Ellen Forney is a Seattle-based artist, cartoonist, and illustrator who has a new book out, Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads from Seattle's The Stranger, from the boys at Fantagraphics. (Her last book, I Love Led Zeppelin, was nominated for an Eisner.) Lust brings together three years worth of Forney's "Lustlab Ad of the Week" series in which she creates comic works inspired by real ads that appear in the Stranger's personal ad section: Lustlab. For the second installment of Fast and Dirty, I interviewed Forney about what it's like to bring the secret fetishes of Seattle freaks to life. Buy your own copy of Lust here.
Reverse Cowgirl: How did you come up with the idea for your Lustlab Ads of the Week?
Ellen Forney: I wish I could say it was my own idea but it was The Stranger’s--they mostly wanted to draw more attention to their Lustlab section. I just loved the idea; I jumped at the job. The pervy content really appealed to me, of course, but it’s also a fun challenge to whittle down a whole ad into one panel. I write and edit, draw, design, ink--a lot of comics-related skills--but then create something almost more like a tiny poster than a comic. I play with lettering a lot, too, which I love.
RC: What's your process like?
EF: It’s hard to say how I choose an ad... an unusual kink, or an unusual way of wording something, or just something I think is interesting. I also try to keep moving around sexual orientations. I’ve only used one female/female couple’s ad--they’re hard to find. Everyone wants to fuck them but they’re never “seeking.”
First, I edit down the ad, and sometimes it comes to me right away how I might treat it (maybe literally, like, foot fetish: draw feet) or I might use some pop culture reference (furry fetish: Chewbacca).
Sometimes brainstorming can seem pretty random and I couldn’t say how I get to an idea. The main thing for me in this gig is that I get to play with different styles and approaches, and I try to make the cartoons different every time.
RC: What's the kinkiest/strangest/weirdest one you've done?
EF: Strangest: hard to say. I’ve learned some things: I’d never heard of “pantyhose encasement,” or a “Sybian.” One woman wanted to watch a very fat woman straining to take a shit on a toilet. A butch dyke wanted to do medieval reenactments with a femme; I thought that was pretty cute. One guy just wanted a woman who was kind of hairy and didn’t shave; I thought that was pretty cute, too.
I don’t do ads that request “discreet” encounters when they don’t want their partners to know, I can’t really hang with that. And I usually skip the ones where women want to be abused pretty severely by a man. I don’t know that Lustlab is the right forum for that, to be honest. I’m not judging but I fear for their safety with some guy they don’t really know--and it’s MY cartoon; I’m the one that gets to make that call. But, regardless, I only have so much room for people who want to be tied up and really submissive. It’s a totally common kink.
RC: How did the book come about? Were there any restrictions?
EF: My publisher asked that I just not include any that showed people fucking, which was easy because I’d only drawn a few that way. The hardest part was dividing the book into categories--I couldn’t cross-reference like the online ads do. And I had to figure out how to categorize transvestites, MTF’s, FTM’s, and genderqueers--I just gave up and lumped them all together as “trans.”
The book collection also includes several interviews with people who used Lustlab. Besides being titillating (hopefully), it shows that the service really works, that perverts do actually get laid. I think that’s an important thing for sexually conservative readers (I consider them “voyeurs”) to know.
RC: Have you heard from any of the creators of the ads you illustrated?
EF: I’ve only heard from a few, but they were really into it. I got an email from one woman recently whose now-boyfriend’s ad was featured in one of my cartoons--she wanted to get a print of it for herself and one for him. I know he liked the ad--he’d left a comment on my blog thanking me for it.
“Lustlab Ad of the Week” is my dream assignment, in a lot of ways. The subject matter is kinky and playful, I have a lot of freedom with the text and imagery, and the size and content are within very strict parameters, which makes it a challenging puzzle. It’s great.
