There's no point in beating around the bush here: The Unsinkable Ship of Fools is straight-up pornographic erotica of the XXX variety, and, as such, is an “Adults Only” publication. Opening at a hobo camp with a solo train-hopper who serves, more-or-less, to lead the reader into the experiences to follow, the narrative, such as it is, takes place in, on or around a carnival train moving through an indeterminate, ahistorical era. This 250 page, full color book is composed of ten chapters, structured like a collection of a ten-issue comic book mini-series, with each “issue” a self-contained adventure centering on a particular sexual adventure/escapade. A full spectrum of sizes, shapes, colors and types, sexual preferences, gender identities, and role playing combine with elements of fantasy – and the fantastic – to create pure comic book porn.
The creator of this work, erstwhile Pittsburgher and one-time Copacetic customer, Jonas Goonface is clearly inspired by his material here and has produced the most fully realized work of his career. The artwork throughout is lush and colorful, playful and dynamic.
Yet, despite being thoroughly pornographic, it is weirdly wholesome. All is rendered in such a way that the characters portrayed are shown abandoning themselves to their sexual adventures so thoroughly that each seems to be able to release their inner child for romps in the playground of sexuality. And, intriguingly, within the framework of the small society that makes up this particular ship of fools, a clear benefit of this playful abandon is that it enables an egalitarian spirit to reign over the fellow travelers populating it, who fully embody – and, in the process, provide a penetrating insight with foundational significance to – the classic dictum, "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."
We last heard from Lee Dean in 2018 when they produced the astonishingly accomplished I Am Young as "M. Dean." The Girl Who Flew Away is a highly intersectional work set in the USA's bicentennial year that centers on Greer Johnson, a Pittsburgh (!) girl from a troubled home and prey to unscrupulous older men who finds herself packed off to the Florida Keys as a result of an unplanned pregnancy. While new life grows inside her, she struggles to forge a workable identity within the highly mixed millleau within which she finds herself and find a way forward in 396 pages of confidently drawn and lushly colored comics in a horizontal (10" x 8") format that was likely chosen as this work began life online.
And there's more to the story as the protagonist finds herself imaginatively (and impulsively) interacting with characters from her recurring dreams, molding the dreams into narratives that are fixed in a historical past and work to help her gain perspective on her own, present situation through a sort of identification with her own creative abreaction.
