Sex in the comics: Lost Girls, Tijuana Bibles and Alan Moore
- by Shawn Conner
In Lost Girls, an erotic graphic novel by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, three women meet in a hotel in Austria on the eve of the First World War.
The women are grown-up versions of Wendy from Peter Pan, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. As the two-book epic progresses and the women get to know each other in ways most biblical, it becomes clear Wendy, Alice and Dorothy aren’t the only ones who have come of age.
Melinda Gebbie art from Lost Girls.
Sex In comics
The depiction of sex in comics has also matured.
“The way in which those three women enter into the world of sexuality is a perfect metaphor for how any human being does,” offers Moore (whose long list of credits includes V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and, perhaps most controversially from the standpoint of his non-involvement with the would-be Hollywood blockbuster version, Watchmen) from his Northampton, England home.
“All of us, in a sense, are plucked out of the pre-sexual world of childhood and taken to a very strange place where the rules are suddenly different, where it’s a strange, exciting, frightening, unfathomable landscape that’s every bit as weird as those of Oz or Wonderland or Neverland, and full of creatures and characters every bit as colorful.”
Sex in comics, a history
It’s hardly the same vision of human sexuality that informs comic book series like Anal Intruders from Uranus. But maybe the two have more in common than might first appear – for instance, the hardcover Lost Girls and the relatively cheaply printed Anal Intruders induce the same frisson of naughtiness that comes from seeing explicit sex depicted in a medium long regarded as the domain of children.
In fact, comics were exploiting carnality long before a planetary explosion sent Superman rocketing through space to a Midwestern farm. Depression-era audiences ate up the Tijuana Bibles, which featured popular figures of the day, from Cary Grant to John Dillinger to Popeye and Blondie, engaging in cartoon carnality.
“Cheerfully pornographic and downright illegal” is how American comic artist Art Spiegelman describes these poorly reproduced pamphlets in his introduction to Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America’s Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s, a collection of the crudely drawn work.
But part of the appeal of the crudely drawn and written strips, Spiegelman notes, “lies in their peculiar combination of debauchery and innocence… They seem to marvel at the very idea of sex.”
Playboy, Harvey Kurtzman and the Undergrounds
It’s easy to imagine a young Hugh Hefner among the Bibles‘ readers. A failed cartoonist himself, the Playboy publisher filled his magazine with sex-filled gag strips, included the long-running serial “Little Annie Fanny”. Written and illustrated by two Mad Magazine alumni, Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder, the strip revolved around a combination of lasciviousness and innocence as personified by its impossibly buxom and equally naive heroine.
Art from Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder's Little Annie Fanny.
With the emergence of the underground, artists like Robert Williams, S. Clay Wilson, and Robert Crumb transformed the comic book medium into a taboo-breaking playground for their unrestrained ids. These pioneers didn’t so much “marvel at the idea of sex” as deconstruct it for their own twisted ends. Suddenly, readers who had grown up on Batman and Donald Duck had the option of flipping through books about the sexual adventures of the Checkered Demon and Fritz the Cat.
Seduction of the Innocent
Perhaps because of their kid-friendly image, comics have attracted more than their fair share of attention from censors and authority figures. In 1954, Dr. Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, an inflammatory tract against sex and violence in crime, science fiction and horror comics of the day. The book led to a Congressional inquiry and the establishment of the Comics Code Authority. (David Hajdu has written THE comprehensive account of the war on comics in his book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America).
The war didn’t end there. In 1969, a New York State judge ruled as obscene Crumb’s “Joe Blow” strip, about an incestuous S&M family orgy. More recently, a Florida court came to the same conclusion about artist Mike Diana’s 1993 Boiled Angel comic. And Little Sister’s, a Vancouver bookstore, has been fighting censorship battles with Canada Customs for, in part, the right to import explicit gay sex-themed comics.
Fantagraphics and Eros
But legal battles haven’t stopped publishers. Fantagraphics, the Seattle-based company responsible for launching major talents like Daniel Clowes (Ghost World), Jamie and Gilbert Hernandez (Love and Rockets), and Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan), realized early on that black-and-white comics about twentysomething angst alone weren’t going to pay the bills.
With that in mind, in 1990 the company established Eros, which has been supplying comic stores and specialty shops with a steady stream of smut for all tastes ever since. From bondage (Fetish) to superheroes (Blonde Avenger), from “history” (Cave Bang, Blazing Foxholes) to fun, silly filth (Housewives at Play, Gilbert Hernandez’ Birdland), Eros covers all the bases.
Art from Housewives at Play.
Fantagraphics even reprints the Tijuana Bibles, and books that follow in that tradition – Tony Libido’s Boffy the Vampire Layer series features guests like Sabreena the Teenage Wench and Britney Spreads. Eros also publishes a line of “mangerotica” (Japanese sex comics), with titles like Alice in Sexland, Bondage Fairies, and Spunky Knight, and which are in a league of their own when it comes to hyper-exaggerated sex.
New York-based NBM’s Eurotica imprint brings the work of European artists to North Americans. While seeing all manner of sexual proclivity depicted in the same medium that has given us Charlie Brown, Wonder Woman, and Betty and Veronica can provide a juvenile thrill, the Europeans often bring a tad more sophistication to their work.
Milo Manara and Paolo Serpieri
None are more revered than Milo Manara, the 63-year-old Italian artist whose long-limbed women are among the most sensuous figures to ever grace a comic’s page. The art of Paolo Serpieri, popularized by Heavy Metal magazine, is also worth checking out—his character Druuna’s defining characteristic is her shapely butt, coveted across the galaxy.
Sample page from Milo Manara's Gulliveriana.
American company Top Shelf has published Moore’s Lost Girls, and so far the book has encountered little controversy despite its graphic sexuality and some taboo-breaking scenes. The author hopes that people will not only be turned on – that was a primary concern of his and artist/life partner Melinda Gebbie – but that they will recognize some of the deeper themes. For instance, Moore believes setting the story against the backdrop of the looming First World War gives the story a depth not usually found in erotica.
“We thought we could make the fragility of the sexual relationships seem even more poignant against the backdrop of a war that is pretty much going to destroy everything,” says Moore.