Celebrating the Unpopular Arts
 

All right, let’s talk about Penthouse Comics #1, shall we?

A few weeks ago, Penthouse Comics #1 came out, and I decided to pick it up. Let’s do some bullet points to take a look, ok? That’s always fun!

  • This cover is by Elia Bonetti. It’s a pretty good cover, but it’s not necessarily the one I wanted.  I didn’t get this the week it came out, and by the time I did, this was the only one left.  It’s still a pretty good one, though.
  • The dimensions of this magazine are nice – bigger than a regular comic, of course, and I’m still flabbergasted that DC and Marvel don’t do more things like this.  DC has Black Label, which are nice, big comics, and I hope that imprint is doing well, but who knows.  This is a nice magazine – glossy cover, nice paper stock that isn’t glossy but isn’t rough, either, 96 pages long for $9.99, and lots of comics.  If Penthouse can do something like this, why DC and Marvel can’t try it, I don’t know.
  • Non-comics stuff: There’s a word search of Female Adult Movie Performers, for those of you who know about those kinds of things.  I’m not one of them.  There’s a list of the most expensive adult movies ever made – yes, Caligula is #1 – and a brief essay about the most successful adult film franchise ever.  There’s also a pictorial at the end of Sania Mallory, who gets quite nekkid, don’t you worry about it.  And there’s an editorial about AI.
  • We’re a family blog!
  • The AI editorial is interesting.  Penthouse commissioned artists for covers, trying for a mix of established artists and up-and-comers, and in the process, they commissioned a cover done with AI.  They decided to run it, mainly so they could do an editorial about it!  They reached out to the person who created the piece, and they reprint their justification, and it’s not the worst thing in the world.  However, they also point out that they want to give work to humans, and copyright issues are a thing, as well.  They get some testimonials from actual artists, and naturally, they’re not big fans of AI.
  • What cracks me up about Penthouse kind of getting on its high horse about AI is that I can’t believe they haven’t been airbrushing their models for years.  Maybe they say they haven’t, but I don’t believe that for a second.
  • The comics are very European, which isn’t too surprising, I guess.  Europeans seem more attuned to shorter pieces of longer narratives, so they’re more used to anthologies, and Europeans, of course, dig the sexytimes, so Penthouse is not a bad place for them.  The comics are also … just ok.  Not bad, of course, but fairly decent.  Also: less nudity than you might think!
  • The first story is by Jean Dufaux and Guillem March, and March is the biggest name in the book, so that’s the draw, a bit.  It’s part one, and it’s a typical non-DC March book, in that there are many gorgeous people doing sexy things.  A woman goes to a live sex show and recruits the hot dude in the act for a movie, and the dude later bangs the daughter of whom I can only assume is a gangster, so we’ll see where that goes.  The art is painfully beautiful – March draws wonderful-looking people, of course, but the final two pages of the chapter, which is set in a garden restaurant, are simply stunning.
  • The second story, by Steve D and Jef, is not bad.  Two non-white women go to a white supremacist bar and cause trouble, and in the middle there’s a flashback to their time in Afghanistan.  It feels like a complete story, but it could also continue if the creators so desire.  The art is vaguely Jason Pearson-esque, and the layouts are pretty neat.  The story is a bit wonky, because it’s unclear what the women are actually doing, but it’s not bad.
  • Stephen Desberg and Alain Queireix bring us a story … which is very weird.  It takes place in the early 1960s, and it begins with a woman breaking into a house, but she gets caught by a cop outside who then lets her go.  We jump back two years, and the same cop is investigating a serial killer who poses his victims like centerfolds and labels them as “Miss January,” “Miss February,” etc.  Meanwhile, the thief – who’s not yet a thief – is recovering from a rape, but it’s very vague about what happened.  She has lost her hearing, and she hires a female private detective to find the man who did it.  There’s a lot going on in this story – it’s the longest in the magazine, at 23 pages – but it’s kind of all over the place.  How long will it run?  Beats me.  It’s very nice-looking, though.
  • There’s an adaptation of “I Spit On Your Grave” next by a bunch of listed creators.  I’ve never seen the movie, but this doesn’t seem like anything like it.  A dude moves to a small town and goes to work in a bookstore, and he meets some hot young people at a diner and goes out to the lake with them and they get nekkid (not just women, either). Our protagonist narrates that he has sex with the girls – there are a few of them – and he says he has to stay clear-headed, which sounds ominous.  It’s an intriguing beginning, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the original story, unless I’m way off.

So, it’s a nice package. Four long-ish chapters of stories, only one of which might be completely self-contained, by some good creators. None of the stories are mind-blowing, but they’re good, solid stories. They’re definitely for “adults,” meaning they’re not shy about nudity and sex, even if they’re not drenched in sex. They don’t shy away from “adult” things, and they don’t treat them coyly, which is nice. We can handle it, people!

I’m probably going to pick up issue #2, if my retailer gets it. I didn’t pre-order it, so it’s not guaranteed that I’ll be able to get a copy, but I’m usually at my store early enough that I can get it before it sells out. It’s a nice package, it’s a decent price, and the stories are pretty keen. Now, if Penthouse would just collect their old comics, back when they were “comix,” then we’ll have something!

7 Comments

  1. Jeff Nettleton

    That last one sounds a bit like a harder-edged, less fetishy homage to Franco Saudelli’s The Blonde, though it could be just about any female thief, in a catsuit.

  2. I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at when you compare airbrushing a photograph to using generative AI. The most obvious difference is that, in the former case, the photographer, the model, and the airbrush artist all GET PAID.

    1. Greg Burgas

      Yeah, that analogy doesn’t work as I hoped. I was simply thinking of the uncanny valley-ness of AI art compared to airbrushing and Photoshopping, but it’s not a good comparison. Sorry about that. I occasionally get over my skis a bit too much! 🙂

  3. This intrigues me (purely on an intellectual level, you understand!) and raises a few points: * The cover seems to market the publication towards the Heavy Metal/Hurlant crowd: logical.
    * This oldie – same age as you, Greg – remembers when nudie comix were in vogue: Leather & Lace, Glenn Danzig’s output, Fanto’s adult line, as the reading age grew up 1980s onwards in the direct market/comic shop era, censors/CCA were losing their tight grip, Vertigo’s ‘suggested for mature readers’, and so on.
    Which has always puzzled me. By then (1990s) ‘pron’ mags were decades old, VHS was available, the internet was around the corner. Why plump for drawn erotica, when you can watch um, you know REAL people, um, doing it? Discuss.
    * March seems an obvious choice: a natural heir to Manara, Crepax & co (sorry I don’t know any other names, he says coyly)? I remember reading about the Catwoman hoohah, what ten years ago, now?
    * “Paper stock that isn’t glossy but isn’t rough” – so like old Watchmen/Marvel Fanfare stock (Baxter/Mando?) or a step up from it?
    * Didn’t know DC Black Label was oversized.
    * “Two non-white women go to a white supremacist bar” sounds like a feedline to a twisted joke.

    1. “Why plump for drawn erotica, when you can watch um, you know REAL people, um, doing it? Discuss.”

      By that logic, why read comics at all, in any genre? “Live action” is not inherently superior to drawn art.

    2. Greg Burgas

      Pete: I’m not sure about the paper – I didn’t read either Watchmen or Marvel Fanfare in single issues, so I’m unfamiliar with the original paper they were printed on. It’s not quite as glossy as I think Marvel Fanfare was on – it doesn’t reflect light as well, but it’s not coarse at all. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.

      Most of the Black Label books have been bigger, dimension-wise, than regular comics. I think a few have been just standard size, but it seems like the vast majority are bigger.

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