Groupies

This lush erotic horror from Mullane (Painted) and Eisner winner Lotay (Somna) conjures dark delights out of the rock ’n’ roll world of the late 1960s and early ’70s. During the tarnished later days of the Summer of Love, a tight-knit, glamorous circle of six groupies—Amina, Lisa Storm, Vera Vicious, Morgaine La Fey, Gaia, and Myuuzu—prowl the Sunset Strip. “The rock stars we make love to, soon learn that they are blessed to get with us,” Gaia opines, over rumpled post-coital images of a threesome that includes her sometimes-lover Morgaine; in the next scene, she and Morgaine pull tarot cards and pop pills. When the gang goes on tour with the Moon Show, the hottest new band on the West Coast, they’re thrilled to be at the center of the action, and Lisa falls for sexy, sinister lead singer Si. But the party morphs into a bad scene: groupies start to disappear, and the band turns out to be involved in Satanic shenanigans. Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different groupie as she peers through a miasma of sex, drugs, and blood sacrifice. Lotay’s smeared neon colors evoke the psychedelic haze and smoggy Los Angeles sunsets of the era, the painterly art rendering steamy eroticism within warped Satanic Panic tropes. Despite the story’s abrupt ending, horror fans will enjoy this murky nightmare. (Feb.)