CarnalNation

Best Erotic Comics, 2009
Edited by Greta Christina
Last Gasp Books
$19.95, 200 pp.

Critic and novelist Samuel Delaney describes genres that exist outside or on the fringes of so-called high-brow legitimacy as the "para-literary."

Alongside science fiction, fantasy, hard-boiled detective noir, and pulp, Delany particularly champions comic books and pornography as worthy of socio-cultural observation and critique. His line is that one can learn just as much, if not more, about what is on the minds of the people, their collective imagination, their desires, their humanity, by examining what they gravitate towards for pleasure and entertainment as one can by canonizing the hoity-toity.

With this, her second annual edition of contemporary erotic comics, editor Greta Christina brings attention and focus to a dense paraliterary convergence. Erotica, in theory anyway exists to excite and arouse. Comics are associated with escapism, fantasy, and entertainment. Christina is simultaneously cashing in on the current comic zeitgeist and challenging post-Maus graphic novel legitimacy. Just as the world at large is growing to acknowledge the value of comics, the shelves are hit with a cute, unassuming trade paperback overflowing with half-octopus girls, bull-cunnilingus, drunk pistol-whipping, unprotected male sodomy and an abundance of demon fucking, to say nothing of masturbation, queers, and sexually aggressive females.

Erotica as a literary term is often used to denote works with sexual content that is softer, more Oprah-friendly than the red-headed stepchild that is Pornography. Porn, the prevailing wisdom goes, with its cut-to-the-chase fantasy logic, is for men, while the more story-oriented erotica is for chicks.

If it does nothing else, Christina's series is fostering and canonizing a genre of erotica that associates explicit images with well-developed stories, depraved fantasies with sympathetic characters, and high lit/art with complex queer identities and kinky sexualities.

Neither is this book pornography or even erotica in the strictest sense of the categories. The content is certainly obscene—male, female, and animal and monster nudity, sex acts vanilla and kinky, all manner of profanity—but almost nothing here is pure, dripping, direct, fantasy. Christina herself explains that she was looking for interesting sexual content rather than works that would get the most dicks hard.

Some scenes exist in surreal fantasy universes, while some are very strictly realistic. Some, like Ellen Lindner's "Thought Diorama" even depict characters fantasizing, but these hot thought bubbles come to us through the structure of association with the fantisizer.

In his ground-breaking book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud suggests that the more photo-realistic an image, the less we relate to it. At one end of the spectrum is a simple smiley face, which we associate with the general state of happiness, including our understanding of our own happiness. At the other end is a photo-realistic face which distinctly depicts a character smiling—as readers we see that character's happiness rather than our own.

Taking this theory into a consideration of erotic comics, then, one might gauge one's own response to broadly-characterized cartoonish drawings of people, or creatures, engaging in sexy activities, in relation to the stark photographs of humans we are used to associating with pornography. What does it mean to get turned on by a cartoon? I personally find myself more turned on by the Cephalopod Product's crude drawings than Diego Greco's computer-painted panels.

Of course, the opportunity afforded by drawing instead of photographic sexual images is limited only by the artist's imagination. So tiny lovers crawl up in giant pussies, primary and secondary sexual characteristics defy gravity and proportion, and did I mention the lusty half-octopus girls? Christina's definition of "comics" willfully deviates from Will Eisner's concept of sequential narrative, i.e., language and images working together to tell a story. She explains in her introduction that in her mind, a single image that tells a story independent from language counts as a comic, or at least qualifies for worthy inclusion in her collection. I learned something new about myself from reviewing this book—I am more of a stickler than I might have anticipated for old-guard genre distinctions. One or two of these single-page illustrations thrown in for posterity I could have understood, particularly if the title of the piece or the context of the artist's personality lends a humor or pathos to the story inherent in the image. This is the case with John Cuneo's "Why I Went to Art School," whose depiction of the artist painting a naked woman's genitalia as several more luscious nudes queue up in anticipation works with the droll title to spin on one of comics' oldest themes (albeit one that is explored with more lascivious honesty by Crumb and Clowes). But this book is lousy with them, and as someone whose love of and interest in comics hinges precisely on the interplay of language and image, I find them distracting and out of place.

That said, I am heartened by this published record of the current state of the collective erotic imagination, in all its perverted, anxious, conscious, joyful horny glory.

There is a great balance of male and female artists and writers, which is a pretty impressive feat considering the male domination in the fields of both comics and porn.

The highlights here, in your reviewer's opinion, are:

Steve MacIsaac's "Safe", which masterfully addresses the not-always-black and-white conflict of safer sex versus spontaneity and pleasure, a poignant conundrum that all sexually active people in the 21st century have to address.

A nude drawing rescued from a Manhattan trash can and submitted to Dirty Found magazine by comic artist/writer in his own right Adrian Tomine.

An illustrated guide to Robin Bougie's collection of 80s and 90s underground smut that tested the stomach of even your humble reviewer's depraved tastes.

Colleen Coover's "Small Favors" twee-femme fest, whose strangely arousing adorableness tests the breaking point of even your humble reviewer's cynicism.

And Jims Goad and Blanchard's absolutely fucking hilarious "Trucker Fags in Denial," which is, unbelievable as this may seem, even funnier and sweeter than its title betrays.

This collection, by virtue of its very existence, belongs on the bookshelf or hidden under the mattress of any hot blooded human (or octopus girl!). I personally found more engaging and arousing work in last years' edition, but I applaud Christina's project and look forward to next year's edition and all the smut that comes out of the woodwork because of it.