By TRINA ROBBINS (IDW; 1981-2017)
Yet another vital release from IDW that despite some enthusiastic notices did a fast fade. As with IDW publications like SHOCK FESTIVAL and THE MAN FROM THE GREAT NORTH, SAX ROHMER’S DOPE suffered from publicity that was nonexistent and distribution to match. IDW, which as of early 2024 appears to be on its last legs, had an eye for quality material but seemed clueless about presenting it to the public.
As the title makes clear, this volume was adapted from a novel by the UK’s Sax Rohmer.The creator of Fu Manchu, Rohmer was a prolific pulp writer who generously partook of the “Yellow Peril” craze of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, positing that China was a haven for drugs and vice that threatened to overtake the western world. That sentiment is very much present in DOPE, a 1919 potboiler that is, frankly, pretty lousy. This graphic adaptation was written and illustrated by Trina Robbins, a veteran artist who initially serialized DOPE in 1980-83 in ECLIPSE MAGAZINE and ECLIPSE MONTHLY. Here we have its first, and likely only, complete version.
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
In a newly written introduction Robbins claims the artwork of DOPE is among her best. Her art is indeed impressive, presented in stark, shading-free black-and-white that perfectly fits the luridness of Rohmer’s story, about an actress lured into a druggy underworld by an evil one-eyed Chinaman and his “Cuban Jewess” wife. Particularly nifty are Robbins’ renderings of the early twentieth century fashions, which are seductive and even somewhat fetishistic (with great attention paid to the high heeled shoes worn by one eminently fashionable character).
Surprisingly given her feminist credentials, Robbins doesn’t try and modernize the text in any way, letting its archaic trashiness and politically incorrect leanings shine through. Her argument: “It would have been impossible to adapt DOPE without including the racism…Because, in the past, everyone was racist. And when they weren’t being racist, they were busy being sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic.”
Lengthy afterwords by Colleen Doran and Jon B. Cooke fill us in on the history of the novel, written at great haste during Rohmer’s most prolific period, as well as Billie Carleton (1896-2018), the actress whose tragic life and untimely death inspired the story, and the Yellow Peril as a whole. There’s also a great deal of apologizing for the material’s dated aspects, with Cooke making sure to remind us that DOPE, featuring gloweringly evil and hopelessly fragile female protagonists, is “inarguably sexist.” You think?