A short post on the very funny Tijuana Bible, Brilliant!

Hi All,
Just a quick post about the hilarious eight pagers called "Tijuana Bible's", often featuring movie starlette's and comic book characters in risqué situations and involving themselves in bawdy behaviour with members of the opposite sex.

These "two-by-fours" reached the peak of their popularity during the American Great Depression of the 1930's and continued till the 1960's and were very popular during the second world war. I assume to provide a type of funny and erotic form of entertainment. (I hope you can read the samples below)

 The wallet sized (2.5 x 4inches) "grey backs" eight panel comic strips were printed in black & white on cheap white paper. And used Characters to portray the dirty jokes at the time in picture-book form.

I apologise for my incapacity to explain in words how funny I found these little books, I laughed my socks off whilst reading them and admiring the......eh.........Artwork. I would suggest surfing the net and having a look at some of these hilarious cartoons.

 Enjoy your investigation and let me know what you find, and thank you to the underground comic book makers who produced slices of naughtiness for our dirty little minds.

Bye for now........and.......please leave a comment ;-)

Henry Miller - The Prodigal Son of American Erotic Literature.

Let's start with the predictable and move on from there, probably the best known erotic book associated with Henry Miller has to be "The Tropic of Cancer" which incidentally was published by Jack Kehane of Obelisk Press in 1935 (Obelisk is mentioned in an earlier very rushed post of mine......SORRY!!! ) and the cover was designed by a then very young Maurice Giorodias (cover shown below). Miller famously described this book as "a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Time, Love, Beauty." This was to be followed later by "Tropic of Capricorn". He took the inspiration from the circles he frequented at the time in Paris aged 39 and it contains humour, passion and spirituality. This is when experts say his career as a writer really began to take off.

Miller had what most would perceive as an unsatisfactory start to life, being part of a fractured family unit. He shared the beginning of his life with his hopeless Mother, Homosexual Father and his Sister who suffered from learning difficulties. His early works had such bawdy (I love that word) content that his works couldn't be printed in the US or the UK until the 1960's.
Some of his lesser known works to the general public "Whoroscope (1930)" written on his arrival to Paris where he set out on a tempestuous affair with Erotic Author Anais Nin, who actually paid for he first print of Tropic of Cancer. He then went on to produce among others, his trilogy of Sexus, Plexus, Nexus (1949-1960) all of which where said to have a lot of himself in them (tongue in cheek statement). Miller seemed to really enjoy women and weddings having been married 5 times with multiple liaison running parallel.
He left behind a legacy as a sexual innovator when he died in 1980 aged 88. His books helped open wider discussion on sexual issue's especially in the printed format. Henry was also a keen Watercolourist and left behind many pieces of art and books related to this genre.
Henry Miller lived a full life to which most of us can only aspire to, so to him we raise our glasses and on the chime of impact give thanks to this individuals foresight and literary efforts in the field of Erotica.
Thank you my friends, until next time.........

Please leave a comment or suggestion.