From the 1970s to the Present Day

by Tim Pilcher

  The character’s oversized breasts are the primary focus on this page from God of sex, by Kazuki Taniuchi.

  A futanari (shemale) in Silky Whip #10 by the pseudonymous mangaka known as “Oh! Great” aka Ito Ogure.

  Yukiyanagi’s Milk Mama collected numerous mammary adventures, including this tale of a boy who has been breast-fed all his life and ultimately engages in an incestuous relationship with his mother. This page reads in Eastern order, from top to bottom, right to left.

  This cover painting to Silky Whip #5 by Oh! Great obviously plays to the bakunyu audience with the wet T-shirt.

  THE DARK SIDE OF DESIRE

  In 1989, things went terribly wrong for erotic manga. There came a major crackdown after the infamous—and horrific—kidnapping, murder,and sexual molestation of three pre-school girls by Tsutomu Miyazaki, an Otaku (an obsessive fan-boy), who was a huge devotee of lolicon manga. The Tokyo High Court ruled him sane, stating that “the murders were premeditated and stemmed from Miyazaki’s sexual fantasies,” and he was sentenced to death.

  This case caused a furor in parents’ and teachers’ groups concerned over the sexual and violent content of certain manga. A Japanese non-profit organization called CASPAR claimed that lolicon and other anime did encourage sex crimes. The group campaigns for regulation of minors in pornographic magazines and video games. According to Michiko Magaoko, director of a non-profit organization in Kyoto called Juvenile Guide, founded in 2003, approximately half of the staggering 2,000 pornographic anime titles distributed in Japan every year, include schoolgirl characters. The Osaka-based Child Protection Agency’s Mitsui Kondo argues that the films distort attitudes toward girls: “Such a situation makes our society more dangerous to girls…We’ve got to think about it before talking about freedom of expression.”

  However, the Miyazaki murders are still exceptional, and the island state has far fewer incidents of rape and murder than America. To counter the general public’s outrage over the schoolgirls’ murders, the manga industry setup the self-regulatory group the Association to Protect Freedom of Expression in Comics. Headed by several high-profile mangaka (comic professionals), they went on a counter-offensive, fighting for creative freedom and attacking censorship. It eventually worked, and by 1994 the manga witch hunt was off, as Japan’s moral minority trooped off to right wrongs elsewhere. As one pundit put it, “There was a big fuss about it for a while, but now everything seems pretty much the way it’s always been.”

  The eminent sexologists Milton Diamond and Ayako Uchiyama observed a strong link between the dramatic rise of pornographic material in Japan from the 1970s onwards and a dramatic decrease in reported sexual violence, including crimes by juveniles and assaults on children under 13. They also cited similar findings in Denmark and West Germany, believing that countries’ concerns with widespread availability of sexually explicit material leading to increased rates of sexual crimes was not valid. They went so far as to say that the reduction of sexual crimes in Japan during that period may have been influenced by a variety of factors, including erotic manga. As Alan Moore put it in his article on pornography in Arthur magazine, the porn acted as “a safety valve on a pressure cooker.”

  KazukiTaniuchi’s God of Sex reveals how explicit manga has become. In Japan, lip service would have been paid by a small black bar placed over the penetration shot in the first panel—this is removed for Western audiences.

  This erotic fantasy is one of the less predatory stories from Toshiki Yui’s Hot Tails series.

  The cover to Co-Ed Sexxtasy #13 by Makoto Fujisaki illustrates the huge popularity of bondage and submissive comics in Japan. The apples and oranges suggest “forbidden fruit.”

  A Co-Ed Sexxtasy scene about two students, Akira and Nagi, and their diverse sex life.

  Notice in this orgy from Silky Whip that the men are drawn semi-realistically—and slightly sinister looking—while the woman maintains the kwaii (“cute”) aesthetic.

  Alongside numerous other reasons—including a high sense of social responsibility in Japanese society—many have argued that because the Japanese so openly explore their deepest, darkest fantasies in manga, animation, and live-action film, very few individuals ever feel the need to act them out. Titles like the pernicious rapeman act as a cathartic release for readers, and simply put, most Japanese can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. The other anomaly with these sexually violent comics is that the vast portion are created by women and, if examined closely, actually put the woman in a position of power rather than being the victim, further confusing the issue.

  In 2004, the whole censorship issue kicked off again when, on January 13, suwa Yuuji’s (under the pseudonym “Beauty hair”) pornographic Misshitsu (The Honey Room) was deemed “obscene” by Judge Yujiro Nagatani of the Tokyo district court. The Honey Room was originally published in 2002 with an initial print of 20,000 copies, sold across Japan.

  The court’s objection, under Article 175 of the penal Code, was to “bodies [that] were drawn in a lifelike manner with little attention to concealment [of genitalia], making for sexually explicit expression and deeming the book pornographic matter,” said the judge. Nagatani also stated the manga was “mostly devoted to undisguised, detailed portrayals of sex scenes” that “no healthy society today could allow.” The publishers defended The Honey Room on the grounds of freedom of expression and argued that drawings could not be considered as lifelike as photographs or video images. But the judge handed Motonori Kishi—the president of publishing house shobunkan—a one-year prison term. To avoid a custodial sentence, Kishi reluctantly accepted the guilty verdict, and the sentence was reduced to a ¥1.5-million-yen ($14,000 us) fine in June 2005.

  The first major obscenity trial in Japan for 20 years sent shockwaves around the manga world, with many artists and publishers self-censoring, as before, and shops scrapping their adult-only manga sections. The case rumbled along for some time, but in his final appeal in 2007, the Supreme Court’s First Petty Bench denied Motonori Kishi’s appeal, meaning the publisher had to pay his ¥1.5-million fine. Even then, once the press lost interest, everything carried on much as it has since the 1700s. Rightly or wrongly, extreme erotic manga continues to proliferate in Japan, and abroad, as its more innocent forbearers’ popularity continues to grow.

  A previously unpublished convention poster created by Hiroyuki Utatane, the artist on highly regarded erotic series Countdown: sex Bombs and the more mainstream seraphic feather. The lithe bodies have caused some to suggest many manga characters are pre-pubescent, but this fails to take the artists’ drawing styles into consideration.

  A scene from sex-philes—a series of short sexual vignettes—by Benkya Tamaoki, has a lactating slave, Alice. The series was published in the US by Eros Comix’s Mangerotica sub-imprint.

  The cover to possibly Japan’s most controversial manga to date, Missitsu (Honey Room) by Beauty Hair (aka Suwa Yuuji).

  5

  Online comics eroticism

  WEBCOMICS: OFF PRINT AND ONLINE

  Just as Johannnes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 and the invention of the photocopier in the 1970s revolutionized the dissemination of ideas, art, and literature, so the invention of the Internet in the 1990s made comic publishing completely egalitarian and global. In all three cases some of the earliest users of these new technologies were artists and pornographers.

  But some of the earliest online comics to be published were non-erotic: Where the Buffalo Roam by Hans Bjordahl in 1992; Doctor Fun by David Farley in 1993; and Argon Zark! by Charley Parker, launched in 1995. The latter was the first ongoing story specifically designed for the Internet, as opposed to an existing strip scanned in. Whereas many lesser-known creators perhaps self-published only a few hundred comics, the new technology suddenly gave them access to millions of potential readers.

  But what online cartoonists really found liberating was the complete freedom to explore any subject, completely unfettered. It was ak
in to the underground comix movement of the ‘60s where artists pushed the medium as far as they could, with some webcomics stretching the boundaries of taste, taking advantage of the fact that Internet censorship is virtually nonexistent.

  The freedom of webcomics can still cause problems though, as Leisure Town artist Tristan Farnon found when he had legal trouble after creating a homoerotic parody of newspaper cartoon Dilbert. In 1997, Farnon scanned Dilbert strips and changed the speech balloons to deliberately inflammatory racist and profane dialog. Farnon played cat-and-mouse with United Media’s lawyers (the copyright holders), constantly taking down and reposting the strips over the next eight years. “You realize that when you make online comics, you’re sort of folding up your product into a paper airplane and sailing it out the window, and who knows who’s going to catch it,” mused Farnon, later.

  Partly inspired by Scott McCloud’s book Reinventing Comics, 2000 saw an explosion of webcomics. Soon “anthology” portals offer a variety of professional and small press creators’ strips, with sites like Cool Beans World Modern Tales and Web Comics Nation popping up everywhere. By 2007 a staggering 15,000 webcomics were being posted on a regular basis—some good, some diabolical. This, combined with numerous pirate websites that offer illegal scans of printed erotic comics, has made it hard for many erotic comic publishers, who have seen sales decline. As Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics/Eros Comix—one of the US’s biggest publishers of erotic sequential art—noted, “erotic comics sales in general have slowed considerably in this era of Internet porn, and we’ve cut back to all but the most profitable titles…”

  Online cartoonistand designer, Jess Fink’s powerfully lustful cover to Eros Comix’s Head #14

  Morpheus’ cover to his online erotic fantasy, Safyre Blue, from the website Hipcomix.com.

  A digitally rendered character study by Joe Phillips of his gay superhero Stonewall—referring to the infamous Greenwich Village tavern where the gay rights movement started. The hero appears in comic creator Phillips’ computer animated movie, Stonewall and Riot: The Ultimate Orgasm. The artist was one of the first to fully exploit the Internet’s possibilities by posting online comics and computer animated shorts on his website, joephillips.com.

  Two pages from Morpheus’ short story, Obsession, from HipComix.com. The dark voyeuristic/exhibitionist strip was hand drawn, but computer colored “I still prefer to pencil and ink in the traditional way,” explained the artist, “then scan in and color in Photoshop or Painter.”

  A scene from Stonewall and Riot in which Stonewall gives supervillian Polecat his “stiff shaft of justice.” Phillips managed to retain his art style while using computer animation.

  GAY COMICS ONLINE

  Every sexual proclivity is available as a webcomic, and obviously there is a large proportion of high-quality gay comics on the Internet. One of the better titles was the popular manga-inspired series, Boy Meets Boy, by k. Sandra Fuhr, which ran for four years from september 2000. Nominated several times for the Web cartoonist’s choice award, it finally won in 2003.

  Another classic gay-themed strip was versatile cartoonist/editor Tim Fish’s Young Bottoms in Love on the Popimage website. Created in August 2002 as an online daily comic, Young Bottoms in Love examined gay romance from nearly every angle, with dozens of creators—gay and straight, amateur and professional—contributing stories, both funny and poignant. The impressive roster of artists included Paige braddock, Adam Dekraker, David Kelley, and curbsider Robert Kirby.

  When the strip was finally wrapped up four years later “…both Tim and I thought it would be amazing if we could convince Howard cruse to contribute the final strip,” said Popimage co-editor-in-chief, Ed Mathews. The result was Cruse’s six-page strip, My Hypnotist, which ensured the strip finished with a bang, rather than a whimper.

  Fish has since completed several printed projects, most notably his 550-page cavalcade of Boys graphic novel in 2006. Fish’s art style has developed to become an intriguing mixture of Image co-founder Erik Larsen and saucy‘50s gag cartoonist and Archie artist, Dan DeCarlo, and Cavalcade is serilized in Boston’s LGBT newspaper, Bay Windows.

  Another major gay writer is Chicago-based Dale Lazarov, who has produced numerous gay erotica including STICKY, drawn by Steve Maclsaac, which was published by Eros in 2005 and collected by Bruno Gmünder Verlag in 2006. Despite his standing as a quality writer of intelligent gay erotica, Lazarov confessed, “I secretely want to both write the ultimate art comix graphic novel, as well as a fondly remembered run on [DC Comics’] Legion of Super-Heroes.”

  His homoerotic fantasy strip collaboration with Delic Van Loond, Fancy, was serialized as a webcomic at Adultwebcomics.com, the online home of many great cartonists, including Jess Fink.

  Two scenes from Joe Philips’ online homoerotic animation, the House of Morecock. The short, humorous films—about a paranormal investigator, Jonas Morecock—were collected nto a graphic novel with new stories added.

  Steve Maclsaac, deliberately juxtaposed classic counter-pornography text with implicit imagery, making a sexually political statement in his self-published Mantras strip from Shirtlifter #0. Maclsaac is a gay online cartoonist who regularly posts stories on Adultwebcomics.com.

  Gay comix legend Howard Cruse wrote and drew My Hypnotist—the last strip to appear on the high quality, but sadly defunct, webcomic, Young Bottoms in Love.

  SEXYLOSERS.COM

  There are thousands of erotic comic websites, with the majority focusing on sensational art, depicting graphic scenes akin to Spanish and Japanese erotic comics. Typically, the most prevalent are hentai; and Japanese manga and anime have more sites than anyone else.

  Sexy Losers was a strip that was heavily inspired by manga styles and themes—as are many of the younger, new wave of comic creators. Launched in April 1999, and written and drawn by Clay, the title dealt with all manner of sexual peccadilloes. It took extreme sex situations and turned them on their head, deliberately handling them in a flip, off-hand manner. A good example of this is the ongoing theme of necrophilia, which both a father and son enjoy. Sexy Losers has had a longer run than most webcomics and has achieved enough of an audience to run on and off for nine years.

  Poonnet.com is a site run by various erotic artists; and styles and subject matters vary from she-males to celebrity parodies, but it predominately focuses on interracial sex. Another site, Dirtycomics.com, is a better than average site with the sexy, yet silly, Fiona’s Time Machine standing out, as the story of a woman trapped in history with a time-traveling dildo.

  New technologies have led to new art techniques, and the advent of software such as Poser and Maya has allowed artists to create three-dimensional figures, with realistic lighting and skin tones. While the art is of a distinctly varying quality, there is a tendency for technology to replace talent and storytelling. One of the biggest problems is that 3D figures tend to look cold and sterile, like much of the photographic pornography created today. Consequently, most of the strips lack the humor and warmth of their hand-drawn counterparts and are usually barren emotionless tableaux, which are about as erotic as two naked mannequins lying on top of each other.

  Saffyre Blue fights off a naked creature. Morpheus explained his reasons for using CGI graphics in his strips; “At the beginning it was mainly a time consideration. When creating hand-drawn art I have to pencil, ink, color, and letter and there’s ample scope at each stage to screw up the finished art and send you back to the start. With CGI you have the magic of the “undo” command… In many ways I consider the art of creating CGI strips to be akin to being a flm director—the artist creates the set, adds the cast, sets up lighting, moves the camera to get the best angle… just as the director does.”

  Online artist Morpheus’ feisty heroine, Saffyre Blue, finds herself at the mercy of a villain. “She is the result of my love for female warrior fantasy strips like Barbarella, Axa, and Druuna, but with a Heavy Metal-style twist and she popped into my head more or less fully
formed about 15 years ago.” However it wasn’t until he went online that he found the perfect medium.

  JESS FINK

  Jess Fink had always made erotic drawings in lush, long, curvaceous lines, so when one of her college professors told her about Eros Comix the New York School of Visual Arts graduate thought, “Hey, I want to make money doing comics!” She got in touch, and started working for the Seattle-based publisher in 2004. “As it turns out, you don’t really make all that much money doing it.”

  Fink successfully collaborated with writer Polly Frost on several strips and comics for Eros, and her beautiful full-color artwork has been featured in several anthologies, including Blowjob, Rear Entry, and culminating in the entire issue of Head #14 in 2006.

  Fink is refreshingly open and honest about her erotic comics output, and is distinctly unabashed. “Artists have this weird bias toward porno,” she says. “Sex is just as good a topic for art as anything.” Just like her parents’ generation of underground cartoonists, Fink was also inspired by the lewd Tijuana Bible mini-comics of the 1920s. “They’re just really, really dirty…Popeye has this humongous penis, and he has sex with Olive Oyl and it comes out her mouth. It’s great.”

  But it’s online where Fink shines the most, with her Dirty Limericks webcomic, appearing regularly on Adultwebcomics.com. These smutty and silly vignettes told in rhyming couplets recount a variety of sexcapades, including a woman pretending to be a man to sleep with gay boys and the occasional straight girl.