Challenging Taboos

Challenging Taboos

Vampirella Archives - Volumes 1-3

Taken straight from the scoop newsletter:

Vampirella, a character celebrating her 45th anniversary this year, has a storied publishing history that begins with her creation by horror fandom icon Forrest J. Ackerman and designer Trina Robbin and has continued to the present. Vampi was developed to be a host character for Warren Publishing, akin to their Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie for Creepy and Eerie, respectively, or like EC’s Crypt-Keeper, Vault-Keeper, and Old Witch before them.
The cover for Vampirella #1 was by Frank Frazetta, and it had more of the spirit of the character most readers would recognize than any of the stories in the first seven issues. It wasn’t until Archie Goodwin arrived as writer with Vampirella #8 that the character really began to grow.

But it would be a significant mistake to write off those first seven issues, and thank goodness that Dynamite Entertainment has made them so accessible with their New York Times best selling Vampirella Archives – Volume 1.

In addition to Ackerman and Frazetta, the book features the work of Don Glut, Tom Sutton, Neal Adams, Ernie Colon, Billy Graham, Alan Weiss, and Jeff Jones, among others. The stories fit right in with Creepy and Eerie of the period. Even better: the beautiful Vampirella Archives volumes will fit right next to Dark Horse’s excellent Creepy Archives and Eerie Archives editions.

In Vampirella Archives – Volume 2, Archie Goodwin arrives. Remembered as the founding editor of Epic Illustrated and Marvel’s Epic line, a longtime group editor at DC Comics, and for his great stints on the Secret Agent Corrigan and Star Wars newspaper strips, Goodwin’s work on Vampirella Vampirella #8, kicks off the second volume in the series.
crystallized her character and more than a decade of how she was interpreted. His first issue,

Goodwin would most likely have succeeded anyway, but the series found its voice and style with artists such as Jose Gonzales (for many, the definitive Vampi artist), Ken Barr, Wally Wood, Jerry Grandenetti, Barry (Windsor-) Smith, Berni Wrightson, Ralph Reese, Dave Cockrum, Frank Brunner, Sanho Kim, Bill Dubay, Mike Ploog, Sam Glanzman and Estaban Maroto, among others. The lead stories featuring Vampirella began to find their direction and the secondary stories demonstrated the twists, turns and artistry for which Creepy and Eerie were known.

Supporting players Adam Van Helsing and Pendragon the magician are more firmly established in Vampirella Archives – Volume 3, which kicks off with Vampirella #15, an issue that started off with a Richard Corben frontispiece and didn’t stop. It includes work by Goodwin and Gonzales, Doug Moench and Gonzales, Don McGregor and Luis Garcia, and more.

The rest of the volume, anchored by the exquisite matchings of Goodwin and Gonzales, is equally diverse and consistently worthy of the reader’s attention.

Nick Barrucci, Joe Rybandt and the rest of the team at Dynamite Entertainment deserve our thanks for producing these great volumes and the ones that have followed in the series. We’re truly living in a Golden Age of archival collections, but it would have been easy just to concentrate on the Vampirella lead features. If they had, we would be missing out on some truly great stories.

Giovanna Casotto - Playful and Carefree

Giovanna Casotto is next to Ilona Staller(Cicciolina) one of Italy's most popular TV actrices, but she also is an comic art artist, already author of « Expériences Interdites », « Les Désirs de Vénus», «Mauvaises Habitudes » and « Chambre 179 »; is one of the most published artists of the collection «Selen presents ».


She's the first femal erotic Italian illustrator, she's not only an illustrator, but she draws herself in all the "Selen-covers" in the most explicit erotic scenes , she's also an actrice who acts in those stories. Because of her fantastic realistic drawings( of herself and her best friends), the artwork of Miss. Giovanna Casotto is one of the most beautiful you will find in that catagory. The quality of her autoportaits are so beautiful and fantastic realistic that everyone who likes the comic art must see or have this.


Giovanna Casotto got hooked on erotic comics in 1994, after meeting feet-fetish artist Franco Saudelli. With Saudelli she learns to draw and they start collaborating on several stories they write together, Franco pencils and Giovanna inks and models for.

After a short stint on adventure comics for L'Intrepido, Italian publisher Trentini signs her up for his new publication Selen.
Her artwork in Selen leads to major sales in Italy, reprints all over Europe and publication of her stories in the United States in the Bitch In Heat series (Eros Comix). She also becomes a requested guest in many Italian TV shows, and her appearances at comic-cons in Italy and abroad draw huge crowds.

Based on a True Story

Yeah Right.

Anyone knows this artist? Or is his name Friday?

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Eros Graphic Albums 5 and 6 - Ironwood - Bill Willingham


Bill Willingham when asked by Eros Comix: "I thought, “what the hell!” Had often wondered whether I could do an adult comic and have an interesting story as well that held together.  The answer I found was: probably not.
I tried!  Ironwood was 11 issues and some people liked the story, and there are aspects of the story I like, but the formula — the implied contract — that you owe the average reader one arousal, or potential arousal, per issue overshadowed everything else.  “This is a nice story, but get some dirty stuff in there, for God’s sake!”  —  Guess I’m a boring guy, 'cause was running out of ideas on how to get people off.  I didn’t just want to do the same thing over and over again, because that would just be…creepy.  Thinking it was a failed experiment with a few things that I’m still fond of within it.  Yes, that was certainly an interesting time in my career."

In the dark forest of Ironwood, somewhere between the Goblin Kingdoms and the Human Lands, the villainous Sulimon Canto has hired Fantasia Faust, a killer who uses sex as a weapon, to steal something called the Lazarus Knife from errant ship captain Pandora Breedlswight. But the beautiful Pandora has some allies in the form of adventurer Dave Dragavon, the hero for hire: brave, powerful and above all ... horny, and the polite but deadly demon Hugo Wormfire. Sword and sorcery exploits mix with tantalizing and bizarre sexploits, but the overall effect is that of a fairly coherent narrative, and not just an excuse to show drawings of naked people (or, in this case, naked monsters and centaurs, too).

The protagonist of the 11 issue series seems to have been the source of inspiration for one of Willingham's later more successful creations, Jack Horner (star of Jack of Fables).
He has done two Ironwood short stories which were not sexually graphic. Both stories were published in issues of Mythography. One was a three-page comics story and the other was a short text story with a couple of illustrations.









Bill Willingham Website

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SEX IN THE COMIX - documentary

Documentary directed by Joëlle Oosterlinck with Molly Crabapple.

First movie dedicated to erotic comics. Milo Manara, Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky, ZEP, Ralf König, Bastien Vivès, Aude Picault, Tim Pilcher and Bernard Joubert tell us what they think about this art, and how they came into it.
A history told by Molly Crabapple with an interesting graphic work around erotic art.

© ARTE France - Les Bons Clients - 2011

SECRET IDENTITY: The Fetish Art of Superman`s Co-creator Joe Shuster


Title: SECRET IDENTITY:
The Fetish Art of Superman`s Co-creator Joe Shuster
Author: Craig Yoe, with an introduction by Stan Lee
Artwork: Joe Shuster
Published: Abrams Comic Arts, New York (2009)














It is a well-known fact in the comic world that the original artist and co-creator of Superman died having earned only pennies on the dollar for his contribution to the world`s most famous superhero—the rights to the character were won by D.C. Comics in the 1940s.

So what to make of this work in later years? He never signed his name to it, but the Nights of Horror illustrations that depicted lusty ladies, titillating torture, and all manner of mild S&M scenarios were in fact Shuster. What`s more?! The characters of these filthy booklets all look, at great deal, like one Clark Kent and Lois Lane… Find out more in this curious twist in the history of comics and erotic art.
from SEX: A Graphic History by Nicole Marie Guiniling (AD ASTRA COMIX)

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A Memorial to Art Wetherell

I'm handing over Father's Day(column on comicsworld website) to my old friend Tim Perkins this month, so that he might share some memories of British comic book artist Art Wetherell. Back in the dim and distant days when I was an editor at Marvel UK, Art sent me samples of his work and I hired him to pencil strips for THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, DEATH'S HEAD and DOCTOR WHO. He was talented, always cheerful and willing to learn (and teach) and never missed a deadline. When I left Marvel UK for the states he sent me a wonderful illustration with the legend "Starkings Quits, Will Things Fall Apart?" I remember how happy I was to see his work in JABBA THE HUTT a few years ago but had not spoken to him in fifteen years when I learned he had passed away suddenly before this past New Year's. It came as quite a shock, as I always imagined that I would run into him at a convention one day and we would catch up with one another. Art was about my age, still working hard and, of course, he was a father too...
— Richard Starkings

 Thanks once again Richard for affording me the opportunity to say a few words about British Comic Artist, Art Wetherell, who sadly passed away on Christmas day last year.
I first heard of Art back in the early-mid-eighties back on Martin Lock's Harrier Comics. At the time most of the Harrier Gang (creatives such as Kev Hopgood, Steve Yeowell, Jeff Anderson, Mike Collins, Mark Farmer, James Hill, Art Wetherell and myself) little suspected that we would soon become a big part of Marvel UK's next big push into publishing its own titles. This, following the success of Alan Davis' lovely work on Captain Britain and John Ridgway's classical renderings of Doctor Who, the guys that paved the way for us to enter mainstream comics. 

Eros Graphic Album no. 4 - 2 Hot Girls on a Hot Summer Night - Hooper and Wetherell


                                     
This graphic novel is the work of two Englishmen, Art Wetherell and Terry Hooper. The late Art Wetherell was assigned by Dark Horse in the USA to illustrate 'Jabba the Hutt' and other 'Star Wars' titles, which was followed by work for Caliber (a.o. 'Negative Burn', 'The Searchers'). He was also one of the first artists published by Fantagraphics as part of its 'Eros Comix' line, creating such titles as '2 Hot Girls on a Hot Summer Night' and 'Treasure Chests'.
Art Wetherell began his career drawing for Harrier Comics in the early 1980s. He then moved over to Marvel UK to pencil titles like 'The Real Ghostbusters', 'Death's Head', 'Transformers', 'Thundercats' and 'Doctor Who'. In the 1990s he started producing work for 2000 AD. Wetherell has worked on licensed comics 'Power Rangers', as well as fairytale stories such as 'Sleeping Beauty' for the children's comic Blue Moon. He passed away on Christmas Day 2003.

Hooper is a distinguished figure on the UK comics scene, working as a writer, artist, editor & publisher since the 80's and currently behind the ComicBitsOnline site.

In the early nineties, Eros Comix brought them together to create this, volume four in the illustrious and lengthy Eros Graphic Novel series. This volume collects the entire delightful time-hopping series chronicling the naughty rompings of two monumentally stacked English girls, horny honeys M and JC, as they satisfy one another in a Sapphic frenzy through the ages! United by a lascivious love of female flesh, they put their fingers and tongues, a cucumber, ice cubes, a night stick, a religious icon and more to good and gooey uses! "What sort of uses?" you might ask. Seeing is believing!

Billy & Mandy ©Wagner




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Frank Frazetta: Dream Master




 Frank Millers reaction seeing Frazetta's art in real life
 


Eros Graphic Album no. 3 Anton's Collected Drek featuring Wendy Whitebread


Donald E. Simpson is an American comic book cartoonist and freelance illustrator, most noted as the creator of the series Megaton Man, Border Worlds, and Bizarre Heroes, as well as the official comic book adaption of King Kong. He also freelanced for nearly every major comic book publisher. His most widely seen work are the illustrations he created for Al Franken's 2004 bestseller, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

Between 1990 and 1992, Simpson created six erotic underground comix under the pseudonym "Anton Drek," including Wendy Whitebread, Undercover Slut and Forbidden Frankenstein:
In 1993, Eros Comix began to collect their “greatest hits” into a series of trade paperbacks under the moniker of “Eros Graphic Albums.” Each volume generally collects an entire original mini-series under a single cover.
In this edition:
Wendy Whitebread #1-2, Forbidden Frankenstein #1-2, Dracula's Daughter #1, and Anton's Drekbook #1. And extra artwork and cartoons. The exact content is described here: comics.org

The [Fetish] Art of Michael Manning

As an artist, his comics are often discribed as being reminiscent of classical Japanese wood block prints. The plots are thin, but that never bothered since the point is really to enjoy the erotic art. And when it comes to art, Manning delivers. His black and white figures are drawn with simple, clean, fluid lines. The fetish elements are imaginative, sexy and even beautiful. If you think you could enjoy a potent mixture of sci-fi, bondage and harcore comics, you really can't go wrong with "Tranceptor: The Way Station". Followed by "Tranceptor: Book Two: Iron Gauge, Part One". Unfortunately, as the title suggests, this is only the first part of a second book. Consequently, even though the art is up to the same standard set in the first comic, the story feels distinctly unfinished. Which is too bad since "The Way Station" hinted at a very interesting and byzantine world beyond it's desert setting. But you don't see any more of it in the follow-up. "Part One of Iron Guage" captures the main characters in a story-line lull as they recuperate from the action that took place in "The Way Station". Fans of the first book will still find it hard to resist this purchase, but people should beware. The sexuality is defintely kinky and not for the easily offended.

Black Leather Corset of Dune by Noah Berlatsky:

Porn is the genre fiction that dare not speak its name. When you think of genre, you tend to think of sci-fi, detective, horror, western, romance, or the like. Porn doesn’t make the list — instead, its set off in a box by itself, for special censure or (less often) praise. Yet, when you look closely, porn doesn’t really seem all that anomalous. Like other genre art, it’s broadly popular, has its own predictable tropes, and appeals primarily (though not exclusively) to one gender. Porn isn’t an absolute evil ruining our children, nor is it a liberating force releasing the power of our repressed sexuality. It’s just another marketing niche.

The Art of Cornnell Clarke

Browsing the internet in search for some background material I often find these little gems. Ordinary people I assume, who give their opinion on books they read and are often more entertaining then the regular reviews. Below are some of those on one of my favorite artists and his creations.

Catholic high school senior Molly runs  into a wild classmate that gets her into the hottest situations.
Nothing like spreading peanut butter on the right spots, doing it in the school bathroom, getting instructed in oral for the very first time, even getting the strict head nun at their school to lift her robe for an all-out anal blasting orgy for graduation!

Now she must confess to her sins and face how she loves being taken vigorously, even if she has become pregnant! A shockingly arousing side-story to this best-selling series.

Molly Fredrickson is a concoction of humankind's most deliciously sinful desires. With her Catholic schoolgirl outfit, cute family pet, girlish hairstyles, gentle looking suburban neighborhood and freckles like chocolate sprinkles, Molly presents an image of innocent naivety--but across these pages this raw sexual creature is anybody but.

Molly is a nymph of the highest caliber, libido and id off their leashes, a young woman who thrives on pure, sweet pleasure whenever she finds it...or whenever it finds her first. And in her carnal universe she never has to look very far, for as Molly quickly discovers her entire neighborhood is a landscape of orgy-filled insanity. In this dimension EVERYBODY'S horny and ready to go. Anywhere Molly wanders, sex in some form is bound to happen. She's not so much the kind of girl you'd bring home to meet mom as the kind mom would later jump on in the dark.

Billy & Mandy ©Wagner


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NAJA - Morvan & Bengal


Originally published as five albums (the standard bande dessinees format) in France by Dargaud, NAJA is making its appearance in English for the first time courtesy of Magnetic Press. Written by JD Morvan and illustrated by Bengal, NAJA tells the story of the titular woman who serves, when the story begins, as the “number three” assassin for a man named Zero.

Our story opens with Naja committing murder in France before boarding a plane for home—which in this case is Iceland—where a strange man (whom Naja only ever refers to as “He” and “Him”) ties her up. The series lurches forward, ripping through a couple hundred pages at breakneck pace. But while its plot is frenetically paced and doesn’t ever lose your attention, it grows more and more unnecessarily convoluted with each page. That’s not to say that the plot doesn’t make sense or that you’re not able to follow it. On the contrary, Morvan’s dialogue is oftentimes too expository, spelling out things that are already pretty clear with just Bengal’s art. In fact, a silent scene in which Naja (who lacks the ability to feel pain) has surgery performed on her, and clearly derives a sexual pleasure from the rarity of feeling pain (which Bengal renders with just the right amount of overtness), is ruined when the following page has a line “She had a bunch of orgasms! Four I think. Yeah, yeah, four.” Which sounds like me mocking and chiding it, but seriously? That’s almost verbatim the line.
But more importantly: there are so many moving parts for no reason at all—and the last thirty pages are just a villain going over his plan in detail so that the audience can pull back and say…”Uh…but why?” There doesn’t seem to be any reason for the twists within twists within twists that all conclude with a vague epilogue that implies some skin-crawlingly gross actions on the part of a couple characters.

Even Comics has his political refugee: Francisco Solano López, 1928 – 2011



He may be best known in the U.S. for the many (stunningly drawn) X-rated comics he created for international consumption late in his 50-year career, most particularly the long-running Young Witches, but Argentina’s Francisco Solano López was a titan of South American comics, on a level with the great Alberto Breccia, the temporary honorary Argentinean (during the 1950s) Hugo Pratt, and the hugely influential writer Hector Oesterheld (who collaborated with all three).

Solano López was a workhorse comfortable in any genre, whose muscular, realistic artwork was instantly recognizable by the detailed textures created by clusters of short pen lines that gave it a noticeable resemblance to John Severin’s; his signature work in his native country was the ongoing science fiction series El Eternauta (created by his friend and collaborator Oesterheld), to which he returned periodically throughout his career.

El Eternauta told the story of an alien invasion of Buenos Aires from the point of view of a group of survivors. Its enduring image of men in suits traveling through a poisonous, weaponized snowfall was a sign of the still-young Solano López's growing strength as an image maker. In addition to the thrilling nature of the story and the chops put on display by the writer and artist, El Eternauta trafficked in an obviously rich series of potential and realized metaphors: the invasion of Buenos Aires by an outside force, the monsters and creatures the resistance fighters encountered, the ultimate enemy controlling these things from afar.

Star Whores - McAuliffe & Stephen Reid







Complete Comic at Heavy Metal »

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© 2014 Richard McAuliffe & Stephen Reid

Gourgeous and Hung - Kinky Jimmy


































More She-Male Art at Transartstudio »

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Into the World of Sky Doll - Barbucci & Canepa



Created by the Italian team of Barbara Canepa and Alessandro Barbucci in 1997, Sky Doll is a timely socio-political thriller in which a young android must decide her destiny by challenging the very government—and faith—that has controlled her life. Canepa and Barbucci, the team behind the international bestselling series W.I.T.C.H. and Monster Allergy, have seen Sky Doll translated into French, Italian, German and Spanish.

To date, Soleil has published three volumes in Europe, namely Volume 1: The Yellow City, Volume 2: Aqua and Volume 3: The White City, with a fourth one entitled Sudra currently in development. There was also Volume 0: Doll’s Factory, which was a “making of” sketchbook published by Carlsen Comics.

In January, Marvel Comics and French publisher Soleil announced a joint publishing venture that will see Sky Doll and some of Europe’s most popular comics originally produced by Soleil such as Denis Bajam’s Universal War One, Jean-Francois Di Giorgio and Frédéric Genêt’s Samurai and Valérie Mangin and Aleksa Gajic’s Le Fleau Des Dieux, now re-titled Scourge Of The Gods, published in new editions in English for the first time. For the record, Heavy Metal first translated and presented an English edition of Sky Doll in the Heavy Metal Magazine Summer 2006 – Sky Doll Special. Heavy Metal has also translated and partially reprinted Le Fleau Des Dieux as well as other Soleil titles.

The Marvel version of the hit series debuted in May and it was an instant sell out. With the release of the third issue this week, we spoke with the creators about the creation of Sky Doll, their influences, bringing Sky Doll to North American and English-speaking readers and upcoming volumes.

Vamperotica - Luxura - Kirk Lindo

In 1994 the world of comics was forever changed when Kirk Lindo created and published VAMPEROTICA #1. (First ever appearance of The Vampress Luxura) The What started off as a hard to find indie anthology turned into one of the hottest comics in the industry. The hotness of the comic was embodied in the drop dead gorgeous vampire who appeared on the covers and in the stories. She is The Vampress Luxura. Her unique hair, voluptuous curves and insatiable lust for the blood of men and women captivated readers right from the very first issue. The original Vamperotica series ran for 50 issues and spun off into several even more successful projects including a magazine, trading cards, statues, movies, musical CD and more.
The pages of the Vamperotica comics contain art & stories by some of the top names in the comic business including Georges Jenty, Jim Balent, Buzz, Everette Hartsoe, Jimmy Palmiotti, Kevin Taylor, Mitch Byrd, David Mack, Mike Oeming, Fauve (Holly Golightly), Mshindo I, Billy Dallas Patton, Don Kramer, Leonard Kirk, David Quinn, Mike Deodato, Ed Benes, Al Rio, Mike Wolfer and many more.
The Vamperotica magazines, comics and movies have also featured some of the world most beautiful models and actresses including Julie Strain, Glori-Anne Gilbert, Lovette, Leslie Culton, Exotica, Mercedez, Stormy Daniels, Tina Krause, Countess Vladimira, Angel Eyes, Brittany Love, Erin Ellington, April Hunter, Eileen Daly, Julie Smith, Tammy Parks, Debbie Rochon and many more.

Vamperotica #1 went into 3 printings of the original version. The very first Vampress Luxura story "Deadly Desire" has another 6+ printings as inclusions in other special editions. The first Luxura story has over 50,000 copies in publication in it's various versions.


This is without a doubt the most important image in my artistic/comic career. It is the very first finished and published image of The Vampress Luxura. At the time, I had no idea the impact this would have on my future. This comic has a first, second and third printing in it's original form and continues to be a top seller in Digital form.
I completed this image before I did the interior art for this issue. I kept the art in front of me so that I could make sure that the art on the inside of the comic matched the quality of the art on the cover.
There is a pure line art version of this cover as well as the hand colored version.
If you look carefully you will see that I had not yet started drawing the extreme "cobra" look to Luxura's mane of hair. It was a few issues later that I developed and got more comfortable with the signature look to Luxura's hair that is more well know today. The original art for this is in the hands of a devoted collector who has held on to the image for over 15 years. It is next to impossible to find any of the original Vamperotica covers drawn by me for sale on the open market. I take it as a sincere compliment to the quality of the work that collectors are reluctant to part with the original Luxura/Vamperotica covers that I have done.

Entertaining the Girls







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Eros Graphic Album No 1. Mark Sobels Essay Conclusion

Conclusion

After deciphering the various code words, the final section of Birdland appears to be a puzzling dismissal of the major social philosophies of life.  But if science, religion and mythology are not “the answers,” then what does Gilbert propose is “the answer”?
In each of the three dreams, no matter how bizarre and extreme the sexual situations, each ultimately concludes with the two lovers – Mark and Fritz — whose relationship seemed headed toward divorce in the first section of the book, discovering each other anew.  Although their genders have been inverted, indicating how backwards everything is in the world according to Reich (see end note), destiny has intervened to bring the two together, implying that their attraction is itself fated, and that love is a far greater power than the sexual energy swirling around them.
In the final scene on the alien ship, the reunion of Mark and Fritz proves to be the revelatory moment that restores normalcy. The realization of their love sets everything right in the universe.  All of the characters are transformed back into their true genders and the alien world dissolves away as the characters find themselves returned to reality.



Similar to Fritz’s revelation at the end of the first section, Gilbert’s underlying point in this final section is that, while the characters all seem stuck in a fruitless search for “the answer” – the answers they find are all wrong.  According to Reich, sexual liberation was supposed to help them gain clarity and understanding, as well as a sense of inner peace; however, throughout Birdland, the answers they find are fleeting and incomprehensible.  Despite their actualization of Reich’s theories, they are no happier or more fulfilled than anybody else.

Eros Graphic Album No 1. Mark Sobels Essay part 3

Birdland Section Two
Following Fritz’s revelation is a confusing but brilliant section in which the reader is meant to experience a series of visions under hypnosis.  To enhance this trance-like effect, the storytelling is primarily silent and jumps randomly throughout time and space.  While fascinating on the one hand, these final 24 pages are also the most confusing and difficult in the entire book.
The second section is structured into three seemingly unrelated scenes, like a series of disjointed wet dreams, silent and surreal, profound and enigmatic.  The sustained assault of sexual content overwhelms this section, and the meaning is difficult to decipher even after multiple readings, yet once understood, the whole book coalesces into something far more satisfying than just a pornographic fantasy.

The First Dream

The first dream in this section (pages 70-77) begins with the big bang, the scientific origin of the universe, and is followed by a highly graphic scene, which includes an infamous image of dinosaur coitus as well as a series of bizarre sexual encounters with various prehistoric human characters.

Throughout this scene, cryptic words are embedded into the images, like breadcrumbs intentionally left by Gilbert for his readers to decode.  The definitions of these terms are likely unfamiliar to most readers, but their meaning within the overall story is important.

The dozen text clues in this first dream scene are all names of pre-historic dinosaurs and birds, many of which are the earliest known species on record (see end note #1 for specific definitions of each term).  There is no clear commonality between the 12 species mentioned; they come from different time periods and different parts of the world.  Yet nothing is accidental or random about this scene.

Eros Graphic Album No 1. Mark Sobels Essay part 2

Birdland Section One
Throughout the first section (which is comprised of the first 69 pages in the collected edition), there are several clues that reveal Hernandez’s intention to satire Wilhelm Reich’s philosophies. 

“Orgiastic Potency”
The most notable are the book’s many sexual scenes themselves. In Hernandez’s parody, all of the main characters (Fritz and Petra, Mark and Simon, Bang and Inez) have achieved maximum “orgiastic potency” and live ideal lives of free and open sexuality. There are no social, political or religious barriers to sexual relations in the “alternate dimension” of Birdland. Rather, the characters engage in one tryst after another, in a variety of positions and locations, often with different or multiple partners, fulfilling every sexual urge without any fear of moral, legal, social or health-related repercussions.
The pervasiveness of the pornography in Birdland may seem gratuitous, but the images are also skillfully used in service of the parody. The depiction of sex is cartoonish and hyper-exaggerated; there are cumshots on nearly every page; characters have incredible stamina; men require virtually no recovery time; the size and appearance of breasts and genitals are enhanced. In every way, the sex is garish and comical, yet conspicuously devoid of any semblance of realism.













Fritz, the lisping psychotherapist who would later become one of Hernandez’s favorite characters, also shares some telling professional habits with Wilhelm Reich. Her use of hypnotherapy during counseling sessions to lull her patients into a trance, before taking advantage of them sexually, is directly based on Reich’s similarly infamous and highly controversial violations. According to his Wikipedia entry (which cites Myron Sharaf’s 1994 book, Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich as source for this information), “from 1930 onwards, Reich became more interested in his patients’ physical responses during therapy sessions, and toward the late 1930s, he began to violate several of psychoanalysis’ great taboos. He began to sit next to his patients, rather than behind them, and started touching them. He would ask his male patients to undress down to their shorts, and sometimes to undress entirely, and his female patients down to their bra and panties” (in order to break through their “armor” and release their blocked flow of orgone energy). Of course, as with everything in Birdland, Gilbert takes this notion and exaggerates it to a ridiculous extreme. Rather than the awkward groping implied in Reich’s case, Fritz’s “sexual healing” includes oral sex, intercourse and group sex, in all sorts of bizarre positions and scenarios.

 

Eros Graphic Album No 1. Mark Sobels Essay part 1

Review from Marc Sobel in 'The Comics Journal ' called:
“Birdland Reconsidered”: The roots of Gilbert Hernandez’ sex comic in Reich’s orgone energy.
 Very lengthy read but quite interesting.

“Him and his daddy used to sit inside
And circle the blue fields and grease the night.
It was as if someone had spread butter on all the fine points of the stars
cause when he looked up they started to slip.
Then he put his head in the crux of his arm
And he started to drift, drift to the belly of a ship,
Let the ship slide open, and he went inside of it
And saw his daddy hind the control board streamin’ beads of light,
He saw his daddy hind the control board,
And he was very different tonight
cause he was not human, he was not human.”

-       Patti Smith, Birdland
-      
Birdland may be Gilbert Hernandez’s single most misunderstood and underappreciated work.  The book is mostly known for its graphic sex, which is so pervasive, so raunchy and so outrageous, it was released as a standalone series, despite the fact that the four-part story is tangentially tied into Love & Rockets continuity (in a 2007 interview with The Daily Crosshatch website, Hernandez described Birdland as having occurred in “another dimension” so as not “to spoil the relative purity of the Palomar work”).

A brief survey of the book’s smattering of reviews confirms that most readers were too distracted by the excessive use of pornography and too unfamiliar with the book’s obscure literary and cultural references to penetrate its underlying themes.  For example, one prominent blogger concluded that Birdland is “just plain filthy” and that, for all its “mad energy,” it’s still just a “deranged pornographic fantasy.”  Yet to dismiss Birdland as merely a “semen-drenched fantasia,” as so many critics and readers have over the years, is to miss the much richer subtext of the work.

Eros Graphic Album No 1. Birdland - Gilbert Hernandez

Gilbert Hernandez‘s comics, from his work in Love and Rockets to standalone volumes like last year’s Love from the Shadows, have often included some pretty intense sexual content. But he’s only ever released one project that qualifies as full-on pornography: Birdland, a three-issue miniseries from 1990-1991 and a one-shot sequel from 1994, later collected as a single volume. Birdland has been out of print for a while, which is a pity. It’s witty, eccentric, bursting with joy, and utterly, cheerfully smutty.

As often happens in Hernandez’s stories, the basic setup is a complicated chain of frustrated and sublimated desires, although in this one everyone’s sublimating them by getting it on. The stripping team of Bang Bang and Inez (who’d previously appeared briefly in early issues of Love and Rockets) are both carrying on secret affairs with sexually inexhaustible lawyer Mark Herrera.

Every woman seems to desire Mark, except for his wife, Fritz, a psychotherapist who has sex with her patients while they’re under her hypnotic spell. Fritz’s sister Petra unrequitedly lusts after Mark, too, but she’s been carrying on a years-long affair with Mark’s brother Simon, who in turn is erotically fixated on Fritz and, specifically, her lisp, although he’s also sleeping with Inez. And so on. Eventually, the aliens who abducted Bang Bang as a child get involved, and transport the whole cast up to their ship for a pansexual orgy.
Then things get weird, or weirder. Almost the entire cast undergoes a gender reversal, and Fritz breaks the fourth wall to attempt to hypnotize the reader. That’s followed by a handful of wordless dream sequences involving versions of the cast members in X-rated prehistoric, Western and sci-fi scenarios (the first includes some hot dinosaur love) before we get to the comedy-of-remarriage denouement. And the whole thing is drawn in a style that’s the erotic equivalent of Jack Kirby’s fight scenes: grounded in the way actual bodies interact, but pumped up to an imaginative intensity way beyond anything the naked eye has ever seen. On top of that, Birdland is funny–not corny-funny or nudge/wink-funny, but absurd and sly, with a terrific sense for what can make the overfamiliar language of pornography fresh again. In one soap-operatic scene, Petra’s saying “B-but I can give you all the love you need, Mark; you’re wasting your time waiting for Fritz to come around,” and thinking “Oh, shut up and ransack my rapacious rectum with your reputedly tireless tongue, you gorgeous geek!” Dialogue in another panel: “Ah-ah-acmesthesia!” “Oh-oh-ontogeny!”

Yes, this is the kind of porn that requires a dictionary to catch everything that’s going on. A few years ago, Marc Sobel convincingly argued in a multi-part essay that Birdland is a satire of Wilhelm Reich and his theories about sexuality and “orgone energy,” by way of Patti Smith’s song “Birdland” — the story never mentions Reich outright, but the connections are everywhere — and that it’s full of other subtleties for the careful reader. (The bodily-fluid sound effects in one of the final scenes, Sobel points out, are all Spanish words relating to the story of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.) It’s not often that a story pretends to be nothing but stroke material but is actually a bit deeper than that.

Eros Graphic Album "column"

It seemed fun to me to choose collections for the purpose of creating sort of a column.
In which I put info on the issue, its creator(s) or anything else that might be interesting.





Since Fantagraphics faced persistent financial difficulties in the 1990s, and in order to continue publishing material that was financially risky, they created the *Eros Comix* imprint in 1990 to publish mildly erotic as well as explicitly pornographic comics(including a 'MangErotica' line)
designed to draw the income necessary to allow the company to pursue less lucrative ventures.

Despite its blatently commercial goals, Eros nevertheless attracted talented and prominent artists, including Gilbert Hernandez, who published Birdland as an Eros title. Colleen Coover produced the girly adult comic Small Favors, and Eros even continued the company's historical recovery work by releasing volumes of pin-ups by prominent cartoonists and 8 volumes of Tijuna Bibles, the notorious pornographic comic booklets from before World War II.



In 1993, they began to collect their “greatest hits” into a series of trade paperbacks under the moniker of “Eros Graphic Albums.”
Each volume generally collects an entire original mini-series under a single cover.

Eurotica & Amerotica [NMB]

From Interview ComicBookBin with Terry Nantier of NBM by Hervé St-Louis (2010):

NBM Publishing is one of the oldest comic book publishers in North America. Its repertoire of volume is unique and wide. NBM publishes comic books that cater to children, adaptations from Europe, comic strips compilations and erotica.

CBB: Many of the readers reading this article only have vague notions about who NBM Publishing is. Can you shed some light into your early years as a publisher?

Terry Nantier: I started this company when ‘graphic novels’ wasn’t even a word yet back in 1976 with the vision that GNs were what was missing here. As the time comic strips were getting increasingly cut in papers, and comic books were getting cut out of newsstands, comic book stores were barely starting. I had spent my teen years in Paris where GNs were responsible for an explosion in creativity, popularity and importantly respectability. I thought ‘why don’t we have this in the US?’ So I started NBM (then Flying Buttress) principally bringing over European GNs to show the way really, not with the intention of just being a Euro-comics publisher. We were the first to publish Bilal here. Soon enough we started publishing American artists as well but along the way, we were the 1st to start doing complete library-worthy collections of comic strips with the complete library of Caniff’s Terry & the Pirates which proved very successful. In GNs’ we wowed the world with The Mercenary, the first fully painted series of GNs, we did Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese.

From the start our choices for our catalog have been to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, not just a certain group of fans. Even in the late seventies I was already actively pursuing general distribution in bookstores. Obviously it was very tough but I learned a lot and ended up very ahead of the game compared to the rest of the comics industry in dealing with that market. By the time everyone else wanted to enter it and GNs were becoming a real factor in comics, we had been there, done that and were starting to get reviews in Publishers Weekly and newspapers, helping to establish comics as a respectable art form. We were also the first to distribute Dark Horse into that market, btw.

Luis Royo


Luis Royo was born in Spain in 1954 and began his life as an artist from an early age.
As a young teenager he had already learned technical art and by the age of 16, he was devoting his studies to painting and interior design and was working on commissions from various design studios.
Upon discovering the art of Enki Bilal and Moebius in adult comics, Royo followed in their footsteps.Four years after the first gallery exhibition of his fantasy art in Paris, the artist was working for Heavy Metal Magazine and being commissioned to paint cover art for many publishers including Tor and Avon.
Royo's acclaim has continued to grow, and his work is found on posters, on tarot cards and in books devoted to his main passions: women and fantasy.
Luis Royo now lives in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, Spain where he has returned to painting on
canvas, creating visions of an ever more personal nature.

Review by Arleigh on 11th of january 2011 on unobtainium13.com

Art is a word that has a broad meaning. It could mean art in the sense of how some people perceive music and films. Some people have begun to look at video games and similar entertainment media as art. I will always look at art, first and foremost, the realm of painters and those who create images on canvas and other similar materials. I also consider such individuals as purveyors of their own brand of entertainment. While some may not find entertainment when looking upon the works of masters in a gallery for others it’s the highest form.
To start of a feature that will profile artists who have contributed to the furthering of their craft I choose one of my favorite artists of any field today. The first artists chosen is Spanish fantasist Luis Royo whose work has spanned several decades. His distinctive style of blending the sensual and erotic female form with very dark and apocalyptics settings and background has made Luis Royo one of the preeminent artist in the scifi and fantasy literary world. Royo has done covers for genre literature and has even branched out to creating covers for heavy metal bands and video game titles.
Luis Royo’s particular style was first limited to sketches whose images then unveils fully once he has put brush (both traditional and mechanical air) to the canvas. Such pieces have become quite sought after by collectors. While he’s not averse to having his pieces sold to private buyers it’s usually a rare thing for him to sell from his own collection. Most of his artistic pieces owned by private art collectors have been those sold by owners who had contracted Royo to do the piece for them.
In the 1990’s he began to create pieces both in sketch and finished form and collected them into artbooks. These books usually had their artwork fall under a specific theme Royo had in mind to tie everything together. Such collected artbook like Malefic, Prohibited, Tattoos and Subversive Beauty have become fan favorites and one doesn’t have to look too hard to find them in bookstores and comic book collectible shops.
In the last couple of years, he has begun to branch out to creating his artistic pieces using other mediums. He has begun to bring his own paintings to three-dimensional life through sculpture which he saw as just a logical step in his evolution as an artist. Maybe he’ll begin to learn how to adapt his subversive beauties beyond canvas and sculpture and into the world of CGI. From this artistic genius I wouldn’t put it past him not to make that next step into the digital realm.

Melody - Sylvie Rancourt




THE NUNS NEVER TAUGHT ME HOW TO DANCE ON A STOOL!" Interview with Montreal cartoonist Jacques Boivin & cartoonist/sex worker/creator of Melody comix, Sylvie Rancourt by Mia Dee. (Before, I used to say look but don't touch ...now I say touch but don't look!" excerpt, © 2000, Sylvie Rancourt)

In 1985 Sylvie Rancourt created an alter-ego for herself in the form of comic heroine Melody. Actually, this alter-ego may have been conceived years earlier, as Rancourt had already been working as an exotic dancer for 4 years before she put together the first edition & introduction to her character "Melody à Ses Debuts." It was during a temporary break from the business, due to sentimental reasons, that she decided to create her own autobiographical comic about life as a nude dancer.

"The comic encouraged me to return to work, I needed to work towards publishing & distributing my comic & I was determined to do this one way or another. It was this goal that lifted my morale & enabled me to return to stripping."

The comic was initially a way for Rancourt to "vent" about work as a stripper, to voice experiences that most strippers tend to keep to themselves out of fear of being judged by the common negative assumptions that stigmatize sex workers -assumptions that brand sex workers as criminal, sexually deviant, drug-addicted & so on... In fact, what I find particularly charming about Melody is her failure to overtly comment on or even acknowledge these negative assumptions & myths even though her characters are by no means void of these preconceived notions. For Melody is not a victim, nor is she a dogmatic symbol for the empowerment of the sex worker. She is who she is without apology -a young woman who likes to host sex orgies with her criminally-minded boyfriend & who happened upon a job as a stripper out of lack of any better opportunities. And Rancourt couldn't have chosen a better audience to first "vent" these stories to than the very patrons whom she performed for at the strip clubs. The first few photocopied editions of Rancourt's self-published zines were launched & distributed in the stripclubs where she worked.

Mangerotica

EROS Comix publishes the largest roster of Japanese sex comics in the United States. They feature the work from the best MangErotica available today, from KONDOM's fantasy-oriented Bondage Fairies, to the unique teacher/student relations in NeWMaN's Secret Plot, to the adventures of Ituoshi Ihsa's brazen Slut Girl, to the outrageous, over-the-top kink of Mashumaro Juubaori's Voice of Submission, and beyond. They've worked with the original artists to undo the official censorship of the Japanese press, returning previously blurred sections of art to their original, explicit state, ensuring that the artists who publish in the States can be as filthy as they want to be - and oh, are they ever.

Slut Girl is a blast, very funny to read. Straight sex. Sayoko is not so much a slut, rather a user of people, she's always broke, but can very well stand up for herself. Poor Satoru, Sayoko's boyfriend in the series is really the one who we should pity in this series even though he gets to screw Sayoko around. Last but not least, man, Isutoshi knows how to draw!

Strange Kind of Woman. Shion is the cutest and sexiest girl in the school, but she literally never has anything to say. This doesn't stop Mamoru from asking her out, and he is elated to discover that she is actually a repressed nymphomaniac. But the fun is short-lived once his tall, slim, and stacked, but scary classmate Yuki begins stalking him for herself! By Inu

Love and Hate. Chika is beautiful, sexy, and arrogant. She wants a nice trophy boyfriend, but finds herself attracted to Keiji, the class geek and a guy she hates. She tries to resist this horrifying desire, but finally gives in. "But we're just 'classmates with benefits,'" Chika warns the smitten Keiji, and she'll never ever love him. Still, time changes all things.... By Enomoto Heights









Too Hot to Handle. From Tsukino Jyogi, one of the most popular and influential erotic manga artists in Japan, comes this twisted tale of a laid-back sadist, a fiery masochist, plus a boy and his sister. When Ayumo finds a way to blackmail Mutsumi, the icy and aloof honor student, he takes full advantage of it to treat her as his slave… but it isn't long before she's reluctantly enjoying it. And when her classmate Kenji joins in to make a threesome, he soon decides his lovely and innocent twin sister Hinako would make a perfect slave as well. Before long, all four are caught in a tangle of ropes and relationships and plenty of backdoor action.



And Many more....

Ana Mirallès: Jade I Presume


Nationality: Spain
Born: Madrid, 12.16.1959

After graduation of Fine Arts of San Carlos, Ana Mirallès draws for many Spanish fanzines before making illustrations for editions Gregal, Teide and Bromera.
Her first album "El Brillo de una Mirada" scenario by her companion Emilio Ruiz is published in black and white in 1990 by Palgrave General.
This is the erotic story of a woman who describes the relationships, and events that follow one another while shooting a commercial in a hotel. Subsequently, this work was re-color and re-released in Spain by Editorial Casset in France by Glénat under the title "Combat."
With Glénat she draws 'Seeking the unicorn'. This three-volume series is an adaptation of the novel by Eslava Galan Ruan, bestseller in Spain.
A sensitive and prolific writer, her work is available in a variety of picture books, postcards, book covers and magazines, exhibitions, collective work, advertising, screen, etc ...

With writer Jean Dufaux she works/worked at the "Djinn" series at Dargaud Benelux.
Available is also a documentary on Ana Mirallès working on the comic Djinn.
The film, directed by Emilio Zavala Ruiz , screenwriter and husband of Ana Mirallès begins with a slideshow that seems long at first, but actually lasts the length of a song , the time to settle into the mood . The images we see are zooming scroll -made thumbnails of Djinn series . All have one thing in common: they show the bodies. Dressed , painted or bare . Of the men but especially women .

Spanish Spoken with French subtitles. Someone can provide transcript in English?
















The Color of Earth - Kim Dong Hwa

Every year, the American Library Association reports hundreds of challenges to books in schools and libraries all over the United States, and ALA estimates that the number of unreported challenges is significantly higher. People continually try to take away readers’ power to decide what books are right for themselves or their children by bringing challenges to remove books from libraries. Sometimes those challenges result in books being removed from circulation —
the dreaded ban. Comic books, graphic novels, and manga are frequently challenged and banned.

When the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom released their list of the Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged  Books of 2011, the second-most challenged book on that list was The Color of Earth, a critically-acclaimed Korean manga, or comic book, series. In spite of numerous
positive reviews from Booklist, Publishers Weekly, The School Library Journal, and other outlets that praise the book as “richly literate and imaginative” (Booklist) and “a work of great humanity” (Publishers Weekly), the coming-of-age tale is challenged due to nudity, sexual content, and suitability for age group.

In the tradition of "My Antonia" and "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", from the pen of the renowned Korean manwha creator Kim Dong Hwa, comes a trilogy about a girl coming of age, set in the vibrant, beautiful landscape of pastoral Korea.
1. "The Color of Earth": First love is never easy. Ehwa grows up helping her widowed mother run the local tavern, watching as their customers – both neighbors and strangers – look down on her mother for her single lifestyle. Their social status isolates Ehwa and her mother from the rest of the people in their quiet country village. But as she gets older and sees her mother fall in love again, Ehwa slowly begins to open up to the possibility of love in her life.
2. "The Color of Water": When Ehwa goes to the town festival, she meets a handsome young wrestler named Duksam who’s eager to catch her eye. After he wins the festival wrestling championship, he and Ehwa begin to meet, sneaking spare moments to be together. But a shadow falls on their romance when Master Cho sends Duksam away and asks for Ehwa’s hand in marriage himself It is then that Ehwa discovers the pain of heartbreak – and that love is always complicated.
3. "The Color of Heaven".

Its free to read online. Here's the link to Volume I of The Color of Earth.
Here to  all 30 chapters of the Trilogy




Interview with Dee Chorde [15th october 2004]

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

It's Disgusting

Just picked up Sci-Fi magazine. It largely features the 100 all-time greatest comics.
Being this article in this magazine, I know what is to come: getting squashed with superhero crap.
Funny thing is, the magazine itself states that its more then superheroes. Probably knowing they're lying through there teeth.
Im thinking some retard must be getting paid(bribed) to publish this kind of stuff.
And I mean seriously: retarted. I found one erotic comic mentioned, which I personally not even bothered to read.








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Jaxtraw’s Lucy Lastique

Scientists tell us that our universe is unimaginably large, populated by an infinite number of galaxies. So, it’s almost certain that somewhere out there, you’ll find gigantic, intelligent sexual organs running around causing mischief. In the center of this oversexed mayhem, you might just encounter Lucy Lastique — flowing green hair, big bouncing breasts, and all.

Until we make a very gooey first contact, you can prepare yourself by researching Jaxtraw’s hardcore comics, which chronicle Lucy’s sexcapades to date. She’s encountered evil demons, naked warrior women, shemale priestesses, and the aforementioned telepathic genitalia. There’s also a gallery of original cartoon artwork, featuring cute women with tremendous, soft breasts playing with — and sometime sporting — purple-headed monsters of the terrestrial variety.

All in all, Jaxtraw has produced quite a lot of top-notch artwork, and his ongoing series offers the best mix of cartoon playfulness and hot, messy sex I’ve ever seen!

From Lucid Skin: Erotic Fantasy Website »
Jaxtraw's Website »


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At A pornshoot



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Rakko

Japan has its own erotic comic history and genre. Probably even more frowned upon then in the west.

In Japan they have (mandatory) schoolclubs. Which have advisors. Here the members of the photography club are not really into it. Which leaves the advisor in a pinch for the next weeks exhibition.
Btw, she also has the sight of a bat.

Comics are read from right to left


So they come up with the idea to make a swimsuit shoot. With the advisor as a model, they at least have done something.
Only they dont expect what follows.