7 Miles a Second

A graphic novel memoir of Wojnarowicz’s experiences as an underage hustler on the streets of New York and later his experiences living with, and slowly dying of, AIDS in a culture that wished for his destruction. Mixes the realistic and the hallucinatory with abandon—bodies dissolve and rot and grow flowers, sometimes all at once—and why not when we live in a world in which people can do horrible things to one another and it’s not shocking or even noteworthy?

David Wojnarowicz was a high-profile street artist, photographer, filmmaker and AIDS activist in New York until his death of AIDS-related complications in 1992. 7 Miles a Second is his graphic memoir, illustrated by friends James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook. It’s a fever-dream of an autobiography of an adolescence spent starving, hustling and abused on the streets of New York, and a masterpiece of trash-art agitprop that rages furiously against the hypocrisy of the Religious Right, set in an apocalyptic landscape of grotesque body-horror. Fantagraphics has reissued the comic, first published in 1996, in appropriately garish watercolor and frantic hand-lettering. Romberger and Van Cook’s art matches the lurid, breathless style show more of Wojnarowicz’s writing perfectly. It’s heartbreaking and terrifying; it’s a history lesson in a bullet. show less

The nitty gritty life of a young prostitute with the aids virus. I loved the glimpse into his mind but the text at time was very rant like. The artwork was perfect for the content but the long rants almost made me want to throw in the towel half way through.

Raw, powerful and such an important book. Someone should save this book from DC Comics and reprint it.

A graphic (no pun intended) reminder and powerful description of how bad the AIDS crisis was in the 80s and 90s.