Despite the surprising abundance of hardcore and fetish comics between the 1930s and 1950s, their existence and availability was still distinctly secretive, known only to a few, select connoisseurs. It took another decade—and a new generation of artists and writers—to bring erotic comics out of the closet for good.
It was the ’60s that finally saw the lid blown off erotic comics, and unleashed them onto an unsuspecting public. But where did these strange new titles come from—and, more importantly, who was creating them?
The roots of underground comics lay in a multitude of sources. Obviously there was the influence of the infamous Tijuana Bibles that many of the creators had surreptitiously discovered as kids. But another influence was the E.C. Comics line from the ’50s, that had wrought exactly what Dr. Fredric Wertham had feared, and warped a whole generation of comics creators! The E.C. stories were a combination of lurid “true crime” tales, horror stories, and weird science fiction, and—while tame by today’s standards—they caused concerned parents to organize mass comic book burnings, encouraged by Wertham’s campaign to ban these salacious sequential stories. These, and humor titles like MAD and Help! set up by E.C. artist/writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman, were the true cultural kin of the underground movement.
The underground comic creators took these influences and ramped up the content in a deliberate backlash against their parents’ generational values. The ’60s were all about rebellion and experimentation; experimentation with drugs and “free love,” and rebellion against restrictive social conventions and repressive political systems. So, it’s unsurprising that all these elements would feature heavily in the underground comix, with “the X suggesting X-rated or an adult readership,” according to Texan underground cartoonist Jack Jackson.
The cover to Tales from the Leather Nun, expertly painted by the late Dave Sheridan.
Don Lomax’s comix magazine Copperhead tapped into the ’60s fascination with sex cults and satanism.
Bill Griffith’s parodies of 1950s romance comics brought whimsical naïvety up to date for a more sexually aware audience.
Classic underground artist Richard Corben was renowned for his huge muscular men and big-breasted female characters. This is Meet Face to Face from Fever Dreams.
