Dori Stories: The Complete Dori Seda by Dori Seda, Don Donahue and friends BUY THIS
Last Gasp: 1999
This is a collection of comics and artwork by Dori Seda, as well as pieces written by her friends after her untimely death in 1988 when she was still in her thirties.
Dori published her work in the 1980s in collections such as Wimmen's Comix, Weirdo, Weird Smut Comics, and also her own collection: Lonely Nights Comics. A quick flick through this anthology gives you a good idea as to the kind of thing Dori did. Yep, she was dirty. She made ceramic sculptures of giant vibrators. She drew loosely autobiographical comics in which she (too) vehemently denies having sex with her dog -a running theme. "Devil Dori" frequently turns up and makes her drink way too much beer and insult all her friends. Her days generally end rolling around on the floor naked, trying to get her scabby, stinky pets into the bath.
Dori's work is funny. She presents herself as completely hapless, not in the lame "look at Bridget Jones trip over her cleavage" kind of way, but in the way that we are all goofy in our private moments. The book begins with a two page black and white spread of photos, showing Dori in various costumes (or just naked and wrapped in tinsel) all with the same wide gap toothed smile. She comes across as an uninhibited, likeable party girl, and her comics pay homage to her irreverent lifestyle.
Not all of these comix are literally autobiographical, many of them delve into something fairly much like pornographic fantasy (usually with her dog Tona somehow involved!), but the more fantastical comix are obvious extensions of what was going on in Dori's mind as she lived her unconventional life. Vampires, S&M & animal people all turn up in various scenarios. But Dori's tone is so endearing her more extreme comix refreshingly don't generate darkness, and are often laugh-out-loud. Her art style is generally very detailed and realistically drawn (sometimes too realistic - like the close up shot of her dog's eczema weeping sore!). According to her friends, she laboured over her pieces.
The essays that surround her work are illustrated with photos of her and the people in her life, many of whom include famous faces from the comix underground, such as Kristyne Kryttre and Joe Sacco. Usually, you don't really know anything about the creator when you read a comic, and often it doesn't matter. But apart from the fact the collection was made as an appreciation of her short but creatively brilliant life, I think that the biographical & contextual detail it includes also adds an important layer to Dori's work. For example, it allows insight into the legal battles that seem to go hand in hand with underground comics; after Dori's death, her mother tried to stop this collection from being published as she felt that Dori's work was too pornographic, and I suppose she didn't want her daughter's everlasting legacy to be this. But I hope she has changed her mind now that the book has been put out there, because if Dori's personality and moral attitude presented her comics is anything to go by, it's very unlikely she'd be ashamed of this collection. The posthumous publishing of this book reflects the amount of love & respect her friends obviously had for her, and that is something any mother could be proud of.
MS 16/6/05