades struggling to get to the bottom of (can you imagine if Freud had had access to PornHub’s stats when doing his formative work?). It does not shy away from how complex and difficult its subject matter is. It’s also a sumptuously designed, beautifully illustrated compendium of some of the most talented alternative comic creators working today. Just don’t read it on the bus.

Another wonderful review of our book Mirror Mirror II, this one from Tom Baker at Broken Frontier. I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to see this book hit exactly the way we always wanted it to.

All of the books by my brilliant partner Julia Gfrörer are 25% off at her Etsy store, today only. This is a filthily obscene deal for incredible work. For the record, this sale includes three collaborations with me: the anthology MIRROR MIRROR II and the pornographic Edgar Allan Poe adaptations (!) IN PACE REQUIESCAT and THE HIDEOUS DROPPING OFF OF THE VEIL. If you enjoy my writing you may like them as well!

Also, everything in Julia’s Threadless store (t-shirts, hoodies, tote bags, and more) is 20-30% off today only, with free shipping on orders of $45 or more if you use code “CHEER83687d”. Again, this is an insanely good deal!

Julia Gfrörer is releasing a new t-shirt design every day for the whole month of October. Day 31: It is time to keep your appointment…with the Wicker Man.

Julia Gfrörer is releasing a new t-shirt design every day for the whole month of October. Day 30: Torture Hand, not to be confused with the Hand of Glory.

Julia Gfrörer is releasing a new t-shirt design every day for the whole month of October. Day 29: Ominous Cloud.

Julia Gfrörer is releasing a new t-shirt every day for the whole month of October. Day 28: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, represented by the burning flax brandished to remind a newly crowned Pope where he’s headed.

Julia Gfrörer is releasing a new t-shirt design every day for the whole month of October. Day 27: Aurochs Bones.

Julia Gfrörer is releasing one new t-shirt design every day for the whole month of October. Day 26: Mundane Tasseomancy, for when you need to read your tea leaves.