"Choices," Inner City Romance Comix 2 (1972)

This second image demonstrates Colwell’s politicization of sex through his depictions of race and gender and his use of religious references. In his book Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, Charles Hatfield writes that the underground comix movement “was sparked by the political energy of the late sixties counterculture, and reflected its demands for peace and political reform” (Hatfield 18). The presence of interracial sex in the comic captures the countercultural revolts against the mainstream. Colwell emphasizes the interraciality of the sex between Marvin and his white partner through the visual contrast between their bodies; simple hatching creates the color of Marvin’s skin while his partner is left completely uncolored.  

Colwell’s representation of gender in the image is also highly political. The artistic choices involved in the creation of both characters speak to Marvin’s dominance as a man. Colwell draws Marvin’s body with bulging muscles, a defined clavicle and thick black hair, and his facial expression with plump lips, a broad nose, and animated eyes. However the white woman in the panels is void of any detail except the contours of her hips and breasts. Marvin’s detailed features draw attention to not only his race and gender, but also to his personhood. Through lack of detail and expression on her face, Marvin’s sexual partner becomes just a white female body. Marvin’s actions in the panels also establish his superiority over the woman. When his partner moans with pleasure, Marvin asserts a masculine dominance as he turns her and then boasts about her pleasure.  

The depictions of Marvin’s race and gender in the illustration are crucial in conjunction with the religious references in his dialogue. As he thrusts into the woman, he says, “The gates are swinging open. Ah shall be released.” This religious reference elevates his pleasure to some sort of holy territory. The panels then progressively zoom in to Marvin’s face, culminating in a close framing of his face looking directly at the viewer as he says, “Free at last.” His sexual release frees him, and he mockingly declares himself heroic by quoting the words of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. This panel is both a climax and a punch line. It culminates Marvin’s sex scene, and also mocks the incongruity between Marvin’s non-progressive lifestyle and the freedom it grants him. According to Hatfield, irony is the stock and trade of the underground comic, and it is ironizing the form that “gave the comix books their unique edge” (8). In this panel, Marvin ironically alludes to Martin Luther King, in some ways a sacrilege to the politics Colwell espouses, but also a decided mockery of those politics. The humor of the moment, as well as its import, are rooted in irony, the fuel of underground comix and the politics of Colwell’s pornography in particular. 

Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson, UP of Mississippi, 2005. Print.