Flung Out of Space

Book Review by Kevin Wolf

Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith written by Grace Ellis & illustrated by Hannah Templer covers a historical period when homosexuality was considered a mental illness with their sexual relations illegal in the United States. It takes place primarily in the early days of comic books from about 1942 through the early 1950s when Patricia Highsmith worked for several different comic book publishing houses and the start of her literary career. From www.lgbtqhistory.org “1952 – The American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual listed homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance that could be treated.” Illinois in 1962 was the “first state to decriminalize homosexual acts between two consenting adults in private.” According to a posting at Psychology Today by Neel Burton, MD (“When Homosexuality Stopped Being a Mental Disorder” from 1968, DSM-II (Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders, second edition) “listed homosexuality as a mental disorder” and this wasn’t removed completely until 1987. Lawrence v. Texas decision (2003 by U.S. Supreme Court) “ruled by a vote of 6-3 that a Kansas law criminalizing gay and lesbian sex was unconstitutional …” All of this is to write, that during Patricia Highsmith’s time as a comic book writer she had to deal with bias against women in comics and lesbians even existing. Flung Out of Space is partly a story of Highsmith’s mental health struggles and partly her frustrating time to achieve success in the literary world. I recommend this graphic work.

The Author’s Note explains Flung Out of Space “… is a fictionalized, narrative version of a true story” with all dialogue made up, shortened time for events, and some people being composites, “… but the most interesting facts and events are true.” Though fairly tamely presented therein, the Note also states, Highsmith “… was deeply anti-Semetic [sic], racist, and misogynistic, even by the standards of her time.”

According to https://womenincomics.fandom.com/wiki/Patricia_Highsmith and Wikipedia Highsmith published comics with Nedor/Standard/Pines’ shop  in 1942-43, for Fawcett Publications in 1943-45, Western Comics for 1945-47, and at the same time freelanced with Timely (1943-46, later renamed Marvel) after a “date” with Stan Lee, shown in Flung Out of Space. She hated writing for comic books and felt it was beneath her, but she needed that income; and while she wrote for comics, she composed two novels which took a while to be published. Comic story titles included some biographical ones (Catherine the Great, Galileo, FDR, among others), and other titles, including The Black Terror, Spy Smasher, and Jap-Buster Johnson. A person whose screen name is Caustic ’Crazy for Teeth’ Cover Critic allegedly (I can’t vouch for it) made a compilation of ten (80 pages) of Highsmith’s written comics with unknown artists.

She quit comics before her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was published in 1950 and this novel was then adapted by Alfred Hitchcock with the same title in 1951. Her second novel was The Price of Salt published in 1952 under the pseudonym, Claire Morgan, and later republished under her own name in 1989 with the title Carol, a groundbreaking work (more later).

Highsmith spent a lot of her fairly low pay income from comics on sessions with psychotherapists trying to not have “homosexual urges,” but to no avail. She tried dating men—including Stan Lee, who became editor at Timely in 1942—before she started freelance writing for Timely. (There’s some irony here, in that Stanley Lieber used his pseudonym (Stan Lee) at Timely because he wanted to save his real name for writing novels—which never happened). While Highsmith moved on to her novels after using her comics-writing, which she disliked, to initially sustain herself. Her many sessions with psychotherapists, including group therapy, show Highsmith wanting to fulfill societal (at that time) expectations, such as male sexual relationships, heterosexual marriage, but she never actually desired this outcome. As now accepted, none of the psychotherapy “treatments” steer Highsmith to male sexual relationships. Instead, she was consistently going to lesbian bars, enjoying the company of women, and sleeping with girlfriends, wives, and other women she meets, even those from group therapy sessions. At one point one of her therapists asks her, “… How do you feel when you experience homosexual urges?” And Highsmith spontaneously responds, “Happy. Excited. [then more hesitantly to match her therapist’s expectations continues with] Abnormal. Conflicted. [two-panel pause] Guilty. [ 52]” And this is said to a therapist who claims she can make Highsmith a heterosexual.

Highsmith even worked at Bloomingdale’s in the kid’s department during 1948 for supplemental income. A doll purchase by a blond woman at Bloomindale’s is presented mostly wordlessly (pages 140-159) in Flung Out in Space, which inspired Highsmith’s groundbreaking novel—which went through two title changes from The Bloomingdale’s Story to The Argument of Tantalus[i] before being called—The Price of Salt about two women in love with a happy ending which was “unprecedented in lesbian literature” at that time. The Price of Salt was published under the pseudonym because, according to Flung Out in Space, Highsmith could only get it printed as a pulp paperback and she felt it was being categorized like the way Highsmith felt about comic books.

Hannah Templer’s imagery in Flung Out in Space is excellent, playing with color, light/dark, panel sizes, shapes and sometimes no panels at all. There are a few fascinating sequences, including near the opening, her conversation with Stan Lee, and a later three-page sequence of the rejection of The Price of Salt because of its positive love between two women. The opening has word balloons in the dark while attempts are made to start a lighter, then having her cigarette lit by a female bar mate only to be kicked out by the bartender “Get out of here. This isn’t that kind of bar … [page 5]” and walking home alone while she fantasizes murder, while at home typing out a tale of intrigue (parts of Strangers on a Train?). Later when talking to Stan Lee their “word balloons” become pictorial with hers being dark and sinister, and his being light with superheroes battling.

Highsmith also wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley—perhaps her best-known novel—but that was beyond the time period covered in Flung Out of Space. I recommend Flung Out in Space for Highsmith’s acerbic dialogue, presenting a woman’s life in male-dominated field, and her real groundbreaking in sexuality literature.

[i] Tantalus (source of the word tantalize) was a man, who was punished by being near his desires but not quite able to reach them; from Greek mythology.