TITLE    : Tijuana Bibles
STORYID  : tijuana-bibles
SUMMARY  : Early sex comics.
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2010-01-20
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |art|erotica|cartoon characters|fairy tale|satire|humor|politicians|movie stars|illustration|


Tijuana Bibles consisted of eight pages, more or less, of black-and-white or color drawings, often of mainstream comic strip characters, engaged in sexual behavior with one another.



Typically, each page was devoted to one panel, and the entire sequence of drawings told a simple, if relatively improbable, story. 



Although many of the characters in Tijuana Bibles would be unfamiliar to readers today, these same characters were popular during the heyday of these publications, and include Popeye the Sailor, Wimpy, Dagwood and Blondie, Archie Andrews and his girlfriends Betty and Veronica, Nancy and Sluggo, Barney Google, Mutt and Jeff, Maggie and Jiggs, Major Hoople, Dixie Dugan, Andy Gump, Terry and the Pirates, and Smiling Jack. 



Politicians and movie stars were also occasionally included among the cast of characters.



These publications were printed from the 1920's through the 1960's on cheap paper; most measured four inches by six inches.



Wesley Moore, Doc Rankin, and Joe Schuster are rumored to have been among the many anonymous artists who illustrated Tijuana Bibles.



One of the better plots is based upon a bet that a man makes with Barney Google as they drink beer in a tavern.



The man wagers Barney $100 that he cannot sexually satisfy Fifi the French maid.



"Fifi will kill you," an eavesdropper predicts, thereby suggesting her sexual prowess. 



Undaunted, Barney accepts the challenge, and the man who has wagered against him introduces Barney to Fifi, asking her to "entertain" Barney "for a few hours."



After he's fucked Fifi for a while, Barney asks what is wrong with her.



He's had sex with her for an hour, he says, and she hasn't grunted once.



She tells him that she isn't aware that he's even so much as penetrated her.



Although he finds it distasteful, Barney performs cunnilingus on Fifi while she masturbates him, hoping to satisfy her this way, but she merely says she's all right with the act if Barney enjoys it.



A hulking friend of Barney's named Sully walks in on the fornicating couple, apologizing for intruding, but Barney welcomes the big man, saying, "You're a life saver," and telling him to remove his trousers.



Sully fucks Fifi, Barney encouraging him: "Ye gods, Sully, ram it in and fuck like hell or we don't eat tonight." Barney continues to encourage Sully while Sully fucks Fifi.



Finally experiencing an orgasm, Fifi moans. 



Sully hides behind a curtain, as the man who'd bet that Barney couldn't satisfy Fifi admits, judging by Fifi's blissful lethargy, that Barney has, in fact, done so, winning the bet.



The moral of the story seems to be that size matters.



Besides spreads featuring the well-known comic strip characters of the day, Tijuana Bibles also depicted situational stories involving stock and stereotypical characters.



Often the titles of comics in this line indicate either the situation or the type of character that the story includes: The Shower (a woman discovers the joys of vibrators), The Nurse (a private nurse aids a male patient's at-home convalescence), The Doctor (a doctor cures a young woman's frigidity).



In The Doctor, a nurse advises a woman who is dressed simply but fashionably that "The doctor will see you now, miss."



Having removed her clothes, the patient describes her problem to the doctor: she's frigid.



As she lies on her back, upon the examination table, the physician asks her to place her feet in the stirrups, thinking, at the same time, that she has the biggest breasts he's ever seen.



The doctor examines, then masturbates, her, and she says that whatever he's doing to her feels "nice."



She sits up, sees that he is masturbating her, and becomes even more sexually excited.



She observes that he has an erection and asks him to fuck her.



He agrees to do so.



She masturbates him while he caresses her tits. 



Then, they fuck, the patient urging the doctor to "get on top" of her "and really go."



As he does so, she announces that she is "coming."



As he ejaculates into her pussy, he tells her that she will need to return "2 or 3 times a week to correct this little problem," and she readily agrees, smiling, as she asks whether they can also have sex again, now, to make up for last week's appointment, which didn't include the physician's treatment of her malady.



Occasionally, a Tijuana Bible might depict the sexual experiences of a fairy tale character, as Snow White does.



One of the seven dwarfs tells Snow White that they are tired of working for nothing; from now on, he says, she will have to "pay" for the dwarfs' services.



The others concur, telling her, "You're going to have to give us all a good fuck!"



Snow White is willing; as she opens the front of her blouse, revealing her tits, she tells them, "OK! OK! Don't panic, troops."



Doc demands to go first, and Snow White, looking worried, asks him to "take it kind of easy," as she hasn't had sex in "a while, with the Prince sleeping and all."



However, it's Doc who should worry: first his prick "falls asleep" on him, and then, masturbating him, Snow White pulls his cock completely off.



Meanwhile, Dopey, cock erect, taps Snow White on the back, asking whether it is his "turn yet." 



As Dopey tries to figure out what he is supposed to do with his erection, three of his peers service Snow White, one fucking her, another face-fucking her, and the third eating her pussy.



In the next panel, only one dwarf fucks Snow White, doggy style, as, looking back at him, over her shoulder, she observes, not too grammatically, "Wow! For such little dudes you sure got some enormous cocks!"



As she continues to be fucked, Snow White sucks another of the dwarfs, who ejaculates in her mouth, as a third admires her breasts.



Dopey, finally having figured out what to do with his cock, fucks Snow White, making quite an impression on her.



From now on, she says, she wants only him to fuck her with his "nice big prick."



However, at the same time, she masturbates another of the dwarfs.



As Dopey continues to fuck her, Snow White tends to Grumpy, chastising him for his impotence: "No wonder you're so damn grumpy. It won't even get hard enough for you to fuck."



As Dopey, now straddling Snow White's belly, ejaculates copiously in her face, she murmurs, "Oh, fuck that ol' Prince, anyway. He was a dumb fuck. But this Dopey is really far fucking out. Yum! Yum!"



During World War II, some Tijuana Bibles made a point of playing upon military men's patriotic sentiments.



In She Saw the World's Fair--and How!, a paramour, viewing his date's buttocks as she lies over an amusement park ride's car, tells her, "Your ass reminds me of the German pavilion," to which she relies, "That's and [sic] insult! I wouldn't let Hitler kiss my ass!" 



However, products of an age which was both more sexually repressive and naïve than our own, Tijuana Bibles vanished after World War II, to be replaced, it may be argued, during the 1960's by underground comics and, more recently, by Internet sex comics featuring contemporary comic book and comic strip, as well as animated television, characters such as Dennis the Menace, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Disney characters, Loony Tunes characters, Warner Brothers characters, superhero comic book characters, and others, mostly heterosexual, but also gay, lesbian, and transgender in nature.



The humor is more biting, the wit m ore satirical, today, as a rule, than it was during the day of the Tijuana Bible, but, otherwise, the spirit of these early sex comics remains much the same as it was almost a hundred years ago.



As King Solomon observes in the book of Ecclesiastes, "There is no new thing under the sun," it seems.

