Review: ‘Erotic Comics’ by Tim Pilcher
Erotic Comics: A Graphic History from Tijuana Bibles to Underground Comics
By Tim Pilcher with Gene Kannenberg, Jr.
Abrams, March 2008, $29.95
We’ve reached an interesting point in modern culture, when even something as disposable and downmarket as sexy comic books can be the subject of a classy art book from a major publisher. Abrams is about as respectable an art-book publisher as you could find; they’re the official book imprint of both the Whitney and Guggenheim museums. And they’re also the publisher of [[[Erotic Comics]]], a well-crafted and thoroughly conventional art book with lots of pictures of comics panels featuring people at least half-naked – if not actively engaged in various lascivious acts.
Erotic Comics is, except for the smutty pictures, an absolutely standard coffee-table book – printed at a large but comfortable size, not too expensive, with several color reproductions on each spread, occasional background images as well, helpful, detailed captions, and a body text that’s thin beer but perfectly acceptable. It makes no sweeping claims for the field of erotic comics, and is content mostly to show some pictures and retell the same old stories about the men who drew them.
It’s divided into five sections:
• Turn of the Century Titillation covers, very briefly and superficially, all erotic art from the ancient Greeks up to WW II America, including a few pages shoehorned in on Tijuana Bibles
• Playboys Hustling in the Penthouse, the longest section, looks at the world of men’s magazines, starting with Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang and running through the pin-up era to a main emphasis on the major magazines hinted at in the title
• Bondage Babes starts with Irving Klaw (whose materials were mostly photographic, not drawn) and works its way – painfully, with much wailing and cracking of whips – forward to the modern day
• Under-the-Counter and Underground runs through the usual suspects (R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Bizarre Sex) in record time
• And Abandonment Abroad, which takes twenty pages to run quickly through sexy comics everywhere else in the world, which here means only Europe. (Japan is ignored entirely, though several major European artists, such as Guido Crepax, were profiled earlier in the bondage section.)
Erotic Comics is inevitably superficial, flitting from subject to subject without a central narrative. Each two- or four-page section is about one particular artist (or magazine, or other topic of interest), and covers it briefly before moving on to the next. That’s pretty common for a coffee-table book, but sex comics are such a rich field, with so many oddball characters and great stories, that Pilcher’s rat-a-tat matter-of-fact presentation becomes disappointing. (Of course, that’s assuming that anyone is actually reading the text, and I wouldn’t bet any large sum of money on that.)
Each section also runs mostly chronologically, but does skip about a bit in time. And the choice of what to put in each section – Why are Tijuana Bibles in “Turn of the Century,” not “Under-the-Counter?” Why are several major European artists in “Bondage” rather than “Abroad?” – appears to be random at times.
Still, Erotic Comics sets itself to cover a very large field – comic strips, illustrations, gag cartoons and comic books from the last century-plus that aimed to titillate – and accomplishes what it set out to do. The coverage of any particular area may be superficial, but that was inevitable in a book like this. (The only glaring lack is the failure to even mention that Japan has a comics industry which has been known to create erotic work on occasion.)
Andrew Wheeler has been a publishing professional for nearly twenty years, with a long stint as a Senior Editor at the Science Fiction Book Club and a current position at John Wiley & Sons. He’s been reading comics for longer than he cares to mention, and maintains a personal, mostly book-oriented blog at antickmusings.blogspot.com.
Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Andrew Wheeler directly at acwheele (at) optonline (dot) net.
Having not seen the book I must say that the choice of where to place certain types of material or creators does seem at editorial whim. Plus, I'm not familiar with Pilcher so wonder at his expertise in the field.Personally, I don't know that I'd purchase a volume like this that totally ignored the Japanese manga scene. I realise there are books that specifically look at manga, but there are also several books on Tijuana Bibles, so I don't know that this book fills a necessary niche.No offense to the publishers!
Tim Pilcher also wrote "The Essential Guide to World Comics" with Brad Brooks (which features Manga). And, "The Complete Cartooning Course" by Steve Edgell, Brad Brooks and Tim Pilcher. He's also written three or four books on marijuana (including a cookbook) and book about Ecstasy (the drug). The British Title for this book is Erotic Comics: A Graphic History, Volume 1. So, maybe Pilcher has plans to cover Manga extensively in Volume 2.
Hi Chaps,Yes indeed, there is another volume due out in March '09 which will cover gay and lesbian comix (Andrew – you forgot to mention those were missing!), plus US erotic comics since the Seventies, European comics since the Seventies, online erotic comics (invariably the weakest chapter through lack of quality), and of course your beloved erotic manga/hentai. You'll probably be disappointed with the amount of imagery in the latter chapter, simply because it is very difficult (nigh on impossible) to get reprint permission rights for this material. I had a team of four Japanese speakers working for four months in Japan, and everything in the book is all that we could get permission for (which is just scraping the surface). I am aware that we could do a whole book on any one of the chapters previously mentioned in both volumes, but that was never my intention. Rather, it was to flag up the diverse range of material out there, put it into a global context and to act as a sign post for people to go and discover new titles for themselves. It's all about the broad, wider picture. Breadth, not Depth. Alan Moore has written a fantastic foreword for Volume 2 and the two books should definitely be seen as set. Even so, it is impossible to encapsulate every single erotic comic and artist so your bound to find a flaw somewhere, but without dedicating a 5-volume set this is the best I can do in the space allocated.Ross – Thanks for flagging up my previous work. I have been involved in the comic industry for over 20 years and was an assistant editor at Vertigo UK many moons ago. I do know what I'm talking about, I just don't often have the space to write about it! Hence my blog: http://sexdrugsandcomicbooks.blogspot.com/Best,Tim.
Daniel Verdejo EL EROTISMO EN LA PREHISTORIA EROTIC ART – PREHISTORY As we can see through different images, they had sexual intercourse with animals, homosexual relations and more than two people at the same time. http://www.arterupestre-c.com/1000.htm Venus – Venuses http://www.arterupestre-c.com/1000ven.htm There is one sculpture that is emblematic, found in 1908, after lots of research and different epochs being affirmed as the real ones about this sculpture, now they believe it was done around 24,000-22,000 BC. It shows a woman with a large stomach that overhangs but does not hide her pubic area. A roll of fat extends around her middle, joining with large but rather flat buttocks, there's no face and seems that at this place there is a hat or even hair rolled up on the head. Her genital area would appear to have been deliberately emphasized with the labia of the vulva carefully detailed and made clearly visible, perhaps unnaturally so, and as if she had no pubic hair. This, combined with her large breasts and the roundness of her stomach, suggests that the "subject" of the sculpture is female procreativity and nurture and the piece has long been identified as some sort of fertility idol. The fact that numerous examples like that of a female figure. All generally exhibiting the same essential characteristics – large stomachs and breasts, featureless faces, minuscule or missing feet – have been found over a broad geographical area ranging from France to Siberia. That suggests that some system of shared understanding and perception of a particular type of woman existed during the Paleolithic. Daniel Verdejo – Barcelona España arterupestresi@hotmail.com
Huh? What does this have to do with anything, Daniel Sanchez Verdejo? Oh, I see, you're trying to generate interest in your own book about Prehistoric Erotic Art. I would keep the SPAM comments shorter and more to the point. Like, "If you are interested in the history of erotic art, I have written a book about Prehistoric Erotic Art. You can find it …" This was a case of overkill.