The Agency

Skelly (Maids) gathers a handful of erotic webcomics into this hallucinatory collection. Most of the stories originally appeared in the mid-aughts on now-defunct feminist site Slutist, and the NSFW adventures, each a scant few pages, lend themselves to the ephemeral internet medium, proving to be fun, frank, and a bit forgettable once finished. They center on members of a sex-positive cabal of women who want only to get off and help others do the same. Agent 8, for instance, wonders whether her lover, a skeleton, is envious of people with skin; he then proves that nerve endings aren't necessary for pleasure. Agent 10, recently separated from her husband, takes a vacation from herself with the aid of an octopus and a hot tub. With deceptively delicate linework and pop-art pastels, Skelly draws her characters--bewitching, twiggy figures--as insatiable and inscrutable, alluring specters with no time for nonsense but plenty for whimsy. Their insouciant coolness belies the fires raging inside; these encounters are hot stuff. Readers will be left visually satisfied, if at times narratively mystified. This peek into Skelly's indecent, mischievous world will titillate her devotees and wide-eyed newcomers. (Apr.)