Қара Өбіс: 1980-ші жылдарғы құпия мен құмарлық

Comic book series by Howard Chaykin

Black Kiss is a hardboiled erotic American comic book limited series written and drawn by Howard Chaykin, which was originally published in 1988 by Vortex Comics. The series' explicit sex scenes and the inclusion of transexual femme fatale Dagmar Laine saw Black Kiss labelled among the most controversial comic series of the late 1980s. A sequel series, Black Kiss 2, followed in 2012.

The series is set in Los Angeles in the 1980s and opens with Dagmar Laine, a transsexual prostitute and lover to former 1950s film star Beverly Grove, searching for a reel of film taken from the Vatican's collection of pornography. The reel has been sent to Father Frank Murtaugh by his brother who is a Cardinal in the Vatican. Laine tries to grab the reel from Father Murtaugh but the reel is stolen by a nun. Laine and Grove then get Cass Pollack, a jazz musician and ex heroin addict who is on the run from the Mafia, to steal the reel in return for them providing Pollack with an alibi. Pollack is also on the run from the police, due to the Mafia killing Pollack's wife and daughter and Pollack being the only suspect. Laine and Grove (who look virtually identical) provide Pollack with a lead as to where the reel is after the death of Father Murtaugh. This takes Pollack first of all to an occult bookshop called "The Oath of Incannabulata" where he steals a copy of a book about the mysterious "Order of Bonniface". After the bookshop he ends up in a funeral home called "Tanas" where he finds a number of celebrities indulging in bizarre rituals. Going through Murtaugh's possessions, Pollack finds an invitation to the next meeting of the "Order of Bonniface". He attends this and discovers the Order was formed at the beginning of Hollywood's movie era and that they worship Charles 'Bubba' Kenton, a 1920s film star who was also married to Beverly Grove. He discovers that Kenton forced Grove to give their daughter Sophie up shortly before Kenton became a vampire. After becoming a vampire Kenton forms The Order of Bonniface and turns many of his followers into vampires, including Beverly Grove. This gives Grove the chance of revenge over the loss of her daughter and she switches Kenton's alarm clock so that he wakes during the day and dies in the sunlight. However The Order want the reel of film as it shows Beverly Grove and Bubba Kenton together in a pornographic film which shows that Grove is much older than she claims to be to the world. They hope she can turn them into vampires and therefore give them eternal youth. However one of The Order, a young woman called Magda, wants Grove to only make her a vampire. This is because she is Grove's granddaughter, in addition to the nun who stole the reel from Father Murtaugh earlier in the story. Pollack becomes caught in the middle as everyone around him attempts to win, leaving Pollack in a position where he seems unable to survive.

Reviewing the first three issues for Amazing Heroes, Donald K. Niven had mixed feelings. While he praised some of Black Kiss' storytelling techniques and uniqueness, Niven felt that too much of the series was shaped by a desire to shock, and concluded that readers were "more mature than Chaykin pretends to be.". He also felt Chaykin's art made it difficult to see that Bev and Dagmar were intended to look identical. Darcy Sullivan was also unmoved in a later issue, feeling Chaykin played Black Kiss "for giggles, hanging a soupcon of stylistic tricks on the most contrived of plots, and seems most interested in referencing low artforms: hard boiled pulp fiction, porn films, vampire comics.". Comics writer Grant Morrison has described Black Kiss as "adolescent homophobic mummy's boy jerk off fantasy drivel." In response, Chaykin would accuse Morrison of "utterly humourless self regard". Reviewing the 2010 collected edition for Slings & Arrows, Frank Plowright felt the series would never achieve its deserved acclaim due to its sexual content, feeling that behind this there "is a well thought out plot that swerves away from expectation and contains some great sequences". Lars Ingebrigsten was less effuse, feeling Chaykin's flashy storytelling was used to compensate for a weak plot.