Category: Mature Reading

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.

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 21^st 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.