A Dirty Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

One-Handed Funny Books

By Rachel Edidin
February 23, 2009

I am pro-porn, in part because I am a staunch believer in freedom of the press and freedom of expression, but mostly because, to paraphrase Tom Lehrer, dirty books — especially dirty comic books — are fun. Nonetheless, I tend to be a picky pervert: I like my porn safe, sane, and consensual; well-drawn; diverse; well-written; queer; creative; and stocked with a few good laughs, because — let's face it — sex can be pretty silly.

The following comics are — at least as far as I'm concerned — the tip-top of the pornographic pantheon, one-handed reads to delight even the most cantankerous connoisseuse.

Small Favors, by Colleen Coover

Annie masturbates a lot — so much that, by the age of 21, she has already used up her lifetime allotment of masturbation. Her irate anthropomorphic conscience decides that enough is enough and assigns Annie a constant guard, Nibbil. Ostensibly present to keep Annie's thoughts and behavior pure, Nibbil soon decides that Annie's approach is much more fun, and the two embark on a series of supernatural Sapphic romps.

Writer and artist Colleen Coover subtitled Small Favors a "girly porno comic," and the series delivers. It may be little more than nonstop sexual adventures with occasional cursory nods to framing plot, but it's absolutely adorable — the sort of frolicsome fun that's as likely to elicit an "Aw" as an "Ooh."

Xxxenophile, by Phil Foglio

If my favorite porn comics have a single unifying feature, it's that they're unabashedly sex-positive, and none more so than Phil Foglio's Eisner Award-nominated Xxxenophile, which Foglio describes as "fun, happy, and VERY X-rated." The plots are awfully silly, but the buoyant enthusiasm of Foglio's characters is so genuine that it can't help but be contagious.

Xxxenophile's gimmick is that all the stories are nominally sci-fi or fantasy (generic as well as sexual), but with a few exceptions, the frame stories are pretty obviously secondary to the sex. It's great fun, but if worlds that are more than transparent premises for copulation are part of the turn-on, you might be better served by another title.

The Adventures of a Lesbian College Schoolgirl, by Petra Waldron and Jennifer Finch

This was one of the first porn comics I encountered and remains one of my favorites, for the expressive characters as much as for the slew of sex. High school student Petra (the "College" appellation is very clearly stuck on to make it very clear that the characters are all over eighteen, and the comic itself makes no bones about the fact that the school in question is not, in fact, college) is a lesbian student at an all-girl Catholic high school. Surrounded by girls — and cute young nuns — all day, Petra counters her sexual frustration with a colorful fantasy life — until the day she's assigned to tutor Jennifer, a new student with a few secrets of her own.

Lesbian College Schoolgirl is a terrific study in layers of fantasy — all the more so because its protagonists share the names of creators Petra Waldron and Jennifer Finch. Those nested fantasies serve the dual purpose of presenting plenty of sex in a wide range of contexts (although there's a lot of emphasis on a few specific kinks) and softening the "ick" factor of those of cartoon-Jennifer and Petra's exploits that would otherwise be unsafe enough to be an active turn-off (at least for me).

Vixxxen, by Luca Tarlazzi

Luca Tarlazzi's lush, realistic comic stars real-life Italian porn star Selen, her husband Fabio, and a bevy of friends and lovers. How much of the comic is based on Selen's life and films and how much stems from Tarlazzi's imagination, I have no idea, but the book is fun and unequivocally sexy.

In a medium in which plots function as little more than premises for
sex, it's really cool to see an erotic comic featuring a committed, open relationship. Selen and her husband Fabio both have other lovers, and the frank way in which they acknowledge desires and jealousies, and the genuineness of their affection for and commitment to each other will likely hold extra resonance for readers in similarly nontraditional relationships.

Colleen Coover — Colleen Coover's homepage and blog.
Xxxenophile — Phil Foglio's Xxxenophile.
Adventures of a Lesbian College Schoolgirl — Adventures of a Lesbian College Schoolgirl, at Last Gasp Books.
Luca Tarlazzi — Luca Tarlazzi's homepage (in Italian).