Interview: Tim Pilcher Talks Erotica, Part 1
Tim Pilcher has made a fine career for himself writing and editing in the pop culture world. His most recent project is the second volume in his heavily-illustrated survey of Erotic Comics, coming to the UK in January and America in March. We decided to find out how one covers the subject without getting arrested or losing interest in sex. Speaking of which, given the subject matter, we advise you that the art does the subject justice.
ComicMix: Hey Tim, nice to speak with you again. A So tell me, what qualifies you to write about sex?
Tim Pilcher: Well I’m not a virgin! I can prove it, I’ve got kids!
CMix: Seriously, what prompted the two volume critical look at the subject?
TP: It was a series of disparate events over many years. I remember Melinda Gebbie showing me the original artwork for the first few pages of Lost Girls, when I worked in a comic shop (Comic Showcase in London), back around 1990, and being impressed. Then some friends bought me a copy of L’Enfer des Bulles by Jacques Sadoul, which basically highlighted “saucy moments” in regular and erotic comics. I also read Maurice Horn’s Sex in The Comics, which came out in 1985 and it suddenly dawned on me that no one had done a critical, comprehensive, English language, study on the history of erotic comics for over 20 years! I thought that was bizarre, particularly as Eros Comix, and the erotic comic explosion of the late 80s/early 90s happened just after Horn’s book came out, so there was a huge amount of material that hadn’t been explored, such as Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss. I think the final part of the jigsaw was reading an article by Alan Moore in Arthur magazine about the history of pornography ("Bog Venus Versus Nazi Cock-Ring: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography", Vol 1, No 25, November 2006) and that got me thinking about how sex had been portrayed in comics. So Alan and Melinda were the real catalyst for the whole project, and that made getting Alan to write the foreword for volume 2 a really significant honor for me.