An exquisite gag cartoon by Bill Ward.
EROTIC COMICS
First published in the United Kingdom in 2008 by
ILEX
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BN7 2NS
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Copyright © 2008 The Ilex Press Limited
This book was conceived by:
ILEX
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Publisher: Alastair Campbell
Creative Director: Peter Bridgewater
Managing Editor: Chris Gatcum
Art Director: Julie Weir
Designer: Jonathan Raimes
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ISBN 978-1-904705-22-7
ePub ISBN 978-1-908150-19-6
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Aline Kominsky Crumb’s portrait of Christian Coudures (“the other husband”), for the postcard series, 6 Nudes with Baguettes.
Foreword by Aline Kominsky Crumb
Introduction
1. Turn of the Century Titillation
Prehistory of Erotic Art
Romans and the Kama Sutra
Early Japanese Shunga Woodblock Prints
Hogarth, Rowlandson, and Bawdy Cartoons
Victorian Values
Aubrey Beardsley
Saucy Postcards and Cheeky Humor
World War I
Arthur Ferrier
The Rise of the Tijuana Bible
Birth of the Pin-Ups
Vargas and Bomber Nose Art
Jane, World War II, and All That
Male Call for G.I. Jane
2. Playboys Hustling in the Penthouse
Rise of Men’s Magazines: Captain Billy
Rise of Men’s Magazines: Humorama
Pin-up Kings: Jack Cole
Pin-Up Kings: Bill Ward
Pin-Up Kings: Dan DeCarlo
Pin-Up Kings: Bill Wenzel
Pin-Up Kings: Don Flowers
Hugh Hefner: Publisher, Visionary, Cartoonist
Playboy’s Artistic Geniuses
Doug Sneyd
Dean Yeagle
Harvey Kurtzman
Will Elder
Little Annie Fanny
Phoebe Zeit-Geist
The Adventures of Pussycat
Wally Wood
Oh, Wicked Wanda!
Penthouse Comix
Hustler Comix
3. Bondage Babes
Irving Klaw’s Cartoon Serials
John Willie
Eric Stanton
Gene Bilbrew
Erich Von Götha
Guido Crepax
Franco Saudelli
Dementia
Michael Manning
4. Under-the-Counter and Underground
Sixties Comix
Comix Gone Bad
Bizarre Sex
Robert Crumb
S. Clay Wilson
Wimmen’s Comix
Tits and Clits
Comix Legacy
5. Abandonment Abroad
Erotic Bandes Dessinées
George Lévis
Robert Hugues
Jean-Claude Forest and Barbarella
George Pichard
Magnus
Mexican Sensacionales
Art Directory
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
It makes me laugh to imagine anyone finding my comic work erotic, and in general I can say the same thing about most Underground comic art. This work is meant to shock, it’s vulgar, gross (especially mine), ugly, slimy, shows way more than you need or want to see, and it’s not really meant to turn you on. I consider my depictions of sex as anti-erotic, absurd and ridiculous—exposing the human underbelly in all its hideousness!
My husband, Robert Crumb, is violent, twisted, and often satirical in his “sexy stories.” Some poor souls, who unfortunately share his sexual perversions and unsavory fixations, might find his work good masturbation material, but it is definitely not sex fantasy material for the masses. There are a few Underground artists who actually draw fabulously sexy females… My personal favorites are Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez—their adoration and lust for the female body is a real turn-on. I also love Spain’s tough “bitches” as they’re scary and beautiful.
Of course, I get aroused by Crumb’s sick work because many of the female objects of desire resemble me and this appeals to my extreme narcissism! And I even admit that I enjoy the way the “wimp” attacks these powerful females, although here’s a scoop for you—I never think Robert goes far enough in his sadistic exploitation of the Obnoxious Amazon’s body, with the exception of Devil Girl! I wonder how many other people in the world would share this fantasy with me? Maybe I’m twisted…? So anyway, moving along…
Checking out the material in this book, I keep wondering what makes art, or anything for that matter, erotic? Is it work that directly lines up with our own sexual proclivities that turns us on and nothing else? Probably… But obviously there are other subtle sociological factors that contribute to making art powerful. For example, Victorian erotic art is sexy mainly because it is so forbidden. It is also beautifully drawn and all the details of daily life are so lovely that the nastiness of the “act” is loaded and provocative.
The oriental art is so delicate… The sex organs look like flowers, or exotic little animals. I don’t know what to make of the old Japanese erotic images—it makes me feel like a giant hairy gross beast! I know it appeals to a lot of people, especially those who don’t like to think of sex as yucky, juicy, and messy!
The 1920s through the ’50s were the golden age of humorous porno, especially in America. There’s a lot of great looking work and this is the epoch of the illustrated dirty joke, double entendre, and embarrassing mishap. There’s an exuberance to a lot of this work and it’s all real healthy and normal sexuality that culminates with Playboy’s sophisticated adult humor of the ’50s and ’60s. Of course, I cannot relate to it at all, being an over-the-hill summer-of-love kind of free spirit monster!
So anyway, I guess I’ll just go on encouraging my husband to squeeze my face and jump on my butt in public until we’re too old to care, and we’ll let all of you analyze just how twisted and kinky we are!
ALINE KOMINSKY CRUMB
Aline Kominsky Crumb and her husband, Robert Crumb, “A couple a’ nasty raunchy old things” bare all in their brutally frank Self Loathing Comics #2 (1997).
Erotica has a long, illustrious history, dating back to mankind’s earliest artistic endeavours, from simple fertility statues to scenes portraying every type of congress imaginable. From 5th century Greek urns and ancient Roman mosaics, to the Japanese shunga prints and Indian Kama Sutra of the 18th and 19th centuries, erotic and arousing art has held a very important position within the history of creativity.
So it is no surprise that as the human race has developed more sophisticated ways of expressing ideas, erotic art would be at the forefront. As simple illustrations started to develop into cartoon art, using speech balloons and sequential imagery to portray an ongoing narrative, the birth of comic strips would invariably be entwined with the birth of erotic comics.
But erotica has always been the preserve of the upper classes, and not meant for the plebeian masses, for fear it might “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences,” as the Victorians put it. Obviously the upper classes were above such base desires and could appreciate the work purely for its artistic merit. This laughable attitude prevailed for decades, and coupled with the fact that comics and cartoons—erotic or not—had always been given short shrift by the intelligentsia, it meant that erotic comics were doubly dammed.
Viewed very much as “low art” for the masses, it is only within the last 20 years that a certain amount of respectability has been afforded to this mass-produced art form. Yet history reveals that fine artists have long been influenced by their less feted brethren. Pablo Picasso, for example, was a huge comic fan, and an avid reader of the New York Journal’s comic strip Katzenjammer Kids. The strip was created by German immigrant Rudolph Dirks in 1897, and inspired Picasso towards modernism. His own work wears its cartoon inspiration on its canvas, particularly in his more erotic work, such as his cartoon sketches Couple (1964) and the lesbian Femmes Nues a la Fleur (1971).
Pablo Picasso’s 1934 illustration of the Greek sex comedy, Lysistrata, possibly inspired by the great Aubrey Beardsley drawings created 40 years earlier.
One of Picasso’s earliest proto-comic experiments, The Dream and Lie of Franco, depicts an abstract General Franco waving his enormous phallus over Spain (in the 2nd panel).
In January 1937 Picasso etched the first six scenes of The Dream and Lie of Franco. In this satirical proto-comic strip, a bulbous version of Don Quixote travels on horseback, raping Spain with his huge phallus. The strip was an angry attack on Franco and the Spanish civil war, and acted as the template for his infamous painting Guernica.
In the 1960s, Pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein co-opted their childhood comic book influences and transferred them on to canvas, instantly “legitimizing” them in the eyes of the artistic elite and dragging comic art out the gutter. Lichtenstein’s reworking of the romance comics of the 50s told of unrequited love, and seething—but repressed—passions, and would adorn postcards and posters for decades to come. Yet the originals, by great artists such as Mike Sekowsky and John Romita Sr., remained dismissed for another 30 years.
Erotic comics have always had to battle with the tricky debate of erotica versus pornography. In a medium that has been long-regarded by the less enlightened as purely entertainment for children or the “educationally sub-normal” it appears an instant anathema to combine sexual imagery with comic books. Indeed, US-based Psychologist Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 50s witch-hunt against horror and crime comics completely missed the fact that the majority of the titles were intended for an adult readership. Not only that, but his own prejudices began to cloud his judgement as he started seeing sexual imagery everywhere, from the supposed gay relationship of Batman and Robin to the absurd view that “when Wonder Woman adopts a girl there are lesbian overtones.” Sadly, Dr. Wertham obviously forgot Sigmund Freud’s important caveat—“sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
However, there is no doubt that there is art contained within this book that some might regard as “pornographic,” that is to say, an “explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal.” However, I would argue that everything included in here is in fact erotica—as defined as “portrayals of sexually arousing material that hold, or aspire to, artistic or historical merit.” The very fact that every piece of work here has taken someone with some artistic ability to create it, instantly elevates it above the average “skin flick” or hardcore photographic magazine. And I would vehemently refute that any of the work contained would ever “corrupt or deprave” anyone looking at it, as defined by the archaic British Obscene Publications Act. In fact, the deferring terms are quite meaningless and are an entirely Victorian construct, created to “protect” the prudish (and highly hypocritical) morals of the time. Today they are obsolete and we can regard these images without the prejudices that have plagued comic art for over a century. As the late artist Stephen Gilbert quipped; “The difference between erotica and pornography is simple. Erotica is what I like. Pornography is what you like, you pervert!” Or, more succinctly, as the Viennese architect Adolf Loos declared in his 1908 manifesto: “All art is erotic.”
“Ha! My smart-ass wife bet me you wouldn’t put out!” This Bill Wenzel cartoon appeared in Sex To Sexty #41 in 1972.
Bill Ward’s exquisite pencil drawn pin-up was the pinnacle of '50s sex sirens.
Some of the oldest surviving examples of erotic art are Palaeolithic cave paintings and carvings. Along with the more common images of animals and hunting scenes, depictions of nude human beings with exaggerated genitalia have been unearthed in paintings and artifacts. Recently discovered cave art at Creswell Crags, England, includes stylized renditions of female sexual organs and is believed to be over 12,000 years old. It’s been suggested that this art was created for religious or fertility purposes (as opposed to erotic stimulation), but this is open to conjecture.
In 2005, archaeologists in Germany discovered what they believed to be a pair of 7,200-year-old statues depicting a male figure bending over a female figure in a manner suggesting sexual intercourse. Dr Sträuble, the professor who found the statues, stated, “As these figurines are not stylistic, but realistic, they open up a gateway for historians and anthropologists to discuss whether sex really was a taboo subject in the Stone Age.” To date, this remains the earliest representation of “pornography” known to exist.
The Moche of Peru were another ancient people who sculpted explicit sexual scenes in their pottery. However, while explicit, their purpose was not to inflame the senses, but was a result of the Moche belief that the world of the dead was the exact opposite to the world of the living. Therefore, as funeral offerings they would make vessels showing sex acts such as masturbation, fellatio, and anal sex—none of which would result in pregnancy. Their belief was that in the world of the dead these acts would take on their opposite meaning and result in fertility, and hence rebirth.
As mankind’s ability to express itself through art grew more sophisticated, erotic art become less crudely fashioned and more creative in its content. The ancient Greeks often painted sexual scenes on their ceramics, portraying same-sex relations (both gay and lesbian) and pederasty. While perhaps shocking by today’s standards, it’s impossible to tell what was illegal or immoral since the ancient Greeks had no concept of pornography. Their art simply reflected scenes from daily life, some more sexual than others.
Often, carved phalli were seen in places of worship, such as the temples of Dionysus, while a common household item and protective charm was the “herm,” a statue consisting of a head on a square plinth with a prominent phallus on the front. The Greek male ideal possessed a small penis—an aesthetic the Romans later adopted—so large phalli were often seen as comic or satirical, as opposed to aspirational. This was a theme adopted later in Chinese and Japanese erotic art.
Eugene Deveria’s lesbian tryst lithograph, The Harem, from the late 1800s.
Édouard-Henri Avril’s graphic depiction of homosexual love in ancient Egypt would have been highly shocking in the 1800s and only seen by a select few.
Victorian artist Édouard-Henri Avril (1849–1928) was a renowned erotic illustrator who worked on numerous books, including John Cleveland’s Fanny Hill and this example from De Figuris Veneris: A Manual of Classical Erotica by the German scholar Friedrich Karl Forberg.
This Greek red figure cup found near Pompeii, and dating from the 5th century B.C., portrays a hetrosexual couple in congress. The illustrative painting would be concealed at the bottom of the cup until the wine had been drunk.
The ancient Romans adopted many of the aesthetics of the Greeks, including their depiction of sex in art. Numerous sexually explicit paintings and sculptures have been recovered from ruined Roman buildings in Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the Villa of the Mysteries near Pompeii there were ritual flagellation scenes that are clearly associated with a religious cult, while graphic paintings in a brothel advertised sexual services in murals above each door. In Pompeii, phalli and testicles engraved in the sidewalks guided visitors to the prostitution and entertainment district.
The Romans considered sexual scenes for decoration to be in good taste, and one of the most infamous is the Warren Cup. One side depicts a man making love to a male youth, who lowers himself into the “reverse cowgirl” position using a rope from the ceiling, while the other side shows a beardless youth making love to a younger boy in the missionary anal position.
Currently housed in the British Museum in London, the cup was so controversial that it remained unexamined by scholars until 1993. Yet the ubiquity of such imagery suggests that the sexual mores of the ancient Romans were far more liberal than most present-day cultures.
Another society that didn’t regard sex as taboo, but rather as a spiritual act to be celebrated, was that of ancient India. The earliest Vedic texts hinted that sex was considered a mutual duty between a married couple, where husband and wife pleasured each other equally, but sex was still considered a private affair.
Sometime between the 1st and 6th centuries, the most famous book ever written about sex—the Kama Sutra—was created. Originally known as Vatsyayana Kamasutram (Vatsyayana’s Aphorisms on Love), this philosophical work was intended as both an exploration of human desire (including seduction and infidelity), and a technical guide to pleasing a sexual partner within marriage. And, of course, it has been profusely illustrated throughout the centuries, revealing the precise sexual positions for partners to engage in.
This detail, from the Rajput School in India (1790), demonstrates one of the complex poses of the Kama Sutra.
The Romans displayed erotic mosaics and frescos throughout their cities. This mural dates from 1st century Pompeii.
The Warren Cup was bought by The British Museum in 1999 for £1.8 million. The silver chalice shows the Roman idealization of Ancient Greece.
The Japanese approach to sex was as liberated as that of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Indians. Influenced by the Chinese scrolls and erotic art of the great 8th century T’ang Dynasty painter Zhou Fang, the Japanese took the concept of visualizing various sex acts (often with highly exaggerated genitalia) and made the genre their own.
Erotic art was widely circulated as a subgenre of the ukiyo-e, or “floating world” woodblock prints during the Edo period (1603–1898). These prints were known as shunga, or ”picture of spring”—a euphemism for sex.
Nearly all the ukiyo-e artists made shunga at some point in their careers, and their status as fine artists was unaffected by the association with sex. The prints were enjoyed by rich and poor, men and women, and initially carried very little stigma. It was considered a lucky charm against death for a samurai to carry shunga, and widely believed that they protected warehouses and homes against fire. It’s likely that these superstitions arose as a justification for owning the erotic prints, but, whatever the reason, the prints were as ubiquitous then as manga is today. They had the same diverse readership and it was traditional to buy shunga prints as a wedding present. Even women would acquire them directly from book lenders.
Shunga prints were produced and sold either as single sheets or, more frequently, in book form, known as an enpon. These books normally contained 12 images, but the more expensive, hand-painted scroll formats (called kakemono-e), were also popular. Shunga varied greatly in quality and price, but ukiyo-e artists could live for about six months on the profit made from creating a single shunga for a wealthy client. Yet while some works were highly elaborate, others had a limited color palette (full-color printing wasn’t invented until 1765); these were widely circulated and inexpensive.
Edo period shunga artists sought to express a varied world of sexual possibilities, creating an idealized, eroticized, and fantastical parallel to contemporary urban life. Men seduced women, women seduced men, men and women cheated on each other, and all ages—from virginal teenagers to old married couples—were depicted in sexual acts. While most shunga was heterosexual, some depicted gay trysts; lesbian artwork was rarer, but not unknown. Female masturbation was also depicted, with octopi featuring with alarming regularity.
Possibly the most common character in shunga was the courtesan. Shunga artist Utamaro was revered for his depictions of these celebrities of their day, and Yoshiwara —Edo’s pleasure district—is often compared to Hollywood. Men saw these ladies as highly eroticized due to their profession, while being unattainable except to the wealthiest, most cultured men. Women saw the courtesans as distant, glamorous idols, and Japan’s fashions were inspired by these ancient working girls. Male kabuki actors were also depicted in shunga, as many worked as gigolos, and were often depicted with samurai.
While shunga prints were not sequential as such, they often had back-stories that were revealed through text or dialogue in the picture itself. The merging of text and images makes them some of the earliest erotic proto-comics. Symbolism was also concealed throughout the works, with plum blossoms signifying virginity or tissues symbolizing impending ejaculation, for example. Yet most shunga characters remained clothed, because nudity was not inherently erotic in Japan; people were used to fully naked, mixed-sex, communal baths.
Shunga couples were often shown in unrealistic positions with exaggerated genitalia— allowing greater visibility of the sexually explicit content, increasing artistic license, and delivering greater psychological impact.
A shunga scroll from around 1870, depicting an orgy with two men and 11 women.
In Japan, the genitals are often regarded as a “second face,” expressing passions that the “everyday face” is obliged to hide by strict social codes. This meant the penis was often drawn the same size as the man’s head and placed unnaturally close to it by the awkward position.
Throughout history there have been attempts to suppress erotic material, and 17th century Japan was no exception. In 1661, the Tokugawa shogunate banned, among other things, erotic books known as kōshokubon. Shunga still managed to be produced with little censorship, but a new edict in 1722 was far stricter, banning the production of all new books without the city commissioner’s permission. Shunga was forced underground, with sales continuing in secret and most artists no longer signing their shunga works for fear of prosecution. However, between 1761 and 1786 the printing regulations were relaxed and artists started signing their work again, often concealing their names in the pictures themselves.
As in the west, the decline in erotic drawings in Japan coincided with the invention of photography, and shunga finally succumbed at the start of the Meiji period (1868—1912).
In recent years shunga has influenced many manga (meaning “irresponsible pictures”) and anime (Japanese animation) artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, inspiring them to create a variety of erotic comics with niche subjects such as yaoi (gay comics) and hentai (literally, “18-restricted” or “adult-only”).
This detail of a humorous phallic contest has four well-endowed men running toward their “prize” of two women (off page).
Making Love in Winter by Katsukawa Shuncho was painted between 1770 and 1790. This moment of ejaculation would set the tone for Japan’s hentai manga 200 years later.
The two central focal points in this picture—as with most shunga—are the faces and genitalia.
In England, the pioneer of early sequential art—William Hogarth—was developing a body of work that would influence the development of comics forever. A painter, printmaker, and editorial cartoonist, Hogarth completed one of his most famous moralistic works, A Harlot’s Progress,