[6] He labelled the series as an "erotic horror" and noted that this put several publishers off producing it, going with Bill Marks' Canadian company Vortex Comics when he didn't baulk at the contents.

"[5]Chaykin would later acknowledge the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the novels of Alan Furst and Raymond Chandler and his own experiences living in Los Angeles as influences on Black Kiss.

[5] He also claimed Dagmar was partly inspired by "Puerto Rican drag queens" he had worked alongside at an art studio,[6] and an encounter with a "transvestite doppelganger" of a previous girlfriend on Madison Avenue,[9] while much of the architecture was based on real properties in California - particularly Glendale,[10] while sex scenes were modelled on stills from Adult Video Review.

This meant that casual browsers could not open the comic, or obviously see the internal content;[14][15] inside the bag the book featured additional black card sleeves to hide the covers.

[19] Following the conclusion of the series' initial publication in 1989, Vortex repackaged it as a three-part mini-series called Big Black Kiss, reprinting four chapters a time in a 48-page, $3.25 format.

In 1989, customs officers in New Zealand seized imported copies of Big Black Kiss on grounds of indecency; at the time law in the country regarded all comics as children's literature and made no account of material intended for adult readers.

[20] Following a raid on London comic store Edge of Forever saw several titles seized under the Obscene Publications Act 1964, British police identified Black Kiss as "unacceptable in any format".

He attends this and discovers the Order was formed at the beginning of Hollywood's movie era and that they worship Charles 'Bubba' Kenton, a 1920s film star who was also married to Beverly Grove.

While he praised some of Black Kiss' storytelling techniques and uniqueness, Niven felt that too much of the series was shaped by a desire to shock, and concluded that readers were "more mature than Chaykin pretends to be.".

[13] Rob Rodi of The Comics Journal was impressed by the book's "chutzpah", noting "It’s so arrogant it’s funny; you laugh out loud" but found the series wearying as it went on.

[25] Darcy Sullivan was also unmoved in a later issue, feeling Chaykin played Black Kiss "for giggles, hanging a soupcon of stylistic tricks on the most contrived of plots, and seems most interested in referencing low artforms: hard-boiled pulp fiction, porn films, vampire comics.".

"[28] Reviewing the 2010 collected edition for Slings & Arrows, Frank Plowright felt the series would never achieve its deserved acclaim due to its sexual content, feeling that behind this there "is a well-thought out plot that swerves away from expectation and contains some great sequences".

[16] From the start, Chaykin hoped to get Black Kiss made as a film[7] parallel to the comic's publications, initially getting some involvement from an independent producer; he would humorously note that this wasn't to be a pornographic production, but R-rated.