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Erotic Comics:

A Graphic History Vol 2

"This is hardcore", author Tim Pilcher alerts us, in his introduction to this lavish, full-colour, 200-page sequel and conclusion to his two-part history of erotic comics. This greater explicitness reflects the huge changes in how sex was shown in comics which swept in with the Seventies. Not that you’d be able to tell from the cover, exquisitely rendered by the Italian woman illustrator Giovanna Casotto, of a nude bathing beauty, her nipples strategically obscured by bubblebath to avoid offending sensitive (mainly American) types. Inside, it’s a different story as Pilcher trawls much of the globe in search of the hottest in (porno)-graphic novelties. The result is a far stronger collection than the first, helped by narrowing in on a shorter span of time.

Kicking off in the U.S.A., Pilcher charts the ascendancy and gradual erosion of the Comics Code, a censoring authority formed in 1954 by the comic book industry itself to avert state legislation after a media panic about the supposed corrupting influence of comics on children. After so many taboos had been shattered by Robert Crumb and the rest of the underground comics revolutionaries, the Code began losing its teeth. Slick adult strip magazines like National Lampoon and Heavy Metal hit the newsstands, while high-priced comic books like Cherry Poptart, Omaha the Cat Dancer and Black Kiss were sold through the new outlets of specialist comic stores. Struggling alternative comics publishers bankrolled their operations by branching off into sex comics, such as NBM’s Amerotica and Fantagraphics’ Eros lines. This increasing liberalisation and sexualisation also permeated through to the mainstream giants, where DC’s Vertigo label dared to tackle risqué subject matter "suggested for mature readers".


Black Kiss
by Howard Chaykin

A persistent theme running through this volume, and the previous one, is the threat and effect of censorship, as our assorted Big Brothers and Nanny States try to control or suppress our four-colour fantasies and delineated desires. This includes Margaret Thatcher’s notorious Clause 28, covered in Pilcher’s second chapter on Gay and Lesbian Comix. Again, American artists predominate here, but the pioneering Tom of Finland and Germany’s hilarious Ralf König, get a share of the spotlight. Sadly Britain’s own Oliver Frey, an undisputed master of homoerotica, gets only a name-check and a single Meatmen cover image under his pen-name Zack. Unavoidably, there’s plenty more omitted, and more than enough to fill a book this big on their own.

Next up comes European Erotique, much of it centred on Italy, home of voluptuous fumetti heroines from maestros Milo Manara, Paolo Serpieri, Vittorio Giardino and Casotto. Equally rich pickings are to be found from the Spanish scene, once Franco’s regime collapsed, and their Argentinian colleagues. As well as those hot-blooded Latins, there’s a healthy chunk on our homegrown British sex comics, from the trials of Nasty Tales and Knockabout to Fiesta, Men Only and our modern sophisticates, Lynn Paula Russell, published by Erotic Review Books, and Alan Moore with Melinda Gebbie on their sublime Top Shelf Comics trilogy Lost Girls, imagining Alice, Wendy and Dorothy grown up into sensual women. It’s heartening that in this more up-to-date tome, more women creators are expressing themselves though adult comics. In case you’re wondering, Pilcher covers the French BD revolution in the first volume. One of the pleasures of this book, of course, are the plentiful spreads of whole pages of comics, allowing the reader to get a taste of the storytelling, characterisation and action.


Lost Girls
by Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie

There’s no avoiding the rise of manga, comics from Japan, and Pilcher touches the main bases, from Hokusai to hentai or porno-manga. The Japanese have some unique attitudes to what can and cannot be shown, devising an armoury of symbols to replace upsetting genitalia and yet somehow tolerating, or encouraging, what to us can seem to be extreme material. That said, Japan too has had its scandals and test cases recently. The seemingly under-age girls in "Lolicon" or "Lolita complex" manga have stirred controversy, as has the peculiar interest in "Tentacle Porn". Pilcher has skirted round the erotic-grotesque field here, perhaps too strong and too strange, and fails to properly illustrate the surprising "Yaoi" genre, androgenous boys’ love stories created by women and read by girls. Instead, he shows their antithesis, Gengoroh Tagame‘s hairy, horny musclemen, designed entirely for a gay male audience. Still, he does cover plenty here, and manages to include the utterly bizarre Bondage Fairies, miniature, animal-loving nymphs shown here having sex with a grasshopper.


Bondage Fairies

As he brings his graphic history bang up-to-date by going online, the webcomics phenomenon is the new frontier, from cartoonish japes to fully-rendered 3D computer graphics. Censorship still looms in cyberspace, but by cutting out most, if not all, of the middlemen, comic artists today are creating in full control and reaching a worldwide audience directly. Some of us may never get used to reading comics on our computer screens, but for others it’s quite natural, and cheaper than print, or often totally free.

In his archly amusing introduction, "Drawings of Harlots", the root definition of pornography, Alan Moore bemoans the fact that "pornography is very much like adolescent poetry: there’s a great deal of it about because it is a very easy thing to do, and much of it is absolutely fucking dreadful because it is very hard to do well." Fortunately, whatever your taste or peccadillo, there’s such variety and quality on view here that there’s sure to be something here to tickle your fancy.

Posted: May 18, 2009

This article first appeared in The Erotic Review No. 99, May 2009.

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My Books




1001 Comics  You Must Read Before You Die edited by Paul Gravett

Comics Art by Paul Gravett from Tate Publishing





Comics Unmasked by Paul Gravett and John Harris Dunning from The British Library


Featured Books


Erotic Comics:
A Graphic History Vol 2:
From the 1970s
To The Present Day

by Tim Pilcher
(Ilex/Abrams)


Erotic Comics:
A Graphic History Vol 1:
From Birth To The 1970s

by Tim Pilcher
(Ilex/Abrams)