While obviously there have been comic books about sex in the United States since the beginning of the 20th Century, these comics were almost always simply Tijuana Bibles, childish attempts at drawing popular celebrities and comic characters in sexual situations to appeal to the lowest common denominator. When it comes to actual good comic books involving sex, the American comic book market has lagged well behind Europe and Japan, where comic books about sex are quite common.

However, as the years have gone by, there have been a number of good pieces of comic book erotica released from American comic book companies and that number has been growing steadily in recent years as the taboo element of these types of stories has begun to fade (although, again, not to the point where any of these comics would be safe to read at work). Here, then, are 20 great NSFW comic books from American creators and/or American comic book companies (in chronological order).

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35

Misadventures of Jane

This classic British comic went to a place few newspaper comic strips would ever dare follow

Norman Pett launched the comic strip, Jane’s Journal, the Diary of a Bright Young Thing, in 1932, as essentially a fairly standard “pretty girl” comic strip. It was very similar in tone to Chic Young’s iconic American comic strip, Blondie, as it followed the misadventures of a beautiful blonde woman who kept finding herself in embarrassing situations. However, while Blondie evolved into a domestic story about a husband and wife, and their children, Pett went a whole other direction with Jane.

In 1936, Pett began to have Jane find herself in situations where she would lose some clothes. It would all be within a PG level (maybe PG-13), but as attention grew from the audience to this new take on Jane (the strip was shortened to simply Jane, as the journal aspect was dropped), she showed more and more skin until she finally went fully naked in 1937. The Daily Mirror became more of a sensationalist newspaper, and it was fine with Jane being a racy comic, so Pett (and his assistants) leaned into the concept in a big way, as the strip was now really about wacky situations where Jane could get naked. The strip was a MASSIVE hit among soldiers during World War II. Pett even had Jane celebrate D-Day in 1944 via a fully nude strip (with no cheeky disguising of her nudity, like Pett would typically do). The strip ended in 1959 with Jane marrying her longtime beau.

34

Little Annie Fanny

Hugh Hefner’s admiration for Harvey Kurtzman led to this famous series

After creating Mad for EC Comics, Harvey Kurtzman left EC to create a humor magazine for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy line of magazines called Trump. The magazine failed very quickly due to Hefner’s cash problems. But Kurtzman kept pitching Hefner on features for Playboy and finally, Hefner agreed to publish a sex parody comic series within the pages of Playboy called Little Annie Fanny (a parody of Harold Gray’s famous classic comic strip, Little Orphan Annie).

Drawn by Kurtzman’s longtime collaborator, Will Elder, Little Annie Fanny followed the naively optimistic Fanny into various funny situations where she would invariably end up naked. The strip ran from 1962 to 1988, so Kurtzman was able to parody the entire sexual revolution as it happened. Little Annie Fanny was likely not as sharp as Kurtzman’s earliest satirical efforts, like Mad or Fanny‘s direct descendant, Goodman Beaver, but it was still a great comic by two comic book masters.

33

Sally Forth

Wallace Wood’s irascible sense of humor was spotlighted in this comic series

Wallace Wood was one of the most acclaimed comic book artists of the Silver Age, but he just was unable to just play along to be a superhero artist like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. Wood tried. He famously re-designed Daredevil, giving him his now iconic red costume, but Wood couldn’t deal with the idea of plotting and drawing a comic book, and only getting paid for the art on the comic. He argued with Stan Lee, and eventually he just left the company.

Wood was an amazing artist, but he also was a very funny writer, and his offbeat sense of humor (and his love for erotica) combined in Sally Forth, a comic strip that he wrote and drew for a few years in the early 1970s (along with his assistants, of course. Wood’s assistants did a lot of work for him during this period) in the Overseas Weekly, a tabloid designed for American soldiers overseas. Sally Forth would go on a number of over-the-top adventures, and she would frequently end up nude in the adventures. Soon before his death, Wood revisited Sally Forth for a series of pornographic stories in 1980.

32

Oh, Wicked Wanda

Where Little Annie Fanny walked, Wicked Wanda ran at high speeds

In 1969, novelist Frederic Mullally began a long-running character in the pages of Penthouse called Wicked Wanda. She would appear in prose stories, with illustrations by Brian Forbes. In 1973, Wanda made the move to comic stories in Penthouse (while maintaining her prose stories, as well), with artist Ron Embleton taking over art duties on the strip. Wanda was a man-hating lesbian who used an attractive young girl to give her father a heart attack, thus inheriting his estate.

She would then go on adventures around the world, with a time travel element being brought to the strip, as well. Wanda would have sex with men, and then toss them aside, with her true love being the young sexpot, Candyfloss. Mullaly tended to go harder with the satire in his strip as opposed to Little Annie Fanny, as the strip was a bit less clever, but got points for GOING for it constantly, which helped embolden other comic book companies at the time.

31

Indian Summer

Two masters of European comics delved into a dark tale of sexual mores in the early days of America

In the world of European comic books, there has long been a fascination with the early days of the United States of America, and it was that time period that led to the classic collaboration of Hugo Pratt and Milo Manara, two giants of the comic book field, on the graphic novel, Indian Summer, in 1983 (a translated edition has been printed in the U.S. by a few different publishers).

The story is set in the early days of colonial times, where a White woman is raped by two Native Americans. A nearby settler, who is from a family that had been ostracized from the larger local settlement, kills the two Native Americans, causing a ripple effect thar leads to bloodshed. Manara would soon become more interested in outright erotica, so it is notable seeing him working in a relatively restrained manner on this beauitfully drawn series.

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30

Ghita of Alizarr

Frank Thorne continued his Red Sonja-style adventures…just a lot more erotic

Frank Thorne was an accomplished comic book artist for a number of Dell Comics over the years, while also doing some comic strip work, as well. In 1963, he won the National Cartoonists Society award for his comic book work (and since 1963 was during the peaks of guys like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Wallace Wood, that’s really saying a lot). In 1976, Thorne took over as the artist on Marvel’s Red Sonja character in the pages of 1975’s Marvel Feature #2. Red Sonja was a beautiful warrior who was scantily clad in a chain metal bikini (which DID at least look really cool). When she received her own comic book series, Thorne was the artist on the book, drawing it for its entire run, which ended in 1979.

Thorne then promptly just went to Warren Publishing, and started drawing Ghita of Alizarr in the anthology 1994. Ghita was basically a version of Red Sonja who simply had sex a lot. Thorne was such a talented artist that these strips were still really interesting. Later, Thorne later released reprints of those early stories at other companies. Dave SIm named a parody character, Geet-A, in the pages of Cerebus after Ghita (as Cerebus was a Conan parody, so he felt it only right to work in a Red Sonja riff into his comic book, as well).

29

Omaha the Cat Dancer

Reed Waller and Kate Worley’s erotic soap opera had a large cast of interesting characters

Reed Waller was into the funny animal comic book scene in the 1970s when he a reader complained about the lack of “Adult” stories in the genre. Waller then creates the anthropomorphic erotic dancer (who was a cat), naqmed Omaha. Waller wrote and drew Omaha’s stories in a few different adult indie anthologies in the late 1970s, but she debuted in her own title eventually in the early 1980s.

At that point, Waller ran into writer’s block, so his girlfriend at the time, Kate Worley, stepped in, and she was so good that he just made her the main writer on the series. The strip was surprisingly SWEET for a book about sex. It was a true soap opera, filled with earnest, endearing characters (who would frequently just happen to have sex). The series ran for years, but since Worley and Waller broke up along the way, it was the end of the line for the comic. Sadly, both Waller and Worley ran into issues with cancer diagnoses, with Worley dying in 2004.

28

Click

Milo Manara told a dark tale of erotic mind control

Click is a dark erotic tale about a rich, but cold, woman, Claudia Cristiani, who falls prey to a scientist working for her rich husband. He places a device in her brain that, once implanted, merges with her brain, and thus A. no longer shows up on X-Rays, and B. Cannot be removed. The device works with a remote control that can be used to increase her sexual desire to the point where she loses all control, and will do anything to satisfy her sexual urges.

Naturally, this is an awful situation for Claudia, and she gets into a number of disturbing scenarios at the hands of the scientist. The device is seemingly lost at the end of the first volume, but it is found again in the second volume, by which point Claudia has become a respected journalist, so the man who discovers the device torments her some more. The final volume in the series takes place in South America, where Claudia is on assignment, and it is really only tangentially related to the first two volumes. It’s dark stuff, but Manara is certainly an accomplished storyteller.

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27

Xxxenophile

Phil Foglio’s acclaimed indie erotic series often had strange situations

XXXenophile was a comic book series that Phil Foglio wrote and drew with some of the best and brightest comic book artists of the late 1980s through 1995. The anthology series of sex stories always had a sense of the absurd mixed in. The comics were upbeat tales of sex, as Foglio noted he had no interest in writing any sort of problematic sex stories.

There was a lot of humor in the XXXenophile comics, but one of the biggest draws was that readers could very often feel the love in all the stories. The comics were clearly pornographic, but in an adorable, romantic way. It was also interesting to watch Foglio himself evolve as the series went on, moving beyond catering to the straight male gaze.

26

Butterscotch

Milo Manara has some fun with the idea of women having sex with an invisible man

It’s probably not unreasonable to suggest that, for as great as Milo Manara is as a comic book creator, even Manara would admit that there is a certain…if not FORMULA to his work, at the very least a certain recurring type of story idea that he excelled with, and one of those recurring concepts was the idea of taking a sexual fantasy and executing it in graphic detail.

In Click, it was the idea of being able to make a woman crave sex via a remote control unit in her brain. In Butterscotch (in the original French, Il profumo dell’invisibile), a man obsessed with a woman since they were both children comes up with the ability to turn himself invisible so that he can spy on her. He is discovered by the secretary of the woman (who is a cruel lady), and the secretary and the man end up in a series of sexual misadventures as she tries to prove his existence to everyone else, including her jerky boss. She dubs the man “Butterscotch” because the smell of the butterscotch candies that he eats are the only way she can tell he is nearby (well, until he starts having sex with her, of course).

25

Black Kiss

The sex and violence of Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss was shocking at the time

Black Kiss was a controversial comic book series that Howard Chaykin released in the late 1980s as a sort of response to the call for warning labels in comics at the time. Chaykin was the writer/artist of the popular American Flagg series. However, where that series would just hint at sex and violence, Black Kiss would go out of its way to depict both fully. This was a major shock in 1988, especially coming from such a creator as Chaykin.

The story of Black Kiss follows Cass Pollack, a jazz musician on the run after being accused of killing his wife and daughter. In exchange for an alibi, he agrees to locate a historic pornographic film from the Vatican’s porn library. As it turns out, the film is tied up in a ritualistic horror plot and there are many factions trying to get their hands on it, with Pollack caught in the middle.

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24

Little Ego

This adventurous story showed the power of dreams…well…sexy dreams, at least

Debuting in 1985, Little Ego was created by writer/artist Vittorio Giardino as not a parody of Little Nemo, per se, but essentially taking the concept of that iconic Winsor McCay story (about a little boy, Nemo, who travels to “Slumberland” when he sleeps, at which point he goes on wonderfuly creative adventures in his dreams), and twists it so that the lead character, Little Ego, instead finds herself in erotic situations in her dreams.

Since these are dreams, it allows Giardino to try all numbers of clever erotic scenarios, like one where Ego finds herself enthralled with her own reflection, who comes out of the mirror to have sex with…herself. This, in turn, turns on all of the OTHER reflective images of Ego in her apartment, and they all join into a bizarre self-orgy of Ego and her own reflections. Those are the sorts of outlandish sexual escapades Ego gets up to in this inventive classic erotic series.

23

Strips

Years before he wrote Uncanny X-Men, Chuck Austen delighted fans with this offbeat erotic series

Strips was an early comic book series written and drawn by Chuck Austen for Rip Off Press that started in 1989. It starred Zack Mackinerny, a talented comic strip creator for a college newspaper, and chronicled the sexual misadventures he and his friends got into on campus. The other main character is Kenna English, a girl who has a big crush on Zack but who can’t seem to get him to pay attention to her. He ends up dating (and having a lot of sex with) her roommate instead.

Zack is a bit of an oblivious jerk, but he’s a charming enough character and is difficult to hate. Additionally, Kenna is engaging enough for both of them. Sadly, Strips ended on a cliffhanger, preventing it from having a satisfying ending.

22

Birdland

The great Gilbert Hernandez helped launch Fantagraphics’ Eros Comix line

In 1990, Fantagraphics Books launched Eros Comix, a line of pornographic comic books and other erotic materials. To help promote this new endeavor, one of Fantagraphics’ most notable comic book creators of the 1980s, Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame, did a pornographic comic book miniseries for the line called Birdland.

Birdland starred a married lawyer who was having affairs with two strippers while his seemingly stuck-up wife was having sex with her patients as she hypnotized them. Meanwhile, his wife’s sister is also obsessed with him, but his brother — who is also sleeping with one of the strippers — is obsessed with his wife. The whole thing goes to a stranger level when aliens abduct the entire group and the series ends with a series of strange erotic stories. Birdland is a strange comic, but Hernandez is so talented that it still works.

21

Bondage Fairies

The first hit adult manga in the United States

Bondage Fairies was a manga series by Teruo Kakuta (credited as Kondom) about Pfil and Pamila, who are the two top Insect hunters for the Fairy Queen, bringing in rogue insects and animals, but, well, considering that this is in the “best adult comics” list, they keep running into scenarios that involve them having sex, and since their main targets are bugs and animals, well, those are mostly who end up having sex with them.

Kondom was a fine artist, and it is fascinating to see how this was a big hit when it was translated into English for the United States market. It was probably the first hit adult manga in the United States, and in fact, it was one of the earliest hit mangas PERIOD in the United States. Kondom would occasionally do educational material mixed in with all of the porn.

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20

Ironwood

This series was the first erotic sword and sorcery comic book

Like Birdland, Ironwood was one of the first entries in Fantagraphics’ Eros Comix line of books. Written and drawn by Bill Willingham, then best known for creating the independent superhero series, The Elementals (Willingham was inspired by his Eros Comix work to actually do an Elementals Sex Special), Ironwood was notable for being a sword and sorcery erotic comic book series, the novelty of which was used to promote the series at the time.

The series nominally starred Dave Dragavon, a young dragon still in human form as he had not yet grown into his dragon form, but really, the series was very mujch an ensemble series, with a variety of sword and sorcery archetypes thrown into intriguing situations filled with sex, but also a good deal of good humor.

19

Demi the Demoness

Demi the Demoness is Like a DC 1960s Humor Title…Only With Lots of Sex

SS Crompton grew up a big fan of DC’s humor titles in the 1960s, titles like The Inferior Five and Angel and the Ape, and so that sensibility informs his most famous creation, Demi the Demoness. Crompton was trying to draw some female characters to add to his portfolio (while trying to get comic book work in the late 1980s/early 1990s) and he began drawing what became a demoness, but he noticed that he sort of drew her CUTE more than imposing.

That led to the basic concept of Demi the Demoness, which is that she is a demon, but she was raised in the less scary part of hell, and as a result, she is a sweet demoness. After her home was attacked, she took shelter in another place, which gives her access to time and space, and she travels all over, encountering fascinating people and, of course, having a lot of sex. The character has been published by a number of companies over the years, but most famously as part of the Carnal Comics imprint, which started at Revolutionary Comics before the owner of that company, Todd Loren, was tragically murdered in 1992. Loren’s Editor-in-Chief, Jay Allen Sanford, took Carnal Comics to Re-Visionary Press in 1994, and Crompton’s Opus Graphics has been in charge since 2001. This makes Demi the Demoness one of the longest running erotic comic book characters of all-time!

18

Small Favors

Colleen Coover delivered the most adorable erotic comic book of all-time

Another comic book originally published by Eros Comix was Colleen Coover’s Small Favors. It starred a young woman named Annie and the shapeshifting sprite Nibbil, essentially Annie’s own personal sexy Jiminy Cricket. While Nibbil was assigned to be Annie’s personal conscience so that she would keep Annie from touching herself and having sexual fantasies all the time, Nibbil instead gladly joined in with Annie on all sorts of sexual misadventures.

Small Favors was collected in 2017 into one big hardcover by Oni Press, and it is truly the most adorable adult comic book that has ever existed. Dubbed by Coover as “Girly Porno,” Small Favors is a sex-positive fantasy adventure that is really more of a romance comic book about Annie and Nibbil’s relationship than anything else.

17

The Pro

Garth Ennis’ dark take on superheroes, made famous in The Boys, was visible early in The Pro

Garth Ennis is famously not much of a fan of superhero comic books, staying with more grounded characters like the Punisher. Many of his comic book work has involved making fun of superheroes, with perhaps his most famous example being Hitman and his most extended anti-superhero riff being The Boys. Ennis’s most audacious piece of superhero mockery has to be 2002’s The Pro, by Ennis and artists Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti.

The concept of The Pro is that a Watcher-analogue, the Viewer, gives a prostitute superpowers to see if she will become a superhero. She does end up becoming a superhero, of sorts, but does things her way, showing the hypocrisy of traditional supers. It’s a sharp rebuke of the superhero industry, but there is a good deal of heart mixed in with the graphic details, which is the case for all Ennis comic book stories, really.

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16

Djustine

The Twisted West has Plenty of Danger…and Also a Lot of Sex

A fascinating aspect of European comic books is how much they are often influenced by American pop culture, but in the case of Djustine, Enrico Teodorani is clearly inspired by a MULTITUDE of American pieces of popular culture, and he has decided to simply throw them all together into the same comic book, just with a lot of sex involved, as well.

You see, the setting of Djustine is “The Twisted West,” which is about a mixture of the WIld West with classic monsters, like vampires, demons, creatures of the Black Lagooon, etc. It’s just a bizarre combination of different genres, but the result is really engaging, to the point where you can easily remove the sex and the comic book works really well. The sex is just an extra aspect of the series. Djustine is a scantily clad gunslinger who fights demons constantly. Besides Teodarani himself, other artists on the series include Andrea Bulgarelli, Silvano Calligari, Antonio Conversano, Nik Guerra, and Enrique Badía Romero.