The Ninety-Nine Dollar Drag Makeover

Fiona Mallratte's (a.k.a. Pete) autobiographical comic is great with it's droll approach to the life of a drag queen and the personal and social considerations of "going public." Fiona's story begins with her childhood as a rambunctious little boy who plays dress up in his mom’s dresses with his older brother Jerry. Even though Mom finds out what’s up and forbids the boys’ fashion expressions, they decide to turn their favorite magenta satin dress into a character in their game of “Drunken Lady.”

The scene switches shortly thereafter to a scene at a party where Pete (now Fiona) is admired by her friend at a party where she sports a short, sassy dress, eventually revealing the black corset she’s wearing underneath. As Fiona helps herself to another beer at the keg, her friend makes the remark that Fiona’s clothes must have cost a fortune. Herein lies the pivotal part of this comic as Fiona replies that actually her clothes were pretty cheap. This realization spawns Fiona’s idea to write a how-to book on buying cheap drag wares. Fiona explains to her friend, “It’ll help guys look like Cindy Crawford for cheap!” So, from Payless Shoes being “a queen’s dream come true” to Wet ‘N Wild make-up keeping one’s budget under control, Fiona offers helpful, economic beauty tips. But, don’t think this comic stops here at the surface. Fiona and her friend engage in deeper conversation that delves into the social constructions and constraints of drag queens, transsexuals, and “other flavors of she-males.”

On top of all this, Fiona stealthily integrates the triumphs of The Liquid Liner, the superhero who saves the day as the comic bookstore she’s shopping at gets held up by a thug (wearing lingerie under his t-shirt and jeans, of course).

As a warm farewell to her readers, Fiona includes a real life photo gallery doing her performance of "I'm a Cross Between Howlin' Wolf & Millie the model" at the annual Perkin Poetry and Music Festival. What a cool lady!!!

You can buy this comic at bugcomix.com (at least that's what it says on the back of the comic itself; however, I can't find the site, so if you can, please contact me so that I can make this link happen) and Golden Apple Comics (They could use some more pressure from patrons to stock more queer comics and zines, so do your thing and support us starving writers! In fact, you can bug them right now by clicking here. :)

Contact Mable to get your queer indie publication on this site!