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.

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....