What Scarlett Wants, Scarlett Gets
Scarlett Take Manhattan, Molly Crabapple‘s first foray into a full-fledged graphic novel, is out in just two days and is sure to make readers giggle with delight. It’s an audacious prequel to Backstage – a webcomic about seedy vaudevillian adventures set in Victorian New York. And what better way to get the party started than with a bang. A most literal bang, at that – we enter Scarlett’s world as she’s whispering her life story into a beau’s ear while making love. Entirely appropriate for a tale of a woman making her way to the top in a brutal city known for eating its residents alive.
Scarlett Takes Manhattan is a visual delicacy, with detail bursting from every page like yet another fresh-popped bottle of champagne. Molly’s florid style blends with John Leavitt’s writing to reveal 1880s New York’s fleshy underbelly. We peek behind closed doors, over corrupt politician’s shoulders and under ruffled skirts as Leavitt and Crabapple show an uninhibited girl of humble beginnings traipse through manual labor and sex work to become queen of Vaudeville. Sex is celebrated, morality is, surprisingly, maintained and show business gets a new star when the smoke clears.
And now, a special treat our readers! Scarlett Takes Manhattan is peppered with charming Victorian slang. Post your favorite Victorian euphemism in the comments – the sauciest will win a copy of Scarlett autographed by Molly Crabapple.
[Note from the editor: we have a winner! Random Tangent’s reply caught miss Molly’s eye, here it is:
I find ‘buttered bun’ to be much more preferable to ’sloppy seconds’ or ‘cream pie’.
But what kind of brute would refer to a woman’s commodity as ‘crinkum krankum’? That’s messed up.
So if you’re putting Nebuchadnezzar out to grass with a real dirty puzzle, you best mind that you don’t end up having a buttered bun. That dollymop will give you a nasty flap dragon. Once you’ve got a nasty shanker you’d better spend some time in the lock hospital before you knock another botail. It’s not good to go spreading the French disease.
Congratulations and enjoy your signed copy of Scarlett Takes Manhattan!]
Click the jump for two previews of pages from the book, one of them decidedly NOT Safe For Work.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:40 am
I’m intrigued…
July 6th, 2009 at 10:40 am
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this. The level of detail and scale in her work is as beautiful as it is intricate. Seeing her do a full on graphic novel is a treat beyond words…one can only hope it’s one of many.
She’s so good with color…but she’s even better with expressions and body language. Her figures always look alive and the world they live in feels tangible. As cartoon like as her work is it feels far more real than some of the more realistic works I’ve seen depicting this particular era.
Ah, if only I knew saucy Victorian slang…seems like it would be cheating to use Google :P
July 6th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Excited, tittilated, and enchanted to discover that this book is arriving (I’d say coming, but that would be oh so vulgar.) Molly Crabapple is a veritable Apple of my Eye, crab or no, and her work is astonishingly sensual and arousing.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:48 am
While “tipping the velvet” is always charming, I just discovered “Threadneedle Street” (sexual intercourse – also the current location of the Bank of England according to Wikipedia), and I quite like it… So it would be my favorite right now!
July 6th, 2009 at 10:58 am
“Firkytoodling” is my personal favorite.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Hard to say! “Apple Dumplin Shop” (A woman’s bosom) and a “Gentleman of the Back Door” (A Sodomite) are pretty neat :o)
Also: Yay! Been anxiously anticipating this book for a while now!
July 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
(clears throat, pulls out best Artful Dodger accent…)
“Oi there, toffer! Convince me mates I am not a shivering jemmy mandrake an’ ‘elp me put ol’ Nebuchadnezzar out to grass.”
I love olde tyme sex talk. Plus, there has never, nor will there ever be a sexier word in the english language than ‘Nebuchadnezzar’.
Been looking forward to this book for a long, long time. Madame Crabapple is mentally ruined in all the best ways.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Victorian saucy euphemisms eh?
How about “I’d like to wander my Heathcliff all around your wuthering heights.”
July 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I’m really looking forward for the book, so here go my three sentences, as full in euphemisms as I could dare:
1. He’s just feeling under the weather, for his mistress is not giving him the considerations connected with a home lately.
2. For that girl the wages of sin are scant or wanting, for in her face you can see no delight in the contemplation of bestial vice, and then, it’s all over in a huff.
3. I offer you my lad, a night that you will remember as being “unnatural,” “base,” “unfruitful,” and “impious” even for men that lay in the “burning plain” on the seventh circle of hell.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
We’ve always used “bangtail” for those poor Unfortunates (see From Hell) and even though the meaning isn’t as saucy, I thought “dream holes” (an 1800s term meaning openings left in the walls of buildings to admit light) could have a much more wicked connotation.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
oooo!! the book is already temp out of stock on amazon!!! aack!
July 6th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
A godemiche in the ol’ bottie – with tentacles! Both graphic and novel.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Sadly, my copies of The Pearl are in storage, so the only one I can think of is “Vice-Admiral of the Narrow Seas”, for a man who has pissed himself.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Lestrange had Holmes by the Blue Carbuncles now, caught with Five Orange Pips, in the middle of an opium den. His Crooked Man thrust deep inside a Red-Headed League, and he’d have a hard time explaining the Three Students, Six Napoleons, and just why he’d left his Black Peter well inside the mouth of a Solitary Cyclist.
Just having some fun with titles, and the thought of Arthur Conan Doyle turning over in his grave.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
how about “left-handed wife” for mistress? it’s so suggestive of so-called “downhill skiing”. I also love “laycock” for a woman’s privates.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
My fave has always been “tuppeny upright” for a cheap quickie in a back alley.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
She cooed over his pleasure-pivot, and, overcome with tinglings in her furnace-mouth, proceeded to beg him to give her the spurs until they’d both boiled over and he’d filled her to the brim with his balsamic injection.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I find ‘buttered bun’ to be much more preferable to ‘sloppy seconds’ or ‘cream pie’.
But what kind of brute would refer to a woman’s commodity as ‘crinkum krankum’? That’s messed up.
So if you’re putting Nebuchadnezzar out to grass with a real dirty puzzle, you best mind that you don’t end up having a buttered bun. That dollymop will give you a nasty flap dragon. Once you’ve got a nasty shanker you’d better spend some time in the lock hospital before you knock another botail. It’s not good to go spreading the French disease.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I have to agree with a previous commenter and say that favorite (and, surprisingly, still useful) one is “tipping the velvet,” which I was led to believe just meant kissing a woman. However, after some research, I think it might mean a bit more than that. Whoops…
July 6th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Thank you so much, Zoetica. You induce such replies!
July 6th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
So many great ones to choose from.
Three-penny-upright for a quicky up against the wall, or in general “to ride rantipole,” with a lady of negotiable affections, aka dirty puzzle / wagtail / tart, or with one’s mistress, aka one’s convenient, or wife in watercolors.
And of course a man can put his bawbles / whorepipe / talliwag / plugtail in a woman’s bite / cock alley / fruitful vine / old hat / madge / muff / quim, or in her blind cupid, cooler, or nancy if he were a Gentleman of the Back Door.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I have to cast a belated vote for “gamahuche.” I first read the word in the delightful short-lived Victorian “Journal of Voluptuous Reading” The Pearl. It means the same as the much-more-elegant “tipping the velvet” – but gets extra points in my book for sheer ridiculous un-sexiness.
“…my head was buried between her loving thighs, with which she pressed me most amorously; this was fine gamahuche…”
Who thought of this word? And why?
July 6th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Gamahuche.. Wow. Just wow. I laughed for a couple of minutes after saying that one out loud. Try it!
July 7th, 2009 at 12:36 am
FINE GAMAHUCHE
That should be on a t-shirt.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:48 am
well, I stand blushing, in awe, and armed with a whole new repetoire of slang for the next book.
You’re all kings and queens of smut, but the winner of this contest is….
Random_Tangent!
Random_Tangent, your sweet recap of every stage of love- from flirtation to recovery, all in dulcet 19th century words, truely is a thing of beauty. Email me through my website with your address, and a book will be making its way to you shortly.
Everyone else, thanks for all the kind words! My publisher just sent more books to Amazon, so they’ll be in stock soon, and if you’re in LA, SF, or NYC, I’m doing signings!
July 8th, 2009 at 5:35 am
Any idea where it is available to buy in the UK?
July 8th, 2009 at 7:26 am
RE: Laura
Once we get on Diamond, I’ll have a bunch of info on getting your local comics shop to carry Scarlett. In the meantime, Amazon is the way to go
July 9th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I’ve always admired Molly’s work and look forward to checking out the book. I also thank her for creating Dr. Sketchy’s- I regularly attend and enjoy the San Francisco chapter and will be there next week to procure my copy of the book!