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. 

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