Shut In!

Whoa! Now, this is how you do it. First-rate horror here: "Shut In" initially appeared in Pacific Comics' Twisted Tales #7, written by Bruce Jones and penciled by Italian talent Tanino Liberatore - with colours by Joe Chiodo and lettering by Carrie McCarthy.

Courtesy of the super scaretastic The Horrors Of It All blog, who post mostly earlier pulp horror comics with a smattering of later stuff, as here.

Shut In.

Horacio Altuna!

I was just sort of stumbling around some tumblr sites the other night, looking at erotic cartoons and things of that nature, when I suddenly chanced upon a few colour drawings that really took my breath away, striking me as exceptional and with no small amount of depth (for erotic cartoons). This handful of uncredited pictures appealed greatly to my own tastes, and I figured it was worthy of sharing here for those with a similar bent.


The artist is Horacio Altuna, an Argentine who has been drawing comics professionally since 1965. He has not always done erotic work [see gallery links on right], and is perhaps most famous in his home country for El loco Chavez, a series about a detective. Altuna has lived in Spain since 1982 and has continued to publish well-regarded work into the 21st century, including a family series started in 2005 called Familia tipo.


What is it about these pictures that fascinates me so? The detail is probably what strikes a viewer first; Altuna's unusual attention to objects and backgrounds, let alone to figures, makes these scenes that much more believable. But look again - notice the surreptitious nature of the sexual activity going on, the way other people are either watching or close enough to see or hear, the dynamic of the situations, the management of space, the private and the public. There is so little skin on display, yet the filthiness is impossible to miss.


Was innuendo ever so simultaneously vulgar and pretty?

Free Drawings #8 is out now!

With the release of its eighth ish, it would seem Jesjit Gill is taking his Free Drawings series of crazy, drippy newsprint comics out behind the barn and shooting it in the head. And that is very sad, for this was perhaps the greatest free collection of its kind that Toronto has ever seen.

If it must be the end, at least it promises to be a glorious one. #8 includes the work of the following sick minds: Seth Scriver, Adam Buttrick, Chris Kline, Owen Plummer, Matt King, Luke Ramsey, Mark Connery, Peter Kalyniuk, Fiona Smyth, Marc Bell, Peter Thompson, Stephen Appleby Barr, Hugh Langis, Manfred Naescher, Morgan Criger, Nadina Tandy, Amy Bowles, Tad Michalak, Laura Mccoy, Keith Herzik, Jacob Whibley, Adrienne Kammerer, Lane Milburn, Zoe Barcza, Bill Mcwright, Steph Davidson, Alex Mackenzie, Tomas Del Balso, Victor Kerlow, Vanessa Rieger, Juliana Eye, Dave Weir, Leon Sadler, Marco Landini, Ginette Lapalme, Michael Comeau, Pete Dako, and Michael Deforge.

Jesjit is celebrating the release with an August 27th show at Double Double Land, featuring projections by Philippe Blanchard, Adrienne Kammerer and Michael Comeau spinning the wax fantastic, Ghostlight melting your brain, and No No Zero quickening your sex pulse. Admission is $3.

The Return of Cheez!

Did you know Cheez was back? I didn't (obviously) but now I'm happy to say I do.

Since last November, Canadian Super Artist Fiona Smyth has been posting new entries in her hallowed B&W "Cheez" series* -- which originally appeared '92-'02 in the comics pages of Exclaim. Sure, you won't get black smudge on your fingers looking the e-version, but otherwise the experience is much the same. Fiona's even pledged to keep doing them at the last minute.




Nobody's visual mindscape is quite like Ms. Smyth's and I'm glad to see this chunk of it back in action.

*new comics appear in Toronto Art Post.

Comic Book Culo Kings!

I have planned for some time now to highlight Manuel Lopez's ¡Historietas Perversas! - a blog dedicated to "cover scans of Mexican adult comics". In practise, this ends up largely being the work of Oscar Bazaldua (the reigning king of such comics) who has been at it since 1980. Mr. Lopez has kindly assembled his favourite covers into one link for easy perusal (these are also on flickr), and has similarly organized his ass-themed covers too.



If that's got you crying out más! más!, see Neat Stuff for more colour covers and deviantart for some B&W Bazaldua. Or, if you're curious to see what the inside of some of these comicbooks looks like, have a gander at Comic Mexican Cumshots.


Now any assfool should be well satisfied with the Mexican variety. But if there's one thing I like more than adult comics with big ass beauties, it's drawing thematic correlations. So let us venture across the Atlantic now, to a different Latin 'Master of the Ass'...



I speak of course of Paolo Serpieri, who has been working in comics five years longer than Bazaldua (that's 1975), and created nothing less than a worldwide ass sensation with his Druuna character - who first appeared in 1985's Morbus Gravis.



Bastantes, you cry, bastantes culo! But no, I have yet one last link in store for you: that of Erotrash, purveyor of full editions of nasty European adult comics of yesteryear. Yes, you can snap up sleazy scans of such titillating titles as Hembras Peligrosas, Historia Blue, Bionika, Sukia, and Sadosex!!



The only bummer here is that Erotrash seems to stop updating about three months ago - so it may be a dead blog, who knows? Get while the getting is good, as always. And enjoy some sex and violence in a second language!

Batman 290!

Ever find something again after decades that really freaked the hell out of you at the time?

Something you'd forgotten about completely, probably from way back in your childhood - and then, decades later, it just re-appears out of nowhere, with no warning, no context, and a big shudder goes up your spine, you flash cold, and there's that spasm of dumb fear where your brain recognizes the thing, but before it's figured out what it is or why it knows the thing - and it's sort of like the vertigo spins now, everything crashing inwardly for a frozen long minute, and then you think OH - MY - GOD!!!?

I love those moments.

For me, the Jack Chick comicbooks (stuff like Exorcists or Chaos, not the tracts) were like that.

And Batman 290 was like that.

Originally published in August 1977, which means I would have been almost five years old at the time. I just happened upon this picture the other day while surfing, and I almost collapsed in my chair with the gibbering horrors.

I've since read up on the storyline, and frankly it sounds pretty dumb to me now (Skull Dugger's Killjoy Capers!?); at the time though, as a little kid back in '77, whoo -- that story, and most particularly this cover by Mike Grell, seemed really, really scary.

I guess it was the one-two punch of Batman, powerless and held back by demons he's not even aware of, while at the same time you've got the creepy-looking Skull Dugger killing this guy (who is obviously in great pain) by projecting a skull onto his forehead.

Crazy stuff.

If you've got a I-saw-this-thing-and-it-freaked-me-out similar story, I'd love to hear it!

No No Zero in The Nobody!

Jeff Lemire - who you may recall did the wonderful artwork for No No Zero's Rough Stuff album - recently released his first comic for DC/Vertigo, The Nobody. Here we have a couple of early work-in-progress pages from that same title.

The artwork features a poster of none other than No No Zero (!!) adorning the door of a young lady's bedroom (for some reason, featuring the rose from the cover of Depeche Mode's Violator album?!?). We also see that she has a poster for Catl on her wall, and still another for C'Mon taking pride of place above her headboard.


What are we to make of this? Are we to believe this girl has a thing for Toronto-based bands getting a bit long in the tooth? Has such a person ever existed? Is this no less fanciful than the idea of an invisible man, walking around doing things no one sees?

Regardless, it's very flattering if you're one of these bands and I knew I had to mention it here. When Jeff first sent it to Johnny LaRue, The Nobody had yet to come out, so I was asked not to post about it. This is also why the lettering has yet to be done in the speech bubbles.

Now Mr. Lemire is on to his next title, a series called Sweet Tooth about a boy with antlers on his head!

What will this guy think of next?

Georges Pichard!

Georges Pichard (1920-2003) was not just an amazing erotic artist, but an amazing artist full stop - whose work ran the gamut from family-friendly comics to advertising illustration (including at least one album cover), superhero parody to classical adaptations, and - most famously - Pichard's erotic works, themselves ranging from whimsical, funny and fantastic to extreme S&M imagery that is still shocking all these years later.









Apparently, none other than Mr. Marvin Gaye was a fan.










From the Lambiek Comiclopedia --

"Pichard's style is immediately recognizable: he draws tall, well-endowed women, whose starry eyes with excessive make-up give them a teutonian and gothic look."

With the advent of high-speed internet, the diligent may be rewarded with volumes of Pichard's work in a single torrent; whether related or not, his art is certainly undergoing something of a resurgence of interest.

There is an "official site" up, but no content is currently available there.