by Tim Pilcher
UK UNDERGROUND SEX COMICS: GRAPHIXUS AND ANTONIO GHURA
In the UK the situation has been a little less overt than their Continental cousins, but by no means less important in the development of comics in general, regardless of whether erotic or not. With a long history of bawdy and saucy comic illustrators, from Thomas Rowlandson and James Gilray to Aubrey Beardsley and Donald McGill, its hardly surprising that the UK would develop it’s own underground comix scene. While not as large as the Californian scene, UK underground comix in the ‘70s were the seedbed for some of the greatest creators working in comics today, including Brian Bolland, Garry Leach, Dave Gibbons, John Higgins, and Bryan Talbot.
Robert Crumb’s influence stretched all the way from the San Francisco comix communes to the UK, encouraging British creators to be more sexually daring in their work. One for the frontrunners of this rising movement was Antonio Ghura. Inspired by the American romance comics of the ‘50s, and their UK counterparts, Ghura created Truly Amazing Love Stories in 1977. The comic’s cover featured a couple in a clinch, with the man exclaiming, “Oh Lord! I’ve just come in my pants!” Inside was the tale of the explicit seduction of young Jonathan by his Auntie Jean and, even more bizarrely, Bluebell the cow. Torn between the choice of incest and bestiality the man picks the former in this provocative, and farcical, parody. It was another six years before Ghura released #2 of Truly Amazing Love Stories, yet the years had not diminished his zeal for sexual content. Inside were two graphic gay love stories, Remember Rodney and I Lied for Love, which were unflinching in their non-sensational portrayal of anal and oral sex, making them extremely cutting edge for the period. The comic also featured Batman and Robin as a pair of twisted rapists in a one-page strip, fulfilling Dr. Frederic Wertham’s worst fears about superheroes.
But even Ghura managed to shock himself when he wrote and drew the strip I Loved a Sex Fiend, which attempted to make light of the Yorkshire Ripper case. After a sustained rape sequence, the attacker (Paul Rutcliffe, instead of real-life Peter Sutcliffe) is caught by the police and de-masked à la Scooby-Doo, with the weak caveat “Rape is no fun at all!” “I wanted to be outrageous,” the writer/artist remorsefully explained in Headpress #18. “Most people didn’t like it…Looking back at it, maybe I should have left it out.”
In 1978 Mal Burns produced the comic magazine anthology, Graphixus. It featured Brian Bolland, who paid homage to Winsor McCay with his sexual adventures of Little Nympho in Slumberland—just as Vittorio Giardino would 11 years later in Italy (Bolland’s strip was originally drawn in 1973). Little Nympho in Slumberland managed to alienate feminists and readers when the central protagonist appeared naked on the cover to #3. By today’s standards it looks pretty tame, but it certainly provoked many to write in and complain.
In the following issue of Graphixus (#4), Bolland also paid his dues to bondage artist supreme, John Willie, with his The Bizarre Weight Watchers’ Guide. The strip parodied Willie’s complex bondage art, with women tied to Heath Robinson-esque machines like “The Filly Sucker” with the pretence of losing weight. With such edgy material appearing in the underground comix, it was only a matter of time before the authorities started to take notice.
John Higgins’s art for the Zirk strip, Marooned, written by Pedro Henry (aka Steve Moore) that appeared in the Heavy Metal War Machine special in 1993. Higgins, like many British artists, got his first breaks in the UK fanzine and underground scene.
Garry Leach’s cover to graphixus #2, featuring his “erotik space fantasy” Succuba.
Brian Bolland’s pastiche/homage to John Willie’s classic Bizarre magazine. The strip appeared in graphixus #4, and Bolland is clearly aping Willie’s elongated art style. Curiously, that issue’s editorial stated that there was no sexual content inside. Bolland eventually drew mainstream superhero comics for US publishers like DC Comics.
UK UNDERGROUND SEX COMICS: THE NASTY TALES TRIAL
Just like their compatriots in the United States, Britain’s comic creators and publishers faced censorship, but mostly for reprinting US creators such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton.
The IT (International Times) was an alternative newspaper and a voice of counterculture alongside the renowned Oz magazine. Oz’s editors, Richard Neville, Jim Anderson, and Felix Dennis were charged with obscenity in 1971 with their infamous “School Kids Issue.” The art that got them into trouble was a collage created by 15-year-old schoolboy, Vivian Berger, which merged a children’s Rupert the Bear annual with Crumb’s sexually explicit comic strip, Eggs Ackley in the Land of the Vulture Demonesses, from Big Ass Comics. All three editors were found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in prison. However, their custodial sentences were overturned on appeal.
Meanwhile, IT helped finance a new comics anthology, Nasty Tales, in 1971, which featured the work of UK creators Edward Barker, Chris Welch, and others. In 1973 the offices were raided, all 275 copies of Nasty Tales #1 were seized and Paul Lewis, Edward Barker, and Mick and Joy Farren, were brought before the courts on charges of obscenity. The nine-day trial was farcical in places, with Barker’s drink/drug-addled, mumbling, semi-coherent testimony, and Joy’s bursting into tears, doing more harm than good. The defence argued that their reprinting of Crumb’s grand Opening of the Great Intercontinental Fuck-in and Orgy Riot cartoon was as a piece of important satire with famous writers like George Perry and Germaine Greer defending the cartoonist’s work. “Of all underground cartoonists I think Crumb is the best…Among comic strips and comic books this is rather better than most and a good deal less insidious in its effect upon public taste than Superman,” explained outspoken feminist greer. Judge Alan King-Hamilton declared in his summing up, “You may be surprised that anybody came forward to tell you that anything in this magazine has literary or artistic merit. But there you are. This world is full of surprises and it happened.” The defendants got another surprise when, amazingly, the entire Nasty Tales team were let off with a caution — although the reasons are spurious to say the least (one juror wanted to go home and another just thought the comic was “rubbish”).
The whole trial was summarized in the special edition, The Trials of Nasty Tales, with transcripts drawn by Dave Gibbons, and others. But the trial effectively killed the title dead, and with huge court fees to pay, and sales in general declining, Nasty Tales only lasted 7 issues.
But this wouldn’t be the last time that Robert Crumb’s artwork would be in the dock. Twenty-three years later, Knockabout Comics would have to go through exactly the same arguments all over again.
Chris Welch’s cult character, Ogoth, faces a similar fate to Trashman on the opposite page in Nasty Tales #3.
The covers to The Trials of Nasty Tales (cover by Dave Gibbons); #7 with the warning: “Strong stomached adults only;” and #5, which reprinted Greg Irons’ classic anti-Vietnam war strip, The legion of Charlies.
Spain Rodriguez’s Trashman was reprinted in the UK’s Nasty Tales. Here the artist turns the sexual tables on his eponymous hero by having him sexually used by neo-feminists.
UK SCENE: KNOCKABOUT VS. CUSTOMS
The biggest and most successful underground publisher to emerge from the UK in the ‘70s was Knockabout Comics. It was set up by Tony and Carol Bennett after the demise of the former’s combined publishing house, distribution network, and commune, Unicorn, in 1975. It began by publishing Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers which helped clear Bennett’s debts.
As they expanded their range of titles, they included the work of Hunt Emerson and Mike Matthews, as well as many other leading artists. “At Knockabout, our books are only sold to adults, or if younger people read them they are likely to be growing up twisted anyhow,” explained Tony Bennett, somewhat cavalierly.
In July, 1982 the Obscene Publications Squad seized 75 titles, including Dope Comix, Cocaine Comix, and Antonio Ghura’s Amazing Love Stories. In May, 1983 Knockabout endured a long trial at the Central Criminal Court (The Old Bailey) in London under the Obscene
Publications Act, as to whether drug references in comics should be allowed, and whether such references would “corrupt and deprave.” They were acquitted on all charges and this enabled a certain liberalization of comics, cannabis-related books, and the UK’s shops selling such material. But the court case took its toll on Knockabout for years and it wasn’t “worth it financially, or for all the worry and hassle, but certainly I would do it again if I had to,” said a defiant Tony Bennett.
In order to recoup their court costs of nearly £7,000, the publishers released the Bumper Knockabout Trial Special hardcover in 1984, featuring donated work by Alan Moore, Hunt Emerson, political newspaper cartoonist Steve Bell, Bryan Talbot, and Melinda Gebbie.
But the authorities weren’t going to let the maverick publisher off so easily and they didn’t like losing. They saw their chance for revenge in 1996 when the British Customs and Excise department seized Knockabout’s imports of Robert Crumb’s My Trouble with Women collection. Despite having a previous 1988 letter from Customs stating that Knockabout could import the book, Tony Bennett had to defend the seemingly incongruous (to the Government) mix of comics and explicit sexual imagery to the courts. “There is certainly a perception in Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world that comics are for kids…Comics may be ephemeral and ‘low art’ but every newspaper carries comic strips, many of which are aimed solely at an adult readership, although I suspect that quite a lot of those adult readers might be shocked at what is inside the covers of many modern comic books,” Bennett mused 10 years after the case.
Fellow publisher, comics historian, and author, Paul Gravett, was called in as a character witness for the defense — explaining how Crumb was simply following in the long tradition of Thomas Rowlandson and James Gilray. Andrew Bird, who represented Customs and Excise, bizarrely stated, “The artistic merit of these items is wholly irrelevant to deciding whether they are obscene.” Tony Bennett recalled, “We won this overwhelmingly…and Customs were kind enough to write to me after the case setting out a list of what sex acts might be shown in comics. I haven’t actually framed it, but it is a precious document.” The courts awarded legal costs of £6,000 to Knockabout, and their defense lawyer, geoffrey Robertson, declared: “This customs decision would have put at risk all the underground art of the ‘60s and we were very happy to put a stop to any such trend.”
“The agencies of the government that deal with censorship use a somewhat heavy-handed economic weapon by seizing goods and then taking a long time to bring them to trial, and even when the defendant is acquitted there is no compensation for loss of business. Before our big trial in the ‘80s the police had many of our books for nearly three years,” said Bennett.
However, the cases did push the issue of censorship to the fore, particularly in relation to sequential art and Bennett concedes, “Censorship is not nearly so bad [these days] partly due to the successful results of some of our own battles with HM Customs and the Obscene Publications Branch…Without intending to, at the time we helped to change the law, or at least the way the law is used.”
Pages and the cover to the Knockabout edition of Robert Crumb’s My Trouble with Women, which caused the publisher problems with customs in 1996.
Knockabout #4, “The Obscene Issue,” featured a cover by Hunt Emerson.
The Knockabout Trial Special was a fundraiser special to help pay for the publisher’s legal fees and featured work by Alan Moore and political cartoonist, Steve Bell.
HUNT EMERSON
Britain’s less perverted answer to Robert Crumb was the equally talented Hunt Emerson, who was born in Newcastle in 1952. After moving to the UK’s second-largest city, Birmingham, to study at the Art College he co-founded the Birmingham Arts Lab’s comics division in 1972. Their first publication was Large Cow Comix, featuring mostly work by Emerson. The artist was inspired by underground comics by Gilbert Shelton, Crumb, and the like, which he bought from Carol Bennett, who was running a “head shop” in Birmingham at the time.
Emerson adapted D.H. Lawrence’s infamous erotic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1986, 26 years after the obscenity trial that finally saw the book published legally in the UK. The cover of Emerson’s graphic novel even warned “Not for sale to wives or servants,” a dig at the failed — and justly ridiculed — chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, who asked in court if it were the kind of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read.” In typical Emerson style, he tempers the lusty ruttings of Mellors, the gamekeeper, and Lady Chatterley with sight gags and comedic moments.
Emerson’s next foray into the world of erotica was his 1993 adaptation of Casanova’s Last Stand. Featuring the aging lothario, this fast and loose adaptation of the writer’s autobiography is simultaneously sexy and silly, and as Casanova wrote in 1791, “I am writing my life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.” He would have surely approved of Emerson’s take on his work. The graphic novel was feted by critics and it appears on the French National Library’s website. But despite its critical success, Casanova’s Last Stand only sold about half of its initial 5,000-copy print run in 14 years, according to Emerson.
In 2000, Emerson was named as one of the 75 European Masters of Cartooning of the 20th Century by the Centre Nationale de la Bande Dessinee et de I’Image, (CNBDI) in Angouleme, France.
Emerson continued adapting great literary classics, such as Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and most recently Dante’s Inferno, but his contribution to erotic sequential art didn’t finish with just two graphic novels.
A tender moment between Mellors and Lady Chatterley.
Hunt Emerson’s cover to his 1986 adaptation of lady Chatterley’s Lover.
The cover to the Casanova’s last Stand graphic novel.
Several scenes from Lady Chatterley’s Lover revealing a candid, yet romantic story. As two fish comment, “A filthy sexual act!” “Nope — a great work of literature.”
Emerson cleverly uses visual symbolism to indicate Lady Chatterley’s orgasm, and reveals his underground comix roots in the process.
BRITISH MEN’S MAGAZINES: MEN ONLY, FIESTA, AND FIRKIN THE CAT
Emerson teamed up with writer Tym Manley in 1981 for their strip Firkin the Cat, which was created for the top-shelf men’s magazine, Fiesta. Manley was a regular contributor to men’s magazines, writing for Club as far back as January, 1980. Firkin was indicative of how many British creators viewed erotic comics, full of goofy gags and observations on the ludicrousness of humans in their eternal pursuit to get their rocks off. Firkin acted as an observer and commentator on the endless bizarre sexual peccadilloes that Manley and Emerson shone their satirical spotlight on. “We like to point out to people that all the Firkin stories are closely based on personal research,” joked the cartoonist. “The Firkin comics are a debunking view of the sex industries, if they’re anything, but hey, they’re only bloody comic strips after all!”
“When I first started doing Firkin I used to get trouble from some of my women friends, but that was at a time when feminism was very militant anyway,” said Emerson in an interview in 2007. “These days nobody cares very much. Most people I know don’t see my work at all, whether it’s Fiesta work or any other. In a world where erotic magazines exist, Fiesta is one of the less virulent ones.”
Apart from Firkin, British men’s magazines haven’t had quite the eminent illustrations as their US cousins, such as Playboy and Penthouse — although the latter did run O, Wicked Wanda by Frederic Mullally and Ron Embleton in the UK edition. In 2006 Men Only magazine started running Brit Starr, a blonde wannabe-starlet who will have sex with anyone or anything to get those column inches or her face on the news. Written by John A. Short and drawn by Gabrielle Noble, the monthly strip is a satire on society’s celebrity-obsessed culture, where fame is the only thing that counts, even if it costs you your dignity. Short and Noble had previously contributed to Eros Comix numerous specialty sex anthologies, including Head (cunnilingus), Rear Entry (anal sex),
Dildo (sex toys), and Pee Soup (watersports), and Brit Starr continues the tradition of blatantly pornographic comics.
Bearded writer Tym Manley and bespectled artist Hunt Emerson guest star in their own Firkin the Cat strip.
Firkin the Cat’s constant dismay at human’s sexual antics has appeared in Fiesta for over 27 years.
John A. Short and Gabrielle Noble’s Brit Starr from the pages of Men Only — the men’s top shelf magazine.
LYNN PAULA RUSSELL
One of the UK’s lesser-known, but equally important, erotic sequential artists is Lynn Paula Russell. No stranger to the adult entertainment business, Russell had a successful career as an adult movie actress in the ‘70s/’80s under the nom de sexe, Paula Meadows. She went on to edit Fessée, a British spanking/corporal punishment (CP) magazine, published by Janus. Russell’s first professional illustration work was when she was 27, drawing a children’s book, Beyond the Midnight Mountains, written by her husband, Frank Charles. She also painted portraits of fellow West End theater actors and other personalities.
While many of her illustrations graced the pages and covers of Fessée, it wasn’t until 1990 when she drew her first sequential strip. “Fellow erotic artist Erich von Götha put me in touch with a publisher in Paris who set me going on strip cartoons. I was completely new to it and had to evolve my own way of telling a story. Aided by my writer husband, I decided to use my own experiences as a starting point to construct a story line set in the 1920s,” explained a candid Russell. “It was called Sophisticated Ladies. Obviously the situations were different from those in my real life, but the central character reflected my own wonderment and sense of adventure as I set out on a voyage of discovery into the S&M world, back in my early thirties.”