Miss Don't Touch Me

Heya all and welcome to my first blog post! This is a long time coming! Here's to new starts during this strange time of living, if there's one thing everyone has been mentioning since the lock down it's "Time". And guess what I've been making time for? READING, yes that beautiful thing called reading, In the future I'll be creating posts like "What I've been reading, watching, eating"... and if we're all really lucky "pooping" (I lie, of course not hahaha....). A Graphic novel that deserves some love is a French mystery story written by the husband and wife team Hubert & Kerascoet, 'Miss Don't Touch Me', originally published in 2008. I cannot say enough with how much I love this comic, the art is so beautiful. I think what I love most is that it's not trying to be overly polished and your generic comic style (such as superhero ones tend to be), there's beautiful rough line work, it's okay that some parts might look a little ugly, it suits it since the comic is about the seedy underworld of high end brothels and low class prostitution. I love the colours they use, it's all very purposeful, in sad scenes there's blues, the brothel has lots of warm colours, reds, yellows and pinks. In one scene our main character Blanche is dragged to an awful brothel where the owner would prefer to tie up his prostitutes, in these panels it's all mostly green, filled with smoke,to me it's showing the gross darkness of this awful place.

Set in the 1920's the story starts with Blanches sister Agatha going to surburban dance parties, there is some kind of killer on the loose and Blanche is scared her sister will be the next victim.

After losing her sister Blanche searches for answers leading to a high end brothel where she takes on the roll as a Dominatrix. Blanche has never been with a man, in fact she's revolted by them, her gimmick is that she's a brutal, virgin Dominatrix.

It's a fascinating tale of this womans mental health journey, the loss and mourning of her sister, the abandonment of her mother, being thrusted into a new world of which she can't escape. Blanche is a great character, that no matter what or who you cannot change her nor her morals, she's is hot headed (to a fault at times) but has so much initiative and she never gives up. This comic explores different kinds of themes, kinks, transgender, queer, exploitation, repression and femininity and most of all the power of bad luck and circumstances. Would I say this is a Feminist comic? Somewhat, it's so cleverly written and isn't throwing it's themes in your face, it's all well intertwined and subtle. Of course the subject of prostitution and sex workers is a sensitive one, many sex workers enjoy their work and others have been made to work due to whichever reason, it will just have to come down to the individual. I deeply urge you to read this comic, it's beautiful! Sadly the books are quite hard to find in English and for a fair price, I first had to read this as a PDF here. Thanks for reading! Until next time....