Tijuana bible

Final page of the Tijuana bible Chris Crusty, which borrowed the syndicated comic strip character Chris Crusty created by Bill Conselman and Charles Plumb for a topper strip which ran above their Ella Cinders. To compare the knock-off Chris Crusty with the original, see Potrzebie.

Tijuana bibles (also known as bluesies, eight-pagers, gray-backs, Jiggs-and-Maggie books, jo-jo books, Tillie-and-Mac books, and two-by-fours,^[1][2]) were pornographic comic books produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Their popularity peaked during the Great Depression era. The typical "bible" was an 8-panel comic strip in a wallet-size 2.5×4 inch format (approximately 7x10.5 cm) with black print on cheap white paper and running eight pages in length. In most cases the artists, writers, and publishers of these are unknown. The quality of the artwork varied widely. The subjects are explicit sexual escapades usually featuring well known newspaper comic strip characters, political figures, or movie stars, invariably used without permission. Tijuana bibles repeated ethnic stereotypes found in popular culture at the time.^[3]

History

People distributed Tijuana bibles "under the counter" in places such as schools, garages, cigar stores, burlesque houses, and barber shops as well as from the hatches of station wagons and from persons selling them on the street. The term "Tijuana bibles" refers to the apocryphal belief that they were manufactured and smuggled across the border from Tijuana, Mexico.

Spiegelman says that records of prosecutions against publishers and artists for making Tijuana bibles do not seem to exist; the cartoonist added that on occasion authorities seized shipments and people selling Tijuana bibles. According to Spiegelman, it's not clear whether mom and pop outfits or organized crime created Tijuana bibles. Some sources have suggested that they were created in the back rooms of a few rare book shops which sold erotica under the counter in New York City.^[4] In some senses, Tijuana bibles were the first underground comix. They also featured original material at a time when legitimate American comic books, typically, still reprinted material from newspaper strips. After World War II, the popularity of the Tijuana bible declined.^[1]

Little is known about the anonymous artists who produced the Tijuana bibles. Wesley Morse (who later went on to draw Bazooka Joe) is believed to have drawn many of those appearing shortly before WWII, most notably several titles inspired by the 1939 World's Fair.^[5] A number of books have alleged that the freelance cartoonist Doc Rankin might have been the creator of numerous Tijuana bibles in the 1930s, although this remains unproven.^[3] Collectors have assigned names to several anonymous artists with recognizable styles: "Mr. Prolific" (the creator of the "Adventures of a Fuller Brush Man" series, sometimes said to have been Rankin), "Mr. Dyslexic" (a clumsy, semi-literate artist who produced a number of titles in the postwar period, some with political content), "Blackjack", whose work sometimes resembled linoleum block prints, and "Artist No. 4", an early and witty creator of the 1930s who rivaled Mr. Prolific in talent, popularity and productivity^[6] Some observers believe that Mr. Prolific and No. 2 were in fact the same artist working in two different styles to vary his output. The byline "Directed by Elmer Zilch" which appears on scores of early Tijuana bibles appears to have been primarily a pseudonym for Mr. Prolific, although other artists may have employed it as well. The name "Elmer Zilch" referred to a fictional character who was the mascot of the humor magazine Ballyhoo.^[7]

Joe Shuster illustrated a Tijuana-bible-styled erotic work called Nights of Horror in the early 1950s; his male characters are strongly reminiscent of Superman and some of his female characters resemble Lois Lane.^[8][9]

Most Tijuana bibles were obscene parodies of popular newspaper comic strips of the day, like "Blondie", "Barney Google", "Moon Mullins", "Popeye", "Tillie and Mac", "Boots", "Dick Tracy", "L'il Orphan Annie", "Betty Boop", "Dixie Dugan", "Flash Gordon", and "Mutt and Jeff". Others made use of characters based on popular movie stars and sports stars of the day, like Mae West and Joe Louis, sometimes with names thinly changed to (presumably) avoid libel. Before the war almost all the stories were humorous and frequently were retellings in comic strip form of well-known dirty jokes that had been making the rounds for decades.

The total number of distinct stories produced is unknown but has been estimated by Art Spiegelman to be between 700 and 1000. These were endlessly reprinted, redrawn, and pirated, with nearly illegible nth-generation copies circulating decades after the originals were first issued.

In addition to the 8-pagers there were also the more expensive "16-pagers", printed in a larger page size with more pages, and usually more carefully drawn and better printed. These were high-priced and less common than the 8-pagers but showcased the artists' best work.

The scale on which Tijuana bibles were produced can be gauged from the large hauls announced in police seizures. In one November, 1942 raid by FBI agent P.E. Foxworth and his men on a New York City warehouse and a printing plant in the South Bronx, 8 million bibles were reported seized, and small time businessmen Jacob and David Brotman were arrested along with several associates.^[10] According to the FBI four tons of material were ready to ship across the country and 7 tons had gone out recently and were being rounded up at regional distribution centers in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland/Akron, and Indianapolis. Jacob Brotman, identified as one of the main players in the Tijuana bible trade in Jay Gertzman's Bookleggers and Smuthounds, had earlier been arrested in a similar raid on a Lower East Side loft reported in the New York City papers in 1936, which produced a large haul of bibles, "readers", pornographic playing cards, and nude photos, along with printing, cutting and binding equipment.^[11] During the 1939 World's Fair men selling pornographic booklets on the midway at the fair were trailed to a warehouse near the Brooklyn Navy Yard where David Brotman and an associate were arrested and a cache of 350,000 printed items and photos and 50,000 condoms were seized, along with printing plates.^[12] Collectors have estimated that in this period typically 50,000 copies would be produced of a single title, and distributed around the country by an underground network of colporteurs.

In New York City police raids on the business, which were carried out at intervals for decades, were usually at the the instigation of John S. Sumner and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which during the years of its existence closely monitored the trade in pornography in the city.

Cultural references

The cover of a typical Tijuana bible, this one features Wimpy, and is drawn in the style of the anonymous "Mr. Prolific."

Early in the graphic novel Watchmen, the former Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter, is briefly shown reading a Tijuana bible featuring her, which was given to her by a fan. She finds it amusing; her daughter Laurie Jupiter, the current Silk Spectre, does not.

Will Eisner features Tijuana bibles in the first pages of his book The Dreamer, though nothing explicit is shown. His protagonist, Billy, a young artist out looking for work, is offered a job illustrating them by a printer and a mafioso. Shocked and incensed, he asks if they are legal. The vignette serves not only to focus conflict between the character's dream and reality, but also between legitimate and illicit comic production. Dejected, Billy says he will think it over.^[13] The theme is reminiscent of a real-life episode described by Eisner about his being asked to draw for the publications.

In the Canadian novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) by Mordecai Richler, the title character sells Tijuana bibles, some featuring Dick Tracy, to his high school classmates, after buying them in bulk from a newsstand vendor who assigns him a small part of the city as his sales territory.

In the novel Water for Elephants, the term "eight-pager" is mentioned in several different locations, one of these when Kinko the dwarf is caught by Jacob Jankowski masturbating while reading a Popeye the Sailor Tijuana bible.

The film The Green Mile features a scene in which a prison guard reads a Tijuana Bible that is hidden inside another book.

See also

	Comics portal
	United States portal
	Pornography portal

• Dōjinshi
• Hentai

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Spiegelman, A (1997-08-19). "Tijuana Bibles". Salon.com. Archived from the original on 2011-03-06. http://www.webcitation.org/5wzKg7r7s. Retrieved 2009-02-24. 
2. ^ Bright, S (1997-08-19). "Dogeared Style: Tijuana Bibles". Salon.com. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1997/08/19/tijuana/index1.html. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Heer, J (2002). "Tijuana Bibles". St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture (Gale Group). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419101224. Retrieved 2009-04-02. 
4. ^ Gertzman, Jay. Bookleggers and Smuthounds, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
5. ^ Yoe, Craig (2007). Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-86719-653-5. http://books.google.com/?id=M9GTWlMjBqYC&printsec=frontcover. 
6. ^ Gilmore, Donald H. Sex in Comics, Greenleaf Press, 1971.
7. ^ "Birth of the 8-Pager" by Donald H. Gilmore PhD., tijuanabible.org. Retrieved July 30, 2011.
8. ^ Yoe, Craig; Shuster, Joe; Lee, Stan (2009). Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster. Abrams ComicArts. ISBN 978-0-8109-9634-2. 
9. ^ Colton, D (2009-04-13). "'Superman' artist's bizarro world exposed". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20090413/superracy13_st.art.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-22. 
10. ^ "5 Seized by FBI as Lewd Book Ring. Group That is Said to Have Sold Tons of Obscenity to Youths Reported Broken", New York Times, Nov. 24, 1942, p. 27. FBI assistant director and New York City bureau chief P.E. Foxworth, whose main responsibility at the time was conducting mass roundups of German-Americans suspected of Nazi sympathies, died two months later in the same South American plane crash that killed novelist Eric Knight.
11. ^ "Obscene Library Raided by Police. Patrol Wagons Busy All Day Removing Vicious Books from Huge Plant. 4 Held as Distributors. Printing Establishment Called One of Biggest in Country by John S. Sumner", New York Times, March 28, 1936, p. 3.
12. ^ Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 18, 1939; cited in Jay Gertzman, Bookleggers and Smuthounds.
13. ^ Eisner, Will, (1986). Pgs 5-6. The Dreamer ISBN 978-0-393-32808-0

Further reading

• Adelman, Bob; et al. (1997). Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s. New York: Simon & Schuster Editions. ISBN 978-0-684-83461-0. 

External links

• Tijuanabible.org
• Tijuanabibles.org
• Collection of covers