Adult Comics

The catch-all term adult comics typically denotes comic books, comic magazines, comic strips or graphic novels that are marketed either mainly or strictly towards adult (or mature) readers. This can be because they contain material that could be considered thematically inappropriate for children, including vulgarity, morally questionable actions, disturbing imagery, and sexually explicit material.

Adult comics can be defined as intended for audience of 16 years or older.

In English-speaking countries

Early days

Roger Sabin traces the history of adult comics back to the political cartoons published in broadsheets since the 19th century.Roger Sabin. Adult Comics: An Introduction (Taylor & Francis, 1993, , Routledge, 2005, ) p. 15 In the 1930s, there were clandestinely produced tijuana bibles – rectangular, eight page pamphlets with black printing on cheap white paper. The artwork ranged from excellent to utterly crude and the stories were explicit sexual escapades, usually featuring well known cartoon characters, political figures, or movie stars, without the subjects' consent.

Sold under the counter in places such as tobacco stores and burlesque houses, millions of Tijuana Bibles were sold at the height of their popularity in the 1930s. They went into a steep decline after World War II and by the mid-1950s only a small trickle of new product was still appearing on the market, mainly in the form of cheaply printed, poorly drawn and tasteless little eight pagers which sold for 10 cents each in run-down candy stores and gas stations, circulating mainly among delinquent teenagers.

Starting in 1932, Norman Pett drew a strip called '' Jane'' for the British ''Daily Mirror'' newspaper. The heroine would often find herself in awkward situations where she would lose her clothing for one reason or another. The strip was written to some extent for a military audience to boost the morale of troops away from home. Winston Churchill said that Jane was Britain's "secret weapon".

In the United States, pulp magazines such as Harry Donenfeld's ''Spicy Detective'' featured comics on heroines who lose their clothing, such as Adolphe Barreaux's ''Sally the Sleuth'' which debuted in 1934. Many of the early comic publishers got their start in the pulps with Donenfeld for instance going on to found DC Comics. Fiction House similarly started as a pulp magazine publisher, but in 1938, released '' Jumbo Comics'' featuring Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, the first of many scantily clad jungle girls. Fiction House comics routinely featured attractive women on the covers, a trend which later became referred to as ' good girl art.' In 1941, Quality Comics put out '' Police Comics'' featuring Phantom Lady, a scantily clad crime fighter. Fox Feature Syndicate eventually began publishing Phantom Lady where she was drawn by Matt Baker, one of the most famous 'good girl' artists. Milton Caniff started producing the comic strip '' Male Call'' in 1943, and Bill Ward came out with '' Torchy'' in 1944 featuring sexy heroines.

Pulp magazines were also known for their violence. The Shadow carried two guns for killing criminals, and Batman also wielded a gun from 1939 through 1944 before giving it up. Crime and horror comics were popular genres in the late 1940s and early 1950s with such titles as Lev Gleason Publications' '' Crime Does Not Pay,'' EC Comics' ''Crime Suspenstories,'' '' Crypt of Terror'', '' Tales From the Crypt'' and '' Vault of Horror'' all enjoying brief spells of interest. It is believed that EC had one of the best-selling lines at the time. Harvey Kurtzman was one of the key writers for EC, and artists such as Wally Wood or Al Williamson began to do research for each new story far beyond what had been seen in titles published up to that time.

In the 1950s Irving Klaw published a line of underground fetish and bondage comics by artists like Eric Stanton, John Willie, and Gene Bilbrew. These never achieved widespread popularity but were kept in print for many years, sold through Klaw's mail order catalog to the same customers who bought his bondage photographs of Bettie Page. Not quite obscene enough to warrant prosecution, they skirted the limits of legality by avoiding full frontal nudity in their depictions.

The Comics Code Authority

In 1954, a psychologist Dr. Fredric Wertham came out with a book ''Seduction of the Innocent'' that claimed that the rise in juvenile delinquency being reported in the news at the time was fueled by comic books. He claimed that Batman and Robin were encouraging homosexuality, and decried the bondage seen in Wonder Woman's comic book. EC Comics came under criticism for the graphic violence and gore seen in its crime and horror books. EC publisher William Gaines was called before a Senate committee to testify, but he remained defensive saying that he was already censoring the more extreme things from his books. Partly in order to avoid the government imposing a solution, the other major publishers banded together to form the Comics Code Authority which would screen comics before they went to press, and only allow the Code mark to appear if the comic passed their standards.

The Code was alarmingly strict. It barred publishers from using the words 'crime,' 'horror' or 'terror' in their titles, thus forcing EC to abandon some of their most popular titles. Police officers could not be portrayed in a negative light, and if a villain committed murder, he would have to be caught and punished by the end of the story. No mention was allowed of vampires, werewolves or zombies, another swipe at EC. Years later when Marvel introduced zombies into their books, they had to call them 'zuvembies' in order to pass the Code. In general, DC and Marvel were supportive of the Code, but EC struggled to cope with the new rules, and eventually abandoned most of their titles to focus on ''Mad Magazine'', which did not need Code approval.

The code also contained provisions against suggestive or salacious illustration, and required that females be drawn realistically without undue exposure. This was a knock at Fiction House's good girl art covers, and may have contributed to Fiction House's closure.

Magazines and comic strips

North American comic books tend to be around 7 by 10 inches in size. Magazines vary, but are usually larger. Comic books tended to have a Comic Code label marking them as suitable for children, while magazines had no such requirement. This led to magazines becoming one of the most common formats for adult comics.

''Playboy magazine'' first came out in 1953. It would feature single panel cartoons by artists such as Alberto Vargas, Archie Comics, Plastic Man creator Jack Cole, LeRoy Neiman and later Olivia De Berardinis and Dean Yeagle.

In the mid-1960s, ''Playboy magazine'' started including a multipage strip called ''Little Annie Fanny'' by EC alumni Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder with an occasional assist from artist Frank Frazetta. Annie had trouble keeping her clothes on, a trend seen also in the strips ''The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist'', Wallace Wood's ''Sally Forth'', and '' Penthouse''s ''Oh Wicked Wanda'' by Ron Embleton and Frederic Mullally. Penthouse would later put out a number of erotic comic magazines: ''Penthouse Comix'', ''Penthouse Men's Adventure'' and ''Penthouse Max'' with the likes of Adam Hughes contributing artwork.

From 1965, Warren Publishing started publishing two black and white magazines, ''Creepy'' and ''Eerie'', commissioning work from the artists who had worked on EC's horror line. Warren added ''Vampirella'' in 1969, and then the science fiction magazine titled ''1984'' (later ''1994'') starting in the year 1978. The large format of these titles meant that they could be sold with other magazines aimed at adults rather than displayed in comic racks where the child-oriented titles were found.

The publishers of the American humor magazine '' National Lampoon'' discovered the French adult magazine '' Métal hurlant'', and in 1977 started publishing '' Heavy Metal'' translating the work of Milo Manara, Caza, Vittorio Giardino, Jean-Claude Forest, Jean Giraud(a.k.a. Moebius) and Guido Crepax for an English audience. '' Heavy Metal'' also provided a forum for the work of American creators such as Richard Corben and Howard Chaykin.

In 1974, Larry Flynt came out with ''Hustler Magazine'', which featured a strip called ''Honey Hooker'' with art originally by James McQuade and later by Tom Garst. Starting in the early 1970s, McQuade drew a series of erotic graphic novels featuring the character Misty.

In 1983, Warren went bankrupt, but more recently, Dark Horse Comics has been reprinting some of Warren's old stories, and has revived the ''Creepy'' and ''Eerie'' magazines.

Underground comics

Adult comics continued underground in the late 1960s outside the umbrella of the CCA. The underground comics movement was spearheaded by creators such as Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Kim Deitch and Spain Rodriguez. Larry Welz appeared in the 1980s with his Cherry book, an underground-style erotic parody of Archie Comics, but these establishments were often at loggerheads with the police, sometimes making distribution difficult.

Independent publishers

In 1966, Wally Wood hit upon the idea of publishing his own comic, and selling it through comic book specialty shops. Recruiting star creators from among his friends, ''witzend'' featured one-off strips on a wide variety of themes by the likes of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Frank Frazetta, Gil Kane and Art Spiegelman.

Fantagraphics Books began in 1976, publishing the ''Comics Journal'' and later ''Amazing Heroes'' with text articles about the comics field, but they began publishing actual comics in 1982, notably '' Love and Rockets'' by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. In 1990, Fantagraphics established their Eros Comix imprint, reprinting titles by Wally Wood and Frank Thorne