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Underground > Comic Books >

Porn Comics

14:49 / 25.04.03

Spinning out of the Chuck Austen thread.

Porno comics. Are they any good? With the rare exception, I say no. I seldom get turned on looking at porn comics - more often than not I find them sad or disturbing. I always imagine them being drawn by creepy, seedy little men, alone in their room spending hours lavishing obsessive detail on drawings of dripping genitals. It might not be a fair judgement, but it's always what springs to mind.

Have you read any good porn comics? What made them so? And so on.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:56 / 25.04.03

Are we talking comics exclusively limited to pornographic content, or including ones that have other elements or a plot but are somewhat, *cough*, dominated by the sexual content? Does Chaykin's Black Kiss count as a porn comic, for example?

15:08 / 25.04.03

No flyboy I'd say black kiss was a bit more mainstream than what I think Cameron is thinking about (correct me if i'm wrong).

I think of porn comics and its the work of milo manara and Eric Stanton that come to mind (these may not be work safe depending on the tastes of your boss).

15:10 / 25.04.03

Aren't you and Stan Lee doing a soft porn comic, Cameron?

Matthew Fluxington

15:30 / 25.04.03

Gee, I can see how one would label Milo Manara pornographic, but it is certainly more like soft porn or "erotica." Manara's stuff is pretty silly and generally tasteful, it's a far cry from the creepy full-on porn comics that you can find in the back of many comic shops.

Manara is easily one of the finest artists to ever draw a comic book, and most small press porn comics are pretty sub-standard in terms of craft.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

15:59 / 25.04.03

Bill Willingham's "Ironwood" was worth reading, the art was some of his best and the stroy was a decnt fantasy story that was crammed with sex. The problem with most of the Eros stuff is just that it is drawn so poorly.

I think that a lot of Crumb's work could be called porn, but most of it isn't very arousing...

16:19 / 25.04.03

I would definitely consider Black Kiss to be a pornographic comic - it's certainly explicit enough, and although it does have a plot and story, not just cover-to-cover fucking, I do think that the sex was Chaykin's primary motivator.

I also think Black Kiss is garbage.

I would also label Manara as pornographic, although he's one of the exceptions I alluded to - I think his work is beautifully executed and genuinely erotic.

Fun Fact about Eric Stanton - he and Steve Ditko shared a studio for many many years. Compare their artwork and spot the mutual influence...

And finally:

>>>Aren't you and Stan Lee doing a soft porn comic, Cameron?<<<

If you're taking the piss, allow me to offer you a weak smile and a roll of the eyes. If you're serious - no, I'm doing the cover only, and the interior isn't pornographic, soft or otherwise. Not even a nipple to be seen.

17:53 / 25.04.03

I'm just being cheeky. Like I mentioned on an earlier thread, I would collaborate on a comic about raping dead babies if it meant I could live out a geek dream like working on something with Stan Lee.

18:07 / 25.04.03

I would think the explicitness of Danzig's Verotik comics line would be enough to think of them as "porno" comics, certainly Satanika, Ingrat, or Morella.

Danzig is a fucking beast, btw....

19:09 / 25.04.03

I would collaborate on a comic about raping dead babies if it meant I could live out a geek dream like working on something with Stan Lee.

Two cheers for artistic integrity!

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

19:17 / 25.04.03

Ive read some Manara, really good artwork, but the translation came across as a bit vapid - like it was only there to justify the pictures.

Also some other stuff in the odd issue of Heavy Metal (Druuna?), not so good.

I read some Lost Girls by Moore and Gebbie online once, that was good quality porn comic, as you would expect.

I've seen some pretty pornographic Crumb also, an image comes to mind of a guy ejaculating out of a girls mouth in a reverse-blow job fashion (he lives inside her body). Good quality Crumb, but not really what I would call arousing either.

Murray Hamhandler

19:17 / 25.04.03

Not to get too mired in semantic arguments, but what is the dividing line between "porn" and "erotica"? And how would you classify a book that contains a lot of explicit sex and yet doesn't quite fit in either category? An example that springs immediately to mind is Jeffrey Brown's Clumsy. A lot of the book was composed of sexual scenes, but the intent was obviously not to arouse the reader. The sex was, in fact, handled in precisely the way I'd like to see a brave mainstream filmmaker handle it at some point: sometimes clumsy, sometimes messy, but always a major part of any honest fly's-eye view of a relationship in process.

So I guess my opinion on this end of the matter is that pornographic tropes can (and, perhaps, sometimes should) be used tastefully and/or well in comics but that it doesn't always make for arousing reading material.

(Side-note: Jeffrey Brown's follow-up/sequel to Clumsy is currently being solicited for a July release.)

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

19:30 / 25.04.03

I liked Black Kiss, but at the time I was a HUGE Howard Chayin fanboy, still in love with his work from American Flagg. I haven't read it in a few years, but I did think the 16 page format it was first sold in was a huge detriment to the story.

Now, the Supreme Court says that porn has no artistic merit, but I think for purposes of this discussion it should be any comic that features explicit sex. Clumsy wasn't an erotic comic by any means, but would be considered porn in most of the Southern US states.

19:32 / 25.04.03

Usually, a practical working defintion for porn is the depiction of the male sexual organ in its glorious erection. From this standpoint only, you can easily consider 98% of Manara's work as erotic (I think I've only seen two penises drawn byhim in Kamasutra). This defintion does not consider porn depictions of: the female genitalia, sexual intercourse, and the flaccid male sexual organ.

I'd actually recommend the whole Druuna series so to experience a strange and mixed feeling of desire, arousal, nausea and inner/outer sexual violence. And they are a bit depressing also, given their post-ultra-apocalyptic context. But the art is gorgeous and quite of its own.

On a lighter side I would recommend Horacio Altuna's series of Voyeur, which I remember appeared in US inside a Heavy Metal special with ridiculous exclamation signs (!) supposeddly censoring unexisting and undrawn genitalia.

And I just wish popular porn-comics were written/drawn a bit better.

22:50 / 25.04.03

>>>Not to get too mired in semantic arguments, but what is the dividing line between "porn" and "erotica"?<<<

I would define "erotica" as something that contained nudity and/or the *implicit* depiction of sex. "Pornography" is the *explicit* depiction of sex. In both cases the nudity and/or sexual content must be the primary purpose of the story.

That's how I define it, anyway.

I must say that I neglected to consider Japanese manga in my initial post - of the Japanese porn comics I've seen, most of them have been explicitly sexual and also very erotically appealing - the sex scenes are expertly drawn (as opposed to the cruder Western material)and with all the same ferocious, apocalyptic energy as you'd find in the action/sci-fi stuff.

at the scarwash

23:18 / 25.04.03

Cynthia Petal's Really Fantastic Alien Sex Frenzy by dave cooper is pretty good fun for a porn comic.
I don't know if cooper's style exactly arouses, but there is an elegance of line that gives it a somewhat erotic
sheen. Weasel is pretty smutty too. In a really creepy way. I like Lost Girls quite a bit,
but how can you go wrong with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbe. I think that there is a pornographic element to a lot
of Paul Pope's best work, but of a more fetishist stamp.

03:47 / 26.04.03

I would collaborate on a comic about raping dead babies if it meant I could live out a geek dream like working on something with Stan Lee.

Two cheers for artistic integrity!

Dude, it could be a really good comic about raping dead babies, y'know. And feature, ummm, Dazzler.

Fuck Stan Lee, that's my Epic proposal sorted! Suh-weet.

23:57 / 05.05.03

Um. I guess Chester Brown's 'The Playboy' doesn't really count. What about stuff like the cheesecake story in Alan Moore's latest thing from Avatar? Or, indeed, 'Lost Girls'? I haven't read LG but I hear it's pretty decent. Well, I hear that from people who're big Moore fans.

And then what about the whole Lady Death/Vampirella/Shi style stuff? Is that considered porn? I keep well shot of it to be honest, as it's just a wee bit lame. But does it pretend to have another purpose than porn?

I guess I'm just confused by terms here.

Haus of Mystery

14:34 / 06.05.03

I've seen some Druuna stuff and despite the fact it is exquisitely drawn it seemed to mainly consist of a buxom space wench getting involved in fairly rape-like sex but naturally enjoying it. which is like most crap porn. there also seemed to be some nasty abortion-fear, body horror stuff tastelessly chucked in. Still, good for a quick wank in Forbidden Planet.

Haus of Mystery

14:36 / 06.05.03

posted twice.
balls.

16:14 / 06.05.03

Three times, actually.

But that's what the "Moderate Post" button under your name is for, Mr. Thompson.

16:59 / 06.05.03

The Lady Death/ Vampirellla/ Shi books seem to be just cheesecake, from what I have seen. Certainly not pornography. I don't bother trying to read them anymore. Just alot of posing frames.

17:04 / 06.05.03

A lot of 'name' writers, Morrison included, have written Vampirella. I've a friend who's quite a connoiseur of such books.

17:06 / 06.05.03

Actually, being the Morrison sheep that I am, I've read some of the Vampirella issues he's written. Sadness. Everything has its exeptional moments. Even cheesecake books. :-)

18:43 / 06.05.03

The stuff that Gilbert Hernandez has done springs to mind. Birdland is definitely pR0n, not erotica, but it's so cheeky and smiling that it manages to be fun and almost arousing. Part of that comes from the fact that the same characters appear in stories for general audiences (Love and Rockets) , kids (Measles) and adults. You just don't see that in any medium, but he makes it work, at least occasionally.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:30 / 07.05.03

Man, I love Gilbert's filthy stuff. It isn't a proper Love & Rockets collection until someone gets their kit off. "Thergio!"

13:21 / 08.05.03

It really is the lisp that makes it seem dirty, isn't it. Mmm.