The Tijuana Bibles Hardcover Vol. 1
By various anonymous artists; edited by Michael Dowers

In all its many guises, sex has been around for a long time. Back in the 1930s it was these little eight-page sex comics that became the talk of men's clubs, bars and some of the rougher workplaces. Famous Sunday-funnies cartoon characters were the earliest, and most popular, targets of these XXX-rated parodies; a parade of Hollywood actors and actresses madly copulating in a wide variety of positions soon followed. These "Tijuana Bibles" were so popular in their day that fans anxiously awaited new releases; men and boys got a genuine education when they realized there was more than one position that could be used to have sex. As the years went on, pornography evolved into men's girlie magazines, and then today's adult film industry; one look at these sexy, silly little comics will have you hankering for the good ol' days.

This fat hardcover volume collects all of Vols. 1-3 and most of Vol. 4 of the original Tijuana Bibles softcover series. Like those volumes, this book features a new original cover illustration by Pat Moriarity. This volume also includes comics historian R.C. Harvey's introductory essay "Getting Our Pornograph Fixed."

520-page black & white 5.25” x 7.75” hardcover • $35.00
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Now available for preview and pre-order: The Tijuana Bibles: America's Forgotten Comic Strips Hardcover Vol. 1, a fat little hardcover compiling the original Vols. 1-4 in Eros Comix's reprints of the satirical, XXX-rated sex comics of the 1930s. This book is scheduled to be in stock in mid-February and in stores approximately 4 weeks later.

View a brief photo slideshow preview embedded above. Click here if it is not visible, and/or to view it larger in a new window; there, Flickr users with safety filters set to "moderate" or higher will be able to view additional, R-rated images (including the front and back covers).

• Newsarama talks to Greg Sadowski, editor of our forthcoming anthology of early Golden Age superhero stories Supermen! (with a bonus deleted story)

• Dick Hyacinth's best-of-the-year long list includes his thoughts on a full baker's dozen of our 2008 releases

• The River Cities' Reader includes Robert Pollard's Town of Mirrors in its holiday recommendations of rock-related coffee table books

• At Comics Comics, Frank Santoro rediscovers an Eros Comix classic from the 1990s

We're unleashing a torrent of raunchy comic strips and erudite comics scholarship on comic shops across the U.S. this week, with the following titles scheduled to arrive:

• Comics Are for Idiots!: Blecky Yuckerella Vol. 3 by Johnny Ryan
• Rocky Vol. 2: Strictly Business by Martin Kellerman
• The Tijuana Bibles Vol. 9
• The Comics Journal #294

As always, we've got more information and previews at the links above for your perusal.

(And if I might be allowed a non-Fantagraphics recommendation this week: Kevin Huizenga's Fight or Run #1 from Picturebox CORRECTION Buenaventura [dammit, sorry Alvin]. If you liked the opening sequence of Ganges #2, get this.)

Now available on Fantagraphics.com: the popular long-running series from Eros Comix, The Tijuana Bibles: America's Forgotten Comic Strips, including the brand-new Volume 9 (shown above) and past volumes #2 and 5-8! (Click here to browse the full list.) This series, edited by Michael Dowers, collects the hard-to-find comics booklets produced mainly in the 1930s that feature the most popular comic strip characters and media personalities of the day in sexually-explicit and outrageously satirical situations. These taboo-busting pamphlets were the original "underground" comix, and this reprint series is of interest to nostalgia buffs, connoisseurs of vintage erotica, and anyone else who likes fun, dirty stories. Each volume features snappy original cover art by Pat Moriarity.

Don't let these people fool you to believe they have any affiliation with Eros Comix.