It’s a bit unusual for the comics blogosphere to raise torches and pitchforks against a non-superhero offering, but the debut graphic novel from Regan Books, HOW TO MAKE MONEY LIKE A PORN STAR, has done just that, with a remarkable array of highly negative reviews:

Occasional Superheroine

So I get my grubby hands on some of the highly-touted “naughty” preview pages. Bernard Chang’s work is great — that was never a question. As to the content, it was pretty tame –just your standard domestic violence and potential suicide. I wondered if this was enough of an enticement to reel in the readers, or if they should have just went with one of the rape scenes. It didn’t even have to be one of the “heavy” scenes, it could be that whimsical passage about the heroine getting raped by her long-lost brother (clearly a nod to Dickens).

Girls Read Comics (And They’re Pissed)

According to the press release, it’s “in the vein of Sin Cityâ€?, which I must assume means “there’s sex in itâ€?, rather than “it relies heavily on noir tropes and includes breathtaking originality in the layoutâ€?.

Don’t buy this comic. It’s complete crap.

This four-part tale of Claudia Corvette, a fictional porn star, is one of the most misogynistic pieces of art it has been my displeasure to read in the last couple of months.

Lest you think it’s just the ladies who don’t like it, Beaucoup Kevin is also less than taken with the book’s charms:

A disclaimer, right off the bat: I hate to use a word like “reprehensible,” especially as it’s one of the most-often used elements of the right-wing, talk show blowhard lexicon that seems to think censure and scorn is a better solution than, say, discussion. It’s not a word I’m comfortable using – I’m a bed-wetting liberal who hugs a copy of the First Amendment every night before heading off to bed.

That said, How To Make Money Like A Porn Star by Neil Strauss and Bernard Chang is possibly the most reprehensible piece of fiction that I’ve read in my lifetime.

In a later post, Kevin even tracks a possible review conspiracy over on Amazon.

The book is written by Neil Strauss, a rock journalist whose recent non music books have included a bio of porn star Jenna Jameson and a best-selling guide on how to pick up girls using cunning subterfuge like promising to call and the popular reverse psychology method of being a total bastard. New York Magazine profiles Strauss and reveals the heart rending story of a man who learned that lying and cheating for a series of quick hook ups was not all it was cracked up to be:

But now Strauss seems rather weary of being the Dr. Phil of cruising. By the end of his book tour for The Game, he says, the audience had transformed from 23-year-old virgins asking how to make their first pass at a girl to, “like, big college-football jocks saying, ‘This book changed my life. I can meet all these women now!’ And I’m thinking, I got into this community because you were getting all the girls! This book isn’t for you!â€?

Sad.