An award-winning tale of Victorian robot sex

Chester5000 Isabelle and George coverCheck it out: Local artist/author Jess Fink won the 2017 Ignatz Award for outstanding series for her comic Chester 5000 XYV.

The annual Ignatz Awards are the festival prize for the annual Small Press Expo, which was this past weekend in the DC area. "The Ignatz recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression." (The actual award is a brick, in honor of the character Ignatz from Krazy Kat.)

Chester is an erotic, Victorian, sci-fi, romance comic. As she told us a few years back of the story's origins:

I've been interested in how people in eras past have dealt with sexuality for some time. A big inspiration was the Tijuana Bibles which were these little dirty comics people sold illegally in the 20s-50s.
I also had an interest in early erotic photography. Basically the Victorians are famous for being prudes, having no knowledge of the female orgasm and little sex education, yet there is a lot of erotic art from that era. I thought the juxtaposition of sexual discovery and prudish Victorian values would be fun.

The story has been collected into two books, which are both available for sale.

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