“To Insult The Character Of Erotica”

I was bemused throughout my reading of this lengthy critical essay on erotic comic artist Milo Manara. In the end I suspect it may be true, as the essay-writer himself warns, that the essay reveals more about its author than about its subject. But it’s fun to read, and I think it may help explain why I’ve never really warmed to Manara’s work overall despite greatly enjoying many individual panels as works of erotic art:

His draftsmanship is beyond reproach, but to only study figuration is to value illustration over sequence, diminishing the function of comics art. Similarly, to only appreciate images of sexual acts is to insult the character of Erotica, which rightly encompasses the psychological textures of the sex act: the anticipation; the anxiety; the flight from one’s senses; afterglow.

By this tradition, il maestro luxuriates in the effect of rape. See how the above diptych appears on first glance to depict one continuous image, though on closer examination it instead shows, in panel one, Valeria gazing in abject horror at the weeping face of the man who betrayed her trust, worthless and weak, unable to meet her gaze, his hand laughable in hers, as panel two closes in, at dead center of the image, on the debutante instance of unwanted penetration, Valeria’s hindquarters enlarged and raised, beckoning to the accorded silent moment of a ritualized insertion.

In panel one she is not raped, and in panel two she has been raped, and will always thereafter have been raped. It is consummate comics.

Bike Boy Gets It Stuck To Him

In my Usenet comics directory I stumbled across some pages from Bike Boy by Zack. Bike Boy turns 18 and goes out looking for adventure. He finds it:

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Astonishing Celluloid

Ever since Violet Blue wrote about it a little while back, I have been eagerly awaiting the appearance of Dave McKean‘s new erotic graphic novel Celluoid from Fantagraphic Books.

Celluloid is an essay in pure visual storytelling — something that is quite difficult, or at least so my own experiments with it suggest to me — but which McKean pulls off with great ability and confidence. The story is very simple: a woman comes home from work and finds that her partner will not be home as he is working late. She undresses, bathes, and then finds a projector and a bit of film. Out of curiosity she threads the film and runs the projector and finds projected a stunning erotic dreamworld which she then…steps into.

I am almost loathe to produce an image from the book because to do so seems somehow an injustice or a misrepresentation because McKean shifts fluidly among so many different artistic techniques and styles in this book. But I’m utterly beguiled by it and want you to be too, so here is one, right at what I take to be a critical moment in the story’s plot.

Astonishing. It’s a pricey book, I fear, but something not-to-be-missed by those who either want exceptional artistic erotica, and those who enjoy seeing the comics medium show its true power.

Because Lizard Men Need Blowjobs Too

They DO…

Via Erectus.

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Is Booty Bumping A Martial Art?

I ask, because I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a pen-and-ink booty in greater need of being plundered:

From Comically Vintage.

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Keep Your Nipples Up, Phoebe!

It was G.W.F. Hegel, if I remember right, who wrote that the Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk. He meant this as a commentary on the Self-Understanding of the World Spirit in History or some such Deep Important Germanic Thing, but here I’ll just apply it to dirty comic books instead, and how you don’t really know the significance of something when you first encounter it.

It was in a dingy used bookstore, in a decaying New England industrial town, that I encountered in my late teens a truly bizarre-looking comic book called The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist. I opened it up and found…a pretty young woman being forced to strip at gunpoint by a Nazi (hmm, Erosblog familiar theme there, then tied to a helicopter. Well, I thought, that’s certainly different.

But I could deal. I mean, I was eighteen and in college and all sophisticated about sex, right?

Well, wrong. I think I was somewhat disturbed by the fact that in Episode III our heroine Phoebe is killed, and in Episode IV her corpse is stolen by a cult of necrophiliacs…but somehow later on she is resurrected by an Eskimo shaman and then she proceeds to have a endure a series of perils and humiliations that take her all over the globe. She is converted into a makeshift torpedo by some gay white-slaving submarine pirates:

She is captured by shoe fetishists:

She is enslaved and abused by Asian communists:

And so on. There is a mad tattoo artist and a guild of lesbian assassins, among other things. Feeling somewhat disturbed, I didn’t buy the book, a decision I regretted for years thereafter, because copies of The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist would prove very hard to find in subsequent years.

But what I didn’t realize then is that Phoebe is satire, and absolutely brilliant satire at that. (ErosBlog’s astute readers will have picked this up from individual panels already, of course.) She was written in the mid-1960s by Michael O’Donoghue who would later go on to comedic glory as a writer for National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live. She was drawn by Frank Springer, who would go on to a future as a distinguished artist at Marvel comics. And her adventures were first published in Evergreen Review, one of the most daring serious publications of its day (so much so that it was once denounced by Gerald Ford on the floor of Congress). Everything that O’Donoghue can think of is a target here, from old Perils-of-Pauline like movie serials to James Bond movies. Needless to say, the optimistic consumerist culture of the postwar United States is well skewered.

Indeed, by the end, O’Donoghue is even satirizing himself and his own bizarre sense of humor.

If you can ever get a copy of Phoebe, treasure it, because there’s really nothing like it. I read it now and wonder how I could have missed all the obvious jokes.

I suppose the answer is just too obvious. Because I was eighteen years old and this a comic book whose heroine spends about eighty of its ninety pages naked, that’s why.

Afterthought: If you are an eccentric billionaire looking for a project with which to make your mark on the world, please consider financing Phoebe as a movie. Thanks, and now back to your regular ErosBlog programming.

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Happy Mushroom Pickers

Fun in the forest:

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The Spirit of Capitalism

One of the nicer perks of publishing a long-running sex blog is that sometimes I get the most amazing stuff in the mail from people who hope I’ll blog about it. This strategy has mixed results at best, because I’m terrible about actually doing product reviews. However, if the swag impresses me enough, I will sometimes write about it.

The latest “blow me away” box of goodies was a HUGE pile of dirty manga (close to thirty titles) from Icarus Publishing. (Their motto: “Keeping the ‘manga is porn’ stereotype alive”.) These turn out to be way better (for an ugly American like me) than the stuff I can download a few random pages at a time from 4chan or Usenet. Icarus Publishing puts out well-printed publications that are nicely translated and (the ones I’ve looked at, anyway) completely uncensored — no pixelations or stupid little black lines. All in all, I found shuffling through these titles to be a premium manga porn viewing experience.

Given the ongoing financial meltdown, the first title I pulled out of the box was something called “The Spirit of Capitalism.” It’s a fitting title in these trying economic times, especially since it features office workers getting fucked:

Icarus Publishing (aka Icarus Comics) has some sample pages from The Spirit of Capitalism online for your viewing pleasure, and a deep web catalog that’s well worth your time.

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Dynamite Fumetti

I’m not a comics guy, so I don’t know much about fumetti comics except that the vintage ones I keep stumbling over tend to be Italian and feature sex and violence combined in shocking and politically incorrect ways.

Lately I have several times run across the Groovy Age of Horror blog while doing Google image searches. It’s a resource for all manner of vintage pulpy wonderfulness, but the excerpted fumetti comics (complete with high quality scans of every panel) are one of the best features of the site. Example: all the good parts from Macho #3 as reprinted in Pecatti #1. You really need to follow the link, because while I’m “borrowing” Jaakko’s dry commentary in the block-quoting below, I’m only reprinting cropped and reduced details from a few panels of the artwork; the commentary-plus-complete-panels is a much more vivid experience. As Jaakko tells the story:

It’s called Il Clan Dei Centurioni (The Clan of Centurions), and it teaches us a new, fun way of defusing a stick of dynamite stuffed into a bodily orifice. Watch and learn, kids! First the bad guys chain Macho to the roof. Then they rape him, much to his delight. Then they stick a dynamite stick up his butt. Fortunately Macho is bisexual, and his girlfriend soon rushes to help him.

Wait a minute, what the hell?

Apparently this girl really loves using her mouth.

And thus, when Macho’s gay friends arrive, they find a horrifying sight: Macho is getting a blow-job… from a woman. Oh, the humanity! The End.

Collaring A Slavegirl, Comic Book Style

Here’s the comic book version of putting a slave collar on a pretty girl:

“Hey, mister, watch it with the spikes!”

Via Bondage Blog.

Update:Karl Elvis commented “I wanna see the brute who’d put that kinda slave collar on a girl.”

Easily done! The picture is, apparently, a detail from the cover of Marvel Mystery Comics #8, from waaay back in June of 1940, according to the Alien Slavegirl site where Bondage Blog found it. And the four-armed enslaving alien brute in question looks like this:

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Barbie And Xena

I stumbled across an unfamiliar-to-me webcomic called The Devil’s Panties, and this strip about Barbie and Xena made me laugh:

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Bondage Fairies Cosplay

Wow — it may be grainy, but this is still a very cute picture of a cosplayer in the persona of Pfil, the pretty and often-helpless pixie girl from the incredibly raunchy worm-and-beetle-sex Bondage Fairies comics:

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Comic Book Catfights

It’s no suprise that nearly-naked catfighting is an old tradition, and not something they just dreamed up over at Ultimate Surrender. Still, I love this vintage 1960’s comic book cover approach to the genre:

Thanks to comics blogger Johnny Bacardi for the illustration.

Supergirl In Bondage

You might find this detail from the cover of Action Comics No. 339 (July 1966) entertaining. Supergirl kneels in her mini-skirt in a cage, what’s not to like?

From Comic Book Bondage Cover Of The Day, via Bondage Blog.

Not For Internal Use

The special perverts (of course I mean that only in the nicest possible way) over at Hoot Island have provided a helpful list of Things Not To Insert Into Your Lover’s Hoo-Ha. I think my favorite is:

A rolled-up copy of Action Comics #1. It depreciates the comic too much, and you lose the crispness of the binding.

Like, duh. Besides, there are better things to do with your lover and a rolled-up comic. “Bad puppy! Bad, bad!”

A Little Manga Blowjob

It’s time for some gratuitous sex comics, don’t you think? Here’s a sweet manga blowjob that looks like a lot of fun:

Take special note of her good firm grip on his balls. That’s the way to get a man’s attention! Ladies, a tip: gentle is good, especially where teeth are concerned, but we like, and can tolerate, more pressure than you tend to enjoy. Never be afraid to use a good firm grip!

Eros Comix, We Loves Them, Our Precioussss….

Yesterday the Reverse Cowgirl posted a link to an appeal from Fantagraphics Books, which is in a dangerous cash flow crunch that might alternatively be described as a “bulging warehouse” crunch. Book rich and cash poor — who among us can’t be sympathetic to that universal plight of the literate?

Anyway, this whole matter cut no onions with Bacchus, because he’s not generally a comic book guy and the Fantagraphics guys apparently are. And here’s the mind-boggling part — nowhere in their “buy our books!” appeal did they mention their ownership of the Eros Comix imprint, to whom we all owe thanks for the kinky insectile slitherings, moanings, and writhings of comics like Bondage Fairies, not to mention the wholesome spankings and 1950s June Cleaver dildo shenanigans of Housewives at Play. And too many other quality erotic titles to count.

This oversight on Fantagraphics’ part is possibly forgivable, as they’ve doubtless got good reasons for separating out their adult business and being low-profile about it. But it’s inexcusable for the Cowgirl not to have mentioned this trivial detail (unless, like Bacchus, she did not know it.)

Fortunately for all concerned, a mysterious stranger who calls himself Sam dropped an email. So now we know: Go buy some dirty comics today, if you want to be able to buy them tomorrow! It’s a good cause….

Another Unsung Benefit of Globalization

Mexican porn comics? Who knew? Nobody tells us Norteamericanos the stuff we need to know. Until now:

Pocket-sized comic books called historietas have been available for decades on every corner newsstand, but in the past seven years they have been overrun by a fresh and lurid genre that’s part noir melodrama, part Tijuana bible–what Mexico City writer Alex Giardino dubs the “ghetto libretto.”

These nasty funnies are less graphic than their Japanese counterparts but make up in operatic depravity what they lack in plumbing. Page through Heat Between Her Legs, Secret Temptations, or Carnal Sins, at the Las Americas supermarket on East Lake Street, and you’ll find every variant of anguish on the characters’ faces. My favorite artist, who signs his name Galvez and inks boldly with crude strokes, tells sweaty tales of poor women who endure class browbeating, male predation, incest, and long nights of hot, guilty sex–all before hacking their tormentors to pieces.

What Women Like: Japan Edition

From Japan we have a discussion of the three most popular types of dirty comic books for women:

And most of the women’s carnal needs that extend beyond the bounds of regular publication respectability are being sated by what are referred to as Ladies Comics, or redikomi, as they’re known in Japanese. Apparently, there’re three broad genre of redikomi.

“Firstly, you have your rape types. These aren’t like guys comics, where the woman is brutally violated. Usually they involve a story where a woman is caught up in some situation where somebody is virtually forced to rape her. Following that are the S&M stories. Again, they lack the violence of men’s S&M comics, and usually focus only on soft stuff, like blindfolding or binding the hands,” the editor in chief of “Love Experiences Special Deluxe,” a redikomi, tells Shukan Taishu. “Finally, you have the incest types. These are either loved or hated, but they often tell the story of a married woman falling for stepbrothers or brothers-in-law.”