Adult comics

Adult comics are comic books, comic magazines, comic strips or graphic novels that contain content that appeals to adult readers.

Early days

Roger Sabin traces the history of adult comics back to the political cartoons published in broadsheets since the 19th century. In 1930's, 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 was sometimes also racist (Blacks were caricatured with huge lips and extruding eyes). Their stories were explicit sexual escapades usually featuring well known cartoon characters, political figures or movie stars (used without permission).

Sold under the counter in places like tobacco stores and burlesque houses, millions of the 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, gas stations, and schoolyards, circulating mainly among delinquent teenagers.