The medium of comics is not usually known for its eroticism. But since the advent of underground titles, slice of life drawings chronicle everything. Including sex. The Advocate takes a look at lusty scenes from underground comics: from the romantic, to the realistic, to the grotesque.
Kinkiest: Robert Crumb & Aline Kominsky's Self Loathing Comics
The queen and king of comics, Aline Kominsky and her husband Robert Crumb, have been airing their dirty (sometimes really dirty) laundry in comics since the '60s. Most telling of their deviant sexual fantasies are the comics they draw together. In this strip, from 1997, Robert and Aline each draw themselves in compromising and embarrassing sexual positions, proving that everything is fair game for comic material. And that old people can still have exciting sex.
Most Awkward: Jeffrey Brown's Unlikely
Through his scratchy drawings in the book alternately titled How I Lost My Virginity, Jeffrey Brown gives the audience an intimate look into his dysfunctional first relationship with a more experienced woman named Allyson. With moments that are both tender and completely embarrassing, Brown lays out his insecurities and awkward situations with abandon. The scene where he finally does lose it is the epitome of awkwardness, something rarely so readily admitted in any form of expression.
Creepiest: Charles Burns' Black Hole
Despite a mysterious and disfiguring STD going around the '70s suburb in Charles Burns' Black Hole, the characters sleep together, oblivious to the possible consequences.
Part sci-fi murder and part teen drama, the terrifying disease continues to spread. It causes characters to grow tails, shed their skin, and sometimes completely mars their faces.
But still, they continue to spread the disease. Scary.
Most Romantic: Craig Thompson's Blankets
Craig Thompson tells a wistful, nostalgic story of first love lost in his beautiful graphic novel, Blankets. As he struggles with religious guilt and is taken out of his shell by the sensual Raina, Thompson's expressive drawings chronicle their relationship's beginning and end. And the sex is beautiful. Really beautiful. Thompson elegantly traces the contours of the female body as well as the male, creating scenes that are not only romantic, but works of art.
Most Unappealing: Julie Doucet's My New York Diary
In the story "The First Time," Julie Doucet tells her cherry-popping story as a seventeen-year-old. The young Doucet and a friend head to a party full of aging, creepy drunks, and one of them takes her to his room to show her his paintings. You can guess what happens next. While the drawn-out scene is completely unappealing (the old, bearded hippie's ribs show through his chest as Julie lays there, bored), in the end it's empowering. Julie walks home grinning, saying, "I did it...I feel...free! Hey, I'm not a baby anymore."
Most Realistic: Jaime Hernandez' The Girl From H.O.P.P.E.R.
Throughout the Love and Rockets series (of which The Girl From H.O.P.P.E.R. is a part), brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez broke ground in the underground comics scene in the '80s by portraying both heterosexual and homosexual sex with their realistic plotlines and clean, visceral drawing style. The punk rock soap opera follows the lives of a series of mostly Latino characters, and is actually the comic that got independent comics publisher Fantagraphics started in the business.
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