By D. Scot Miller
BEST EROTIC COMICS 2009
Last Gasp, 1995
Edited by Greta Christina
The cover art by Junko Mizuno alone makes Last Gasp’s Best Erotic Comics 2009 worth the price of admission. His gothic-Sanrio-sex-kittens getting into all kinds of weird mischief, involving sleeping-spray and whips among other things, is just one example in this well-pieced and well-paced collection.
There’s something for everyone in this one, but I have my favorites:
Cephelapod Products weighs in with an homage to the bawdy “just for larfs” period of the 1940s and ’50s, and returns with the look and feel of the 60’s underground “Zapp” comic days that is so dead-on that I feel like I’m in the back of the record shop.
Toshios Saeki reaches even further back to early Japanese erotica to do that sexy double-entendre thing with the word “fantasy.” Saeki does the best tentacles in the biz, and he creates passionate embraces that make even the most supernatural seem like the most natural.
A long-time favorite of mine, Christy C. Road, brings “Reclaim Yourself: Revolution On A Battery Operated Phallus,” which it actually is. Whether it’s a bicycle or a buttplug, Road’s lines, color and emotion feel like liberation to me. Delicious, shameless sex is part of the revolution, better believe it. Even/especially when you’re by yourself.
Belasco’s Brothers of New Essex
In that same vein, Belasco (best known for his “Brothers Of New Essex” graphic novel) opens “Th’Floodgates,” the most poignant, concious, and healing story in the book. Comic book sex can be about sex as a healing energy of succor and an expression of love too. Who knew?
But it ain’t all love-taps in here. Best Erotic Comics 2009 is rough, soft, frightening, and soothing with each turn of the page. Whips, guns, pixies, paronoia, and perverison inter-mingle here, if the thunder don’t get you, the lightning will. Are these truly the best erotic comics 2009 had to offer? Hardly. With manga and web-based comics being published everyday, it’s time for Last Gasp to consider making 2010’s edition much, much bigger.