Review: Velvet Collar Issue 2: Rough Trade Secrets

The second issue of sex worker Bryan Knight’s comic series Velvet Collar, “Rough Trade Secrets,” depicts the aftermath of Rentman’s shutdown, the series’ thinly veiled fictionalization of rentboy.com. Abel, still chasing the wrong men, has shifted into freelance graphic design work. Storm’s precocious daughter, now a teenager, has become a high-school decrim activist, to the chagrin of her dad. (It’s hard to keep it on the low when your own child is blowing up your spot). Billy had to live in his car for a while, but has since joined the other gig economy as a Lyft driver. Indomitable Daddy is in a relationship with a trapeze student hunk and steering clear of sex work. Rica Shay is barely scraping by, increasingly relying on his side- side-hustle of selling blackmarket steroids. 

Into this morass of disruptive fallout from the Rentman raid stomps Ten, a butch/femme switch in a men’s suit, high heels, and a shock of red hair falling over one eye—with two bodyguards in leather dog masks in tow. Ten lays out a proposition, claiming that the Rentman servers are full of personal data incriminating important politicians and businessmen, a “political nuclear bomb.” He proposes to pay them $50,000 apiece to steal the servers out of federal custody. This bonkers scheme is greeted with scorn until Ten reveals that he also has dirt on our five workers—Rica Shay for selling steroids, Daddy for tax evasion, etc. Abel is summarily evicted from his apartment as proof, and Ten threatens to ruin the lives of the rest of them if they don’t help. 

Ten then directs their anger towards a notorious troll, a “seventy-one year old real estate tycoon from Queens,” (get it?) who has “spent years collecting personal information on hundreds of sex workers…” fingering him as the villain behind their blackmailing. It falls on Storm—who is revealed to be a secret agent of an organization called NAAMAH—to convert our five into a special ops team and undertake this high-stakes mission. Storm enlists his brother Star, who is also a down-low sex worker and possible secret agent to help. In the final frames, Ten is revealed to be the lover of the new lead prosecutor on the Rentman case, lamenting how he will have to betray his fellow workers.  

Issue 1 represents a strong start to a promised 9-part series, with clearly rendered characters, concise and neatly interwoven plot lines, and some graphically beautiful frames. Issue 2 departs from established facts to speculate on what might be the true motivations and consequences of the Rentman/Rentboy raid. The graphics are less consistent than in Issue 1—there are two artists on inks, and a third on colors and the cover—and the palette is generally murkier. This might reflect the plot, a hairball of conspiracy theories, double-crossers, and secret agents. It will take some Daddy-level acrobatics to untangle all the strands and resolve them into a plausible conclusion over the seven following issues, however a sneak preview has been released of Issue 3, entitled “Performance Anxiety,” showing our stalwart team fucking their way into a federal storage facility. 

With that said, Velvet Collar breaks ground in chronicling the new realities of sex work in the SESTA/FOSTA era, in which once-reliable platforms have vanished, leaving workers scrambling. The observational work that the creators have undertaken to depict relatable sex worker characters will go a long way in getting us through to the end of a story that is surely unfinished and untold. 

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Former sex worker and activist Dale Corvino’s short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including online at the Rumpus and Salon. He won the 2018 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook contest with a trio of short stories; Worker Names was published in 2019. Recent publications include a reflection on Chile’s massive populist uprising and the legacy of queer writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review and an essay on growing constraints on adult online content in Matt Keegan: 1996, from New York Consolidated/Inventory Press. He lives in New York City. https://dalecorvino.com

Review: Velvet Collar Issue 1: Unhappy Endings

Velvet Collar, a comic book series written and produced by Bryan Knight and drawn by queer comic artist Dave Davenport, depicts the lives of five male escorts. In Issue 1, “Unhappy Endings,” their escort listing service is shut down by the feds, making it a thinly-veiled representation of the 2015 Rentboy raid.

Davenport had previously represented a sex worker in his homoerotic series Hard to Swallow. Set in fictional Fogtown, the series features Doug, a compact young tough who works as a stripper at a gay club. Doug has a special bond with two supernatural characters: a preppie gay who transforms into a sexually ravenous werewolf (Feral), and the Ghost Skater, a skateboarding ex of Doug’s, now a horny ghost. With each story line, the characters’ unashamed, raucous sexuality is an instrument of resolution. The supernaturals rescue Doug from danger, then fuck him silly.

To date, two full-color issues of Velvet Collar has been realized and financed through crowdsourcing, with a third in production. Volume 1 opens with expository blocks offering the backstories of the five male sex workers. Each is based on an actual worker who consented to participate in the project. Some names are changed to avoid disclosure. For their likenesses, Davenport worked from photos and videos. 

Davenport’s hand in drawing Velvet Collar v. 1 is tighter than it is in Hard to Swallow, perhaps because there are more characters and interwoven storylines. The characters are faithfully rendered and colored, and the New York City settings are drafted with precision. The reader shifts from one character depiction to the next via a chain of phone calls gathering up the group to attend an event at the offices of “Rentman,” the world’s largest online escort listing service. This narrative device centers technology, reflecting the current reality of technology-mediated sex work. As with Hard to Swallow, many of the depictions of sex—both personal and transactional—are explicit, raucous fun.

Part of the mission of Velvet Collar is to depict sex workers as fully realized protagonists with complex emotional lives. The five represent a range of ethnicities, body types, and ages. The character Abel Rey is based on a Latino worker active in New York. In his frames, he is seen arguing with a love interest who has “discovered” that he’s a sex worker, despite a previous disclosure “on (their) second date.” The sequence, charged with emotion and sexual heat, resolves with Abel giving him a worker-in-relationship go-to: “Other people pay cash, all you have to do is pay attention.”

Bearish Billy is shown in the midst of a call with a submissive who worships his hairy body and big belly. The character Rica Shay is a composite, partly inspired by the Los Angeles-based gay hip-hop performer and dancer. Frames depict Rica Shay saying goodbye to a loving partner while he pursues his music career, which is in turn financed by  sex work. One of his regulars is shown being supportive of his musical ambitions. The character navigates a romantic relationship, his creative aspirations, and client expectations.

African-American Storm is based on the true experiences of a “down-low” escort who requested that his name and likeness be withheld. He is married with a wife and child; in the opening sequence, the silos between his sex work and family life come crashing down when his young daughter announces, “Dad, I know you’re a prostitute.” This story line grapples with deeper questions of disclosure in the lives of sex workers. While his daughter is understanding, his wife raises serious risks: “If child services finds out, they’ll take her away from you.”

The last of the quintet is Scott, aka Daddy. Daddy is a trapeze instructor and a sex worker at 62. The characterization draws on a veteran worker whose longevity also defies stereotypes. These five convene for the launch party of an ad campaign in which they are featured at the offices of Rentman on the occasion of the company’s 20th anniversary. Federal agents in black crash the party, and overrun the office with force, to the astonishment of our five, who are turning the corner just as Rentman’s handcuffed employees are being perp-walked towards a police cruiser.

The cover art depicts the founder of Rentman bound up in yellow crime-scene tape. While stylized, it accurately conveys the circumstance of founder Jeffrey Hurant, who—after being arrested and charged with promoting prostitution and conspiracy to commit money laundering—was convicted and sentenced to six months in federal prison. The acting U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case described the business as an “Internet brothel.” Before it was shuttered by ICE/Homeland Security, Rentboy.com was the single largest global platform for male sex workers. Prior to 2015, it had operated without any significant federal scrutiny. The raid was part of a coordinated effort—in advance of the passage of SESTA/FOSTA—to shut down websites with prominent sex worker presence (Backpage was seized soon afterwards).

In its detailed frames, Unhappy Endings does an excellent job of presenting its five main characters navigating sex work in their individual lives. It also establishes the Rentboy raid as a turning point in male sex workers’ access to online platforms, a topic to be unpacked in subsequent issues.  

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Former sex worker and activist Dale Corvino’s short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including online at the Rumpus and Salon. He won the 2018 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook contest with a trio of short stories; Worker Names was published in 2019. Recent publications include a reflection on Chile’s massive populist uprising and the legacy of queer writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review and an essay on growing constraints on adult online content in Matt Keegan: 1996, from New York Consolidated/Inventory Press. He lives in New York City. https://dalecorvino.com