Diary of a Dominatrix

On first Impression, I was a bit underwhelmed by the visuals of Diary of a Dominatrix. The drawings are unexpressive, have a hard time describing certain ideas or objects, and lack in general appeal. As I read through this comic, however, the unique narrative begins to draw me into the story, as I’m curious to read a real humans perspective on such an interesting job. This becomes the main appeal of the comic for me, as every aspect of the comic, from the dialogue to the drawings, helps illustrate the thoughts and struggles of an ordinary person working in a rather extraordinary job. This is the one aspect of this comic that lead me to investigate the story, as if it weren’t for the personal perspective of an actual person, I fear this comic would have degraded to nothing more than a pornographic comic more humorous than most.

This being said, I wish the comic focused more on Zelda, the Dom’s personal life and less on her life as a dominatrix. The scenes focusing on her preparing for her work, or afterwards I found to be the most interesting. I understand that the main demographic of this comic most likely pick up this comic for its adult material, but I personally found this aspect to be the least interesting. I enjoyed the humorous aspects of the sex scenes (why is there a Kermit doll, umbrella, and pogo stick amongst Zelda’s sex toys?), but I found much of the comic’s more explicit scenes either uninteresting of conversely too graphic to want to read. I should have been prepared for this when I opened the comic, but regardless certain descriptions of torture and bondage left me somewhat disgruntled.

Some aspects of this comic that I found particularly unique, and therefore interesting were its focus on texture, fantasy, and a few pages, which were designed more creatively than most. Such pages include one wherein we see the thought process and fantasy of Zelda as she considers killing and dismembering a client and then the repercussions that would follow afterwards. This page is illustrated with minimal character acting or dialogue; much of the page is described in newspaper or book clippings.