Real-life stories of love, sex, poverty, despair, drugs, struggle, life and death from Underground Comics-pioneer Guy Colwell! Printed in 1978.
Excellent summary and review from Comixjoint: "For the first time in this series, Guy Colwell presents five different short stories instead of one full-length story in Inner City Romance #5. In his autobiographical art book, Central Body, the Art of Guy Colwell, Colwell states that he chose to produce some short stories because they could be reprinted in magazines and anthologies much easier than a whole book, thereby earning him more money. Indeed, some of the stories from this issue were picked up by various publishers for reprinting in Europe and the United States. Inner City Romance #5 is also the last issue in this series, and the last comic book Colwell would produce for about a decade, until he returned with Doll.
Two of the five stories in this book are wordless yet joyful depictions of a man and a woman preparing for and then making love. The first is the opening story in the book, the couple is black, and they have sex indoors. The second story is the last in the book, the couple is white, and they have sex outside on a bed of clover. The first story may be slightly more intriguing due to the scenes leading up to the sex, and the artwork that hangs on their walls.
The second story in the book is called 'Down Up' and features a skinny woman and a fat man, both feeling the severe effects of [a drug binge]. They go to her place to have sex, but like two ships passing in the night, their artificially induced states of mind never meet...
The third story runs eight pages and is the most ambitious in the book. It's called 'Interkids' and stars a nameless black boy about eight years old who lives in the inner city. He is sent out by his mother to pick up milk at the store for his baby sister, but must resist the temptation of going with his friends to see a fire that just broke out in a nearby building, while also avoiding the bullies that are always looking to shake him down... ['Intrerkids'] seems quite reflective of what life must be like for children in the ghetto, when at any moment on any day your life might change forever or even end, but instead you make it through the day and the week and the month...and most kids actually grow up without getting killed. 'Interkids' presents this reality in a "slice of life" story that feels nostalgic without tasting saccharine.
The fourth story, 'Sex Crime,' is much more harrowing, as it relates a tragic tale of a young woman who is tracked down by a rapist on a deserted street at night..."
