Category: Adult/Erotica

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Hotwire Comics volume 3


By various, edited by Glenn Head (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-288-3

The third magnificent, oversized compendium of cutting edge cartooning and alternative artistic visions has finally arrived and once more combines famed and possibly less well-known creators in a bold, brassy high-quality, giant-sized (9×12 inch or 230x304mm) full colour and black and white anthology of new tales and concoctions. There’s even a multi-page psychedelic, phantasmagorical fold-out ‘The Magnificent Pigtail Show’ from the incredible Steven Cerio.

Beginning with art-pieces – David Sandlin’s ‘Studio of Sin’ and Tim Lane’s ‘Greetings From Hotwire USA’ – the sequential narratives launch with Michael Kupperman’s ‘Meet McArf!’, a decidedly smooth shaggy dog story, the eerie childhood reminiscence ‘Car-Boy’s Family’ from Max Andersson and ‘Bottomless’ a salutary tale of excessive appetite from Eric Watkins and Chadwick Whitehead.

The first of a series of ‘Feral Spheres’ – monochrome artworks by David Paleo – is followed by ‘Denial’ and ‘The Bully’, two moody introspections from Jayr Pulga and Sam Henderson’s gross-out gag-strip ‘At a Frat Party or a Sports Game or Something Like That’, before editor Glenn Head enthrals with the cheery chiller ‘Candyland Clinic.’

After Paleo’s second ‘Feral Sphere’ the always fascinating Mary Fleener describes how and why she bought a gun in ‘The Judge’ and Rick Altergott reveals the sordid saga of a sweet young thing who was just too ‘Keen on a Clown!’, after which sordid shocks Head returns with some  ‘Psychedelic Smut’.

Onsmith’s beguiling ‘Dispossession by Tornado’ is followed by another ‘Feral Sphere’ and Mark Dean Vega reinterprets some of our most beloved comics characters in his mouth-watering ‘Popeyeconography’ before Doug Allen’s grotesquely funny ‘Hillbilly’s Dun Gawn Ta College’ and the ever offensive Johnny Ryan provides insight to life with ‘The Cockhorns’.

Following the aforementioned Cerio foldout section Tim Lane crafts a chilling tale of hobos riding the rails in ‘Spike’, Danny Hellman illustrates a truly lovely clash in ‘Alice Versus the Sandman’, R. Sikoryak retells the story of Hamlet using Hank Ketcham’s oddly appropriate cartoon cast in ‘The Menace of Denmark’ and Mack White provides a surreal and terrifying glimpse into ‘Roadside Hell.’

Another ‘Feral Sphere’ precedes, for my money, the very best piece in this collection. The darkly mannered tale entitled the ‘Passion of Atte’ by Matti Hagelberg is a complex, brooding tale of vanishment and suicide – or is it?

‘Infernal Combustion’ is a bold, old-fashioned paranoid nightmare by David Sandlin, followed by one last ‘Feral Sphere’ and Danny Hellman’s delightful ironic parable ‘Tales of the Sodom Ape Men and the Electronic God’, Stephane Blanquet provides so much more than just a ‘Drawing’, Karl Wills delivers a punchy space fable in ‘Connie Radar’ and Mats!? chills and thrills with his deeply disturbing discourse ‘Sleep Walker.’

The final tale is the classy history of an unsung hero from another, more wicked time:  Glenn Head relates the rather sad and nasty tale of ‘Vulvina, the Ventriloquist’s Dummy Daughter!’ which closes another startling, offensive, compelling and thoroughly wonderful box of cartoon delights for brave, hungry souls in search of different kicks. Strictly for those of you over voting age, this is a treat no real comics aficionado can afford to miss.

All artwork and stories © 2010 the respective creators. All rights reserved.

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The Classic Pin-Up Art of Jack Cole


By Jack Cole, edited by Alex Chun (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-284-5

Jack Cole was one of the most uniquely gifted talents of American Comics’ Golden Age, crafting landmark tales in horror, true crime, war, adventure and especially superhero genres. His incredible humour-hero Plastic Man remains an unsurpassed benchmark of screwball costumed Hi-jinks: frequently copied but never equalled. As the Golden Age faded, Cole could see the writing on the wall and famously jumped into gag and glamour cartooning, becoming a household name when his brilliant watercolour saucy pictures began running in Playboy with the fifth issue.

Ever-restless, Cole eventually moved into the lofty realms of newspaper strips and in May 1958, achieved a life-long ambition by launching the syndicated domestic comedy Betsy and Me. On August 13th 1958, at the moment of his biggest break he took his own life.

The unexplained reasons for his death are not as important as the triumphs of Cole’s artistic life and this captivating paperback (reprinting a rare hardback compilation from 2004) provides a fascinating insight into a transitional moment in his artistic development.

When Cole began his move from comic-books into the “adult world” of cartooning, he adopted the nom-de-plume “Jake” whilst he honed his dormant gag-skills (sequential narrative being so far removed from the “quintessential moment” illustration needed for a single picture telling an entire story). Working in beautiful ink and wash creations he began submitting to the cheaper end men’s magazines: ubiquitous little throwaway digests with titles such as Romp, Stare, Joker, Laugh Riot and Breezy, packed with photos of saucy vixens like Betty Page and her cheesecake ilk – and lots and lots of debatably risqué gags.

Nor was he the only artist making the pilgrimage: other funnybook stars on the move included Bill Ward, Jefferson Machamer, Dan DeCarlo, Bill Wenzel and Basil Wolverton.

This charmingly innocent compendium of Lush Ladies, Willing Wantons, Savvy Sirens, Naive Nymphs (always stunningly beautiful women) collects his 100 or so published sales, divided into Line Art, Washes and an astounding selection of Originals – images shot from the actual artwork and not printed pages, revealing all the detail and unedited work a budding creator could need or desire.

This beguiling glimpse into a major artist’s processes and the sexual mores of an entire generation are an intoxicating treat and that the work is still utterly addictive is a treasure beyond compare.

© 2004, 2010 Fantagraphics Books All right reserved.

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Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter: First Death


By Laurell K. Hamilton, Jonathon Green & Wellington Alves (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-07851-3476-3

I’m not a great fan of these oh-so-topical vampire love-stories – and to be fair the first entries in the vast sequence of supernatural thrillers by Laurell K. Hamilton either didn’t start out as a prototypical example of that blossoming sub-genre or the author displayed extraordinary patience before getting to the sanguinary snogging – preferring instead to concentrate on blending horror and police procedural elements rather than delve into the somewhat dubious but unaccountably popular teen passion for getting jiggy with dead people.

Therefore this review will concentrate specifically on the material created for this graphic novel prequel, set in the early days of the necromantic private detective and re-animator…

Sharing elements with such later but rather better-known properties as Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries (as seen on TV as True Blood) and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (see The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle) the stories are set in modern day St. Louis on an Earth where magic is real and the supernatural is both accepted and legitimised.

Here America is at the forefront of civil rights for supernaturals, granting spooks and fiends the same rights and protections every other citizen has under the Constitution. Since the rest of the world is somewhat less enlightened about the things that prey on humanity the USA has experienced a huge influx of migrant monsters, and society – particularly law-enforcement – has had to adapt quickly.

Anita Blake is a necromancer whose day job is to temporarily raise the dead (for settling will litigation and the like…) but she also works with the police, using her powers to execute vampires who break the law. That law being: don’t kill humans – or else…

The first novel Guilty Pleasures was adapted by Marvel as miniseries with great success but appalling frequency, and an all-original 2 issue micro-series prequel, ‘The First Death’ was rushed out to supplement the saga and placate the waiting fans. Together with the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter Guilty Pleasures Handbook that tale is collected here to reveal the early days of many of the novel’s characters and locations.

The Handbook is an illustrated text glossary of all you need to know about Blake’s world compiled and written by Stuart Vandal, Ronald Byrd, Michael Hoskin, Chris Biggs & Ave Cullen illustrated by Brett Booth and Ron Lim, but be warned it does reveal the end of Guilty Pleasures so either read that first or accept that you know in advance who dies, stays undead, gets staked etc…

‘First Death’ is a rather appetising, readable treat – although Brett Booth’s art, whilst highly competent, feels fearfully dated due to its angular, Image-style rendering…

When butchered, blood-drained children begin turning up, it’s clearly a case of a vampire gone off the rails and Sergeant Dolph Storr calls in Anita Blake, a licensed Vamp executioner to kill the freak when they eventually catch it.

She surprises the jaded cops by actively joining their hunt. Only state-sanctioned operatives like Blake are allowed to expedite the undead, but usually they wait until cops have done all the dirty work of finding and catching the blood-suckers…

The investigation leads to the Vampire enclave of “The District” where supernatural businesses and citizens cluster in a quasi-legal, twilight zone ghetto and inevitably to “Guilty Pleasures”; a bar and strip club where the quick and the dead mingle in secure anonymity. For the first time Anita meets the proprietor Jean-Claude, a powerful Nosferatu who will figure prominently in her future…

By seeking the kid-killer the hard-pressed hunters accidentally uncover a huge ring of rogue vampires who have been covertly slaughtering citizens, and when the Executioner and her mentor Manny get in over their heads child-killer Valentine (a later arch-enemy for Blake) nearly butchers them both. Luckily they have a heavy-hitter of their own…

Edward is only human and used to be a hitman, but as that proved to be no challenge, now he only takes on vampire commissions. He’s the one thing the supernaturals are scared of…

Fast-paced and extremely intense, this is a riotous horror-ride-come-cop-story for older readers and one that has enough wit and wonderment to engage even an old curmudgeon like me. If you thought this was a chick-lit chiller that has nothing to offer dedicated comics veterans, think again…

© 200, 2009 Laurell K. Hamilton. All rights reserved

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Penny Century (Las Locas volume 4)


By Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-342-2

Please pay attention: this book contains stories and images of an extremely adult nature, specifically designed for adult consumption and the kind of coarse and vulgar language that most kids are fluent in by the age of ten. If reading about such things is likely to offend you, please stop now and go away. I’ll be back with far more wholesome, family friendly and acceptable violence and explosions tomorrow. So come back then.

Love and Rockets is an anthology comics publication that originally featured slick, intriguing, sci-fi-ish larks, heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasies and bold experimental comic narratives that pretty much defied classification, all wrapped up in the ephemera of the LA Hispanic and punk music scene. The synthesistic Hernandez Bros joyously plundered their own relatively idyllic childhoods to captivate with incredible stories that sampled a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from comics and TV through alternative music to German Expressionism and masked wrestlers.

Jaime Hernandez was always the most visible part of the graphic and literary revolution that is Love and Rockets, his slick, seductive, clean black line and beautiful composition, not to mention impeccably rendered heroes and villains and the comfortingly recognisable comic book iconography, being particularly welcomed by readers weaned on traditional Marvel and DC superheroes.

However his love of that material, as well as the best of Archie Comics cartoonists (I often see shades of the great Sam Schwartz and Harry Lucey in his drawing and staging), accomplished and enticing as it is, often distracted from the power of his writing, especially in his extended saga of Maggie Chascarillo and Hopey Glass – Las Locas.

Palomar was the conceptual and cultural playground of brother Gilberto, whilst Jaime initially began with a fantasy-tinged adventure serial (as seen in volume #1 ‘Maggie the Mechanic’) which eventually evolved into a prolonged examination of love and friendship as Maggie and Hopey, chums since childhood and occasional lovers, drifted into and away from each other over the years. The later stories also yielded focus to an increasing number of truly unique friends and acquaintances…

This volume ostensibly stars Hopey’s lifelong friend and wild child Beatriz Garcia who meticulously reinvented herself as the cosmic starlet and ambiguous super-heroine Penny Century, but the whole utterly magnetic cast are on board for a series of revelatory tales, casting light on both the shadowy histories and portentous futures as Maggie and Hopey approach middle age – still beautiful, still feisty but not really that much wiser…

Collected from the spin-offs and miniseries ‘Whoa Nellie!’, ‘Maggie and Hopey Color Fun’ and ‘Penny Century’ produced between 1996 and 2002, the pageant of wonders begins with a disturbingly compelling side-trip into the world of women’s wrestling, following the lives and glory-days of two women as they strive to become tag-team champions: a visually mesmeric and touchingly poignant dissection of an extraordinary friendship.

The spotlight lands squarely on Hopey in the second extended tale as the older but no wiser wildcat revisits her good old days with Maggie, before the main event, told through a succession of short stories, commences. Beginning with two instalments of ‘Locas’, and three of ‘Penny Century’ the narrative is interspersed with nineteen fascinating complementary vignettes and sidebars such as ‘La Pantera Negra’, ‘Hopey Hop Sacks’, ‘Look Out’, ‘Chiller!’, ‘C’Mon Mom!’, and ‘Loser Leave Oxnard’ – the secret origins of most of the extended cast are laid bare in progressively more funny and tragic tales of missed opportunities and lost last chances…

Every bit as surreal and meta-fictional as brother Beto’s incredible tales of Luba and Palomar, Jaime’s continuing development as a writer both stirring and meaningful is a delight to experience, whilst his starkly beautiful drawing – even when he affectionately dabbles with other styles – is an utter joy. It’s an amazing trick to tell such wistful, insightful and even outright sad stories with so much genuine warmth and slapstick humour but this book easily pulls it all off.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll own one hell of a good book when you buy Penny Century… and you may regret it forever if you don’t.
© 2010 Gilbert Hernandez. All Rights Reserved.

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High Soft Lisp


By Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-318-7

Please pay attention: this book contains stories and images of an extremely adult nature, specifically designed for adult consumption and the kind of coarse and vulgar language that most kids are fluent in by the age of ten. If reading about such things is likely to offend you, please stop now and go away. Tomorrow I’ll write about something with violence and explosions, so come back then.

In addition to being part of the graphic and literary revolution that is Love and Rockets (where his astonishingly compulsive tales of Palomar and the later stories of those characters collected as Luba gained such critical acclaim) Gilbert Hernandez has produced stand-alone tales such as Sloth, Grip and Girl Crazy, all marked by his bold, instinctive, simplified line artwork and a mature, sensitive use of the literary techniques of Magical Realist writers Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez: techniques which he has added to and made his own.

Love and Rockets is an anthology comics publication that features slick, intriguing, sci-fi-ish larks, heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasy and bold experimental comic narratives that pretty much defy classification. The synthesistic Hernandez Bros still captivate with incredible stories that sample a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Archie Comics and alternative music to German Expressionism and masked wrestlers.

Palomar was the conceptual and cultural playground of Gilberto, created for the extended serial Heartbreak Soup: a poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. Everything from life death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in the meta-fictional environs of Palomar, and did, as the artist explored his own post-punk influences, comics, music, drugs, comics, strong women, gangs, sex, family and comics, in a style that seemed informed by everything from Tarzan comics to Saturday morning cartoons and the Lucy Show.

Beto, as he signs himself, returns to Palomar constantly, usually with tales involving the formidable matriarch Luba, who ran the village’s bath house, acted as Mayor and sometimes police chief – as well as adding regularly and copiously to the general population. Her children, brought up with no acknowledged fathers in sight, are Maricela, Guadalupe, Doralis, Casimira, Socorro, Joselito and Concepcion.

Luba eventually migrated to the USA and reunited with her half-sisters Petra and the star of this volume, Rosalba “Fritz” Martinez. This collection was compiled from assorted material that first appeared in Love and Rockets volume II and Luba’s Comics and Stories, with some new pages and many others redrawn and rewritten.

Fritz is a terrifyingly complex creature, a psychiatrist, therapist, B-Movie actress, belly dancer, drunk, gun-fetishist, sexually aggressive and a manipulative serial spouse. Beautiful, enticingly damaged, with a possibly intentional speech impediment she sashays from crisis to triumph and back again, and this moving, shocking, funny chronicle uses the rambling recollections of one of her husbands, motivational speaker Mark Herrera, to follow her life from punkette outsider at High-School through her various career and family ups and downs.

Under the umbrella title of ‘Dumb Solitaire’ what purports to be the memoir of Senor Herrera reveals in scathing depth the troubled life of the woman he cannot stay away from, in an uncompromising and sexually explicit “documentary” which pulls no punches, makes no judgements and yet still manages to come off as a feel-good tale.

High Soft Lisp is the most intriguing depiction of feminine power and behaviour since Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – and probably just as controversial – with the added advantage of Beto’s intoxicating drawing adding shades of meaning that mere text just cannot impart.

Very funny, very moving, remarkable and unmissable: no mature fan of the medium can afford to miss this treat.

© 2010 Gilbert Hernandez. All Rights Reserved.

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Indian Summer


By Milo Manara & Hugo Pratt, translated by Jeff Lisle (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 0-87416-030-2-8

Hugo Eugenio Pratt (June 15th 1927 – August 20th 1995) was one of the world’s paramount comics creators, and his inventions since ‘Ace of Spades’ (whilst still a student at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts) in 1945 were both many and varied. His most famous character, based in large part on his own exotic early life, is the mercurial soldier - perhaps sailor would be more accurate – of fortune, Corto Maltese.

After working in both Argentinean and English comics for years Pratt returned to Italy in the 1960s. In 1967 he produced a number of series for the monthly comic Sgt. Kirk. In addition to the Western lead character, he created a pirate strip Capitan Cormorand, the detective strip Lucky Star O’Hara, and a moody South Seas adventure called Una Ballata del Mare Salato (A Ballad of the Salty Sea). The magazine folded in 1970, but Pratt took one of Ballata‘s characters to the French weekly, Pif, before eventually settling into the legendary Belgian comic Tintin. Corto Maltese proved as much a Wild Rover in reality as in his historic and eventful career.

However a storyteller of such vast capabilities as Pratt was ever-restless, and as well as writing and illustrating his own tales he has written for other giants of the industry. In 1983 he crafted a steamy tale of sexual tension and social prejudice set in the New England colonies in the days before the Salem Witch Trials.

Tutto ricominciò con un’estate Indiana (released and known as Indian Summer – although a more appropriate and illustrative translation would be “All things begin again with an Indian Summer”) was brought to stunning pictorial life by fellow Italian graphic raconteur Milo Manara.

Maurilio Manara (born September 12th 1945) is best known for his wry, controversial erotica – but that’s more an indicator of the English-speaking comics market than any artistic obsession; an intellectual, whimsical craftsman with a dazzling array of artistic skills ranging from architecture, product design, painting and of course an elegant, refined, clear-clean line style with pen and ink.

He studied painting and architecture before becoming a comic artist in 1969, beginning with the Fumetti Neri series Genius, worked on the magazine Terror and in 1971 began his erotic career illustrating Francisco Rubino’s Jolanda de Almaviva. In 1975 his first major work Lo Scimmiotto (‘The Ape‘ – a reworking of the Chinese tales of the Monkey King) was released.

By the end of the decade he was working for the Franco-Belgian markets where he is still regarded as a first-rank creator. It was while working for Charlie Mensuel, Pilote and L’Écho des savanes that he created his signature series HP and Giuseppe Bergman – which saw print in A Suivre. The “HP” of the title is his good friend Hugo Pratt…

New England in the 17th century: the Puritan village of New Canaan slowly grows in placid, if uneasy, co-existence with the natives who have fished and hunted these coastal regions for centuries. When young Shevah Black is raped by two young Indians, outcast Abner Lewis kills them both. Taking the “ruined” girl back to his mother’s cottage in the woods the girl meets the entire family – mother Abigail, siblings Jeremiah, Elijah and Phyllis – a whole brood of damned sinners banished by her uncle the Reverend Pilgrim Black.

The mother was once a servant in the Black household, but has lived in the woods for twenty years, ever since Pilgrim Black’s father raped her. When Abigail fell pregnant she was cast out for her sin. Her face bears a sinner’s brand. Aided by the Indians the mother built a cabin, and over the years had three further children. Her progeny are all wild creatures of nature; healthy, vital and with many close ties both to the natives (from choice) and the truly decadent Black family (by sordid, unwelcome history).

Now blood has spilled and passions are roused: none of those ties can prevent a bloodbath, and as the day progresses many dark secrets come to light as the intolerance, hypocrisy and raw, thwarted lust of the upstanding Christians leads to an inexorable clash with the Indians – by far the most sensible and decent individuals in the place – with the pitifully isolated, ostracized and alienated Lewis clan stuck in middle and betrayed by both…

Beautiful, disturbing and utterly compelling, this thoroughly adult examination of sexual tension, attitudinal eugenics and destructive, tragic love is played out against the seductive heat and primitive glories of a natural, plentiful paradise which only needs its residents to act more like beasts and less like humans to achieve a perfect tranquility. Sadly, every Eden has serpents and here there are three: religion, custom and pride…

Pratt’s passion for historical research is displayed by the graphic afterword in which he not only cites his extensive sources – including a link to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel The Scarlet Letter – but adds some fascinating insights and speculations on the fates of the survivors of New Canaan massacre…

Although there is a 1994 NBM edition readily available I’m reviewing from my 1986 Catalan copy principally because I own that one, but also because the Catalan copy has a magnificent four-page foldout watercolour cover (which I couldn’t fit onto my scanner no matter how I tried) and some pretty amazing sketches and watercolour studies gracing Javier Coma’s insightful introduction.

This is a classic tale of humanity frailty, haunting, dark and startlingly lovely. Whatever version you find, you must read this superb story.
© 1986 Milo Manara & Hugo Pratt. English language edition © 1986 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.

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The Year of Loving Dangerously


By Ted Rall & Pablo G. Callejo (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-565-8

If you live long enough you’ll experience the pop culture keystones of every definitive era of your life at least twice more. The base, tasteless and utterly superficial aspects of the 1980s are currently doing the rounds again as the current generation – which was too young to remember them – get all nostalgic for the good bits and blithely ignore all the bad stuff: same as it ever was…

…Except for Ted Rall. The contemporary essayist and American political cartoonist, like everybody who was actually there, also recalls the decade that most tellingly shaped his life and has now written a largely autobiographical graphic novel memoir for rising comics star Pablo G. Callejo to beautifully illustrate.

For us Brits it was Union-Bashing, loads-a-money, poverty, excess, daft hair and Thatcher, whilst America endured trickle-down Reaganomics, insider dealing, covert warfare and poodle rock – so nobody really got off lightly either side of the pond…

In 1984, through a series of concatenating disasters and no fault of his own (well, not too much) college student Ted Rall was expelled from Columbia University, lost his apartment and was dumped onto the streets of New York with only a couple of dollars in his pocket.

Homeless and desperate in a land with no safety-net (not much different from Britain in the 80’s, in all honesty) he faced a short, bleak future, with very few options, the best of which was jumping off the dormitory building roof…

His happy salvation came as he sat in a diner. Accidentally picking up a young woman he spent a night at her pad and discovered a new career. For nearly a year he bounced from pick-up to assignation to one-night-stand, not for cash but only bed and board.

This book follows his narrowest of escapes from poverty, addiction, sexual infection and extreme loss of self-respect as, with the dubious aid of the luckiest dope-fiend in the city, Ted claws his way back to semi-respectability and security (as a stock market trader!) by means he clearly still doesn’t quite understand decades later.

What ought to be a salutary parable about the wages of sin is actually a sincere, sensitive and immensely humane tale of triumph over adversity, free from bragging, tawdry prurience or sordid machismo and truly funny in a heartwarming manner. Rall the student gigolo is a charming, if hapless, protagonist and the non-judgemental treatment of casual sex is wonderfully refreshing, as is the good hard look at the heart and soul rather than the surface veneer of the decade.

Not a book for everybody, but rational adults with an eye to an endearing human drama will love it.

© 2009 Ted Rall & Pablo G. Callejo. All rights reserved.

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Birdland


By Gilbert Hernandez (Eros Comics/Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 1-56097-200-9

This book contains stories and images of an extremely adult nature, specifically designed for adult consumption and the kind of coarse and vulgar language that most kids are fluent in by the age of ten. If reading about such things is likely to offend you, please stop now and go away. Tomorrow I’ll write about something with violence and explosions, so come back then. Please.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: if you do it right – and who does? – sex is supposed to be fun.

Now we all know that in the real world nobody’s actually any good at sex, and there’s always someone trying to put a stop to it (hopefully not your consenting participating partner-of-choice) but fun-filled fictional fornication has usually sought to be a jolly, joyous affair – which is why so much pornography aspires to low comedy.

When champion of diversity Fantagraphics jumped on the smut bandwagon that proliferated in the American comics industry at the very end of the 1980s with their Eros Comics imprint, they gathered the most stylish of European and foreign adult material (such as Solano Lopez & Barreiro’s Young Witches) to complement the quality home-grown creators such as Bill Willingham and Ho Che Anderson (with their superb Ironwood and I Want to be Your Dog, respectively). In such an instance how could they not also tap major talent and socio-sexual revolutionary Gilbert Hernandez for such an “adults-only” project?

In addition to being part of the graphic and literary revolution that is Love and Rockets (where his incredibly insightful tales of Palomar and the later stories of those characters collected as Luba gained such critical acclaim) Beto has produced stand-alone tales such as Sloth, Grip and Girl Crazy, all marked by his bold, instinctive, compellingly simplified artwork and a mature, sensitive adoption of the literary techniques of Magical Realist writers such as Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez: techniques which he has added to and made his own.

All of these graphic novels – indeed all his works – have been notable for a matter-of-fact and totally explicit treatment of all aspects of sexual behaviour. It’s like he realised that everybody screws – and screws around.

In the comic miniseries Birdland collected here and tangentially linked to his earlier Heartbreak Soup and his later Luba in America material he focused on the very strange lives of two strippers, Bang Bang and Inez, providing all the nudity, hard-core action and squirty, slurpy stuff demanded by porn consumers, but also adding psychiatry, bodybuilding, realistic relationships, painful infidelities, tragedy and regret to the usually repercussion-free mix. He also couched the entire thing in a surreal, absurdist, alien-abduction mystery… Smut with a storyline – now, that’s radical…

There’s only so much rampant, recrimination-free bonking I can take (and of course I mean reading about and reviewing, not doing) and clearly Hernandez understands that too: so although the sex is literally non-stop for the insatiable devotees there’s some actual narrative shoved in to be getting on with whilst readers are catching their breath…

Utterly adults-only, this book reprints the black and white miniseries, the short tale ‘Tierra de Pajaro’ from the Free Speech benefit comic True North #2 and a copious quantity of bonus material, and fans might recognise some of the work as having featured heavily in the recent Best Erotic Comics 2009.
© 1990, 1991, 1992 Gilbert Hernandez. All rights reserved.

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Frederic Mullally’s Amanda


By Frederic Mullally, John Richardson & “Ken” (Ken Pierce Books)
ISBN: 978-0-91227-703-5

When I reviewed the comic strip collection Danielle recently I declaimed at long length about having to become an apologist for some of the themes and content of what used to be called “cheesecake” or “girly” strips – a genre stuffy old-fashioned Britain used to excel at and happily venerate. We’re that sort of culture: saucy postcards, carry-on films and ingenuously innocent smut.

As John Dakin points out in his introduction to this short-lived strip-siren, The Sun, original home of the lady in question, was the country’s best selling newspaper and was provocatively, proudly populist. That translated into low laughs and acres of undraped female flesh everywhere except the sports section – and even there when possible…

By 1976 the battle for female equality had mostly moved from headlines to business pages: the height of the much-maligned “Sexual Revolution” with women demanding equal rights, equal pay and fair treatment had passed (so isn’t it marvellous that they’ve got all those things sorted now?). Contraception-on-demand and burning bras were gone except for the provision of comedy fodder and men had generally returned to their old habits, breathing a heavy sigh of relief…

Amanda launched on January 26th 1976, written by journalist, editor (of left-wing magazine Tribune), columnist, novelist and political writer Frederic Mullally, and initially seemed a low key, low-brow reworking of his prestigious Penthouse satire ‘O Wicked Wanda!’ but there were marked differences for anybody looking below the satin-skinned surface.

Amanda Muller was the beautiful, sequestered heir to the world’s largest fortune, and once her old fossil of a father finally kicked the bucket she decided to become a teen rebel and have all the fun she’d missed growing up in an old castle with only prim staff and her cousins Wiley and Hunk for company. With thief turned companion Kiki, she determined to splurge and spree and have anything she wanted.

The strip ran for a year and the first illustrator was John Richardson, a highly gifted artist with a light touch blending Brian Lewis with Frank Bellamy who has worked practically everywhere in Britain from 2000AD to DC Thomson to Marvel UK as well as for specialist magazines such as Custom Car, Super Bike and Citizen’s Band. The introductory story sees Amanda – shedding her clothes at every opportunity – try to buy a title, only to fall foul of a Mafia plot to control Italian Nudist Beaches, before moving on to a “career” as a pop-star – which once more draws her into a world of unscrupulous sharks and swindlers…

Whilst looking for a new maid Amanda and Kiki next got embroiled in a continental burglary ring, before the author’s political interests resurfaced when brainy cousin Wiley was invited to display his new electronic Chess brain behind the Iron Curtain. Naturally physical Adonis Cousin Hunk wants to come along – it’s just before an Olympics after all – and the girls tag along just for kicks.

Since you just can’t trust a Commie they’re all soon in lots of trouble but naturally the frolicsome foursome escape with relative ease. The next adventure, and all the remaining strips, are illustrated by somebody who signs him (or her) self “Ken”, and who, I’m ashamed to say, I know absolutely nothing about. Competent, but a tad stiff and hesitant, and lacking the humorous touch of Richardson, I’d lay money on the enigma being an Italian or Hispanic artist – but I’ve been wrong before and I will be again…

Safely home again Amanda decided to create a feminist magazine entitled New Woman, and sent Kiki to interview the world’s greatest Chauvinist Pig – fashion designer “Bruno” – only to once more fall foul of crooks; although this time its kidnappers and embezzlers.

Still in editor mode the gang then head to super-sexist Banana Republic Costa Larga, just in time for the next revolution, infiltrate the “Miss Sex Object” beauty contest with the intent of sabotaging it, and conclude their globe-trotting by heading for a tropical holiday just as the local government is overthrown by a tin-pot dictator…

Despite my caveats this was series that started out with few pretensions and great promise; however the early loss of Richardson and, I suspect, Mullally’s intellectual interest soon quashed what charm it held. Nevertheless this collection is a good representative of an important period and a key genre in British cartooning history.

Some of the gags are still funny (especially in our modern world where celebrity equates with exactly where drunken, stoned rich people threw up last) and if you’re going to ogle and objectify naked women at least well-drawn ones can’t be harmed or humiliated in the process. Also I don’t think a drawing has ever contributed to a girl’s low self esteem or body issues, At least, I hope not…
© 1984 Express Newspapers Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Newave!- The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980’s


Edited by Michael Dowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-313-2

Everybody has at some stage in their lives used pictures to tell stories. It’s a fundamental step in the cognitive development of children and for some of us that magic never goes away. For most people the crushing weight of the world squelches the joy of creation so that we become observers and consumers rather than makers, but a privileged few carry on: drawing, exploring, and in some cases, where technology allows, producing and sharing.

This book explores, recounts and celebrates those driven artisans who came out of the “anything goes” 1960s and 1970s Underground Comix movement, craving a vehicle of expression, not caring about money, and with enough time to draw – or gather – artwork (mini comics people are notoriously generous, contributing work at the drop of a hat: just check out the huge array of notable creators listed below) before laboriously photocopying, cutting, folding, stapling and then distributing the miniscule but marvellous results.

Just by way of definition: most mini comix were home produced pamphlets using borrowed or when necessary paid for print processes. The most popular format was an 8½ x 11inch sheet, folded twice, and printed at local copy-shops (or made on school/work repro systems like early Xerox, Photostat, Mimeo or Spirit Banda machines) on letter-size – or any – paper. Because they weren’t big, they were called mini comix. Duh!

Although this book concentrates on a specific time, place and creative ethos, the phenomenon was truly world-wide and covered all genres from superhero knock-offs to the sexually explicit, violent, political and drug-related work that typified Newave! Nobody who wanted to and had access to the technology ever resisted making their own comics…

In this 892 page collection the many craftsmen who began the tradition that led inexorably to today’s thriving Alternative and Small Press publishing movements as well as the current internet comics phenomenon, discuss at length their motives and methods, and naturally the best of that adventurous decade are reprinted in crisp black and white.

Among the hundreds, (thousands?) of people who have made or contributed to mini comix many have gone on to more well-received and popular things. Some of them include (and feel free to save time, skip this section and just buy the book) Jeff Gaither, Michael Roden, Wayno, Artie Romero, Brad Foster, Fred Hembeck, Mary Fleener, The Pizz, Rick Geary, Dennis Worden, Steve Willis, Roy Tompkins, Tom Christopher, XNO, Clay Geerdes, Bob X, Jim Siergey, J.R. Williams, Jim Blanchard, Norman Dog, Molly Kiely, Mack White, Daniel Clowes, Doug Allen, Art Penn, Sam Henderson, Gary Whitney, George Erling, Bob Vojtko, Doug Potter, David Miller, Jim Ryan, Par Holman, Roger May, Meher Dada, Wayne Gibson, Tom Motley, Marc Arsenault, Ion, Bruce Chrislip, Dale Luciano, C. Bradford Gorby, Robin Ator, Douglas O’Neil, C. E. Emmer, Kurt Wilcken, Doug Holverson, Jamie Alder, Tom Hosier, Steven Noppenberger, W.C. Pope, Jim Gillespie, John Howard, Tucker Petertil, Gary Lieb, Bob Conway, and Jim Thompson.

I’ve done it myself, for fun – even once or twice for actual profit – and it’s an incredible buzz (I should note that I have a wife not only tolerant but far more skilled and speedy in the actual “photocopy, cut, fold, staple” bit and willing, if not keen, to join in just so she could see the oaf she married occasionally…)

The sheer boundless enthusiasm and joy of making comics is celebrated in this astonishingly vast, incredibly heavy and yet still pocket-sized hardback collection, with over 700 pages of the very best of that decade’s adult cartoons on show, accompanied by not just historical information on key publishers such as Brad Foster, Artie Romero, Steve Willis, Dennis Worden, Bob X, J.R. Williams, Roger May, Tom Hosier, George Erling, Bob Vojtko and others but also a list of website addresses so you can check out how the compulsion to create has survived into the 21st century.

A joy for every fan of the art-form: as long as they’re old enough to vote and strong enough to lift the thing.
Newave!- The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980’s © 2010 Michael Dowers and Fantagraphics Books. All contents © 2010 their respective creators. All rights reserved.