Best Erotic Comics 2008: Call for Submissions

(Note: This news has now been updated.)

Last Gasp is seeking submissions for an anthology of adult comics, Best Erotic Comics 2008 (the first in a planned annual series). The series is intended to showcase the most artistically interesting -- and most sexually arousing -- recent erotic comics, from both the literary comic side of the field and the smut comic side. We believe that the divide between literary comics and adult comics is unfortunate and unnecessary, and we plan to make "Best Erotic Comics" enjoyable both as a literary and artistic exploration of human sexuality... and as a fun dirty book.

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Thus begins the call for submissions for my brand-new book project, "Best Erotic Comics 2008." (The complete call for submissions is on my Website, but I'm also including it at the end of this post.) If you've talked to me in the last couple/few months and I've said I had a potential new book project in the works but was cagey about the details... this is it.

I am dying of excitement. I am so proud of this project -- and am having so much fun with it -- that I could just fall into hysterics at any time.

And here's why I'm doing it.

If you've been paying attention, you know that the last 20 years or so have seen a tremendous blossoming in the world of comics and graphic novels.

And if you've been paying attention, you know that those same 20 years have seen a similarly fabulous blossoming in the world of erotica, especially erotic writing and photography.

But erotic comics have not been getting their props. Adult comics are very much ghettoized in the comics world, shunted off to the side with the expectation that its readers want jerk-off material and nothing more. As a result, the work has suffered, in the same way that stigmatized, low-expectation, commerce-driven art forms and genres have always suffered.

There's good work being done, though. There are adult comic artists doing work with excellent literary and artistic merit. There are serious art/literary comic artists and graphic novelists creating some wildly hot and dirty scenes in their work. And Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's impossibly beautiful Lost Girls (drool, drool -- but that's a post for another day) has made the potential for this field -- and for the fusion of its literary/art side and its dirty side -- unmistakably clear.

The time is clearly ripe for a blossoming in the field of adult comics. With the "Best Erotic Comics" series, I want to help foster that growth. I want to spotlight the good work that's currently being done -- and I want to encourage comic artists to do more of it.

So if you're a comics fan and you have suggestions for work you think should be included in this book, please look over the call for submissions, and send me your suggestions/nominations. If you have friends/colleagues/etc. who are comic artists, please pass the call for submissions along to them. And if you're a comic artist, for the love of God, check out the call for submissions, and send me your work.

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
Best Erotic Comics 2008, to be published by Last Gasp

Last Gasp is seeking submissions for an anthology of adult comics, "Best Erotic Comics 2008" (the first in a planned annual series). The series is intended to showcase the most artistically interesting -- and most sexually arousing -- recent erotic comics, from both the literary comic side of the field and the smut comic side. We believe that the divide between literary comics and adult comics is unfortunate and unnecessary, and we plan to make "Best Erotic Comics" enjoyable both as a literary and artistic exploration of human sexuality... and as a fun dirty book.

In keeping with this vision, submissions to "Best Erotic Comics" should be both:

a) Hot.

b) Interesting in some way in addition to being hot.

Here are some more details:

IF YOU ARE PRIMARILY A SMUT COMIC ARTIST:

Submissions to "Best Erotic Comics" should not simply be hot sex comics. They should have some literary and/or artistic quality, as well as being arousing. We are looking for hot sex comics that are also thoughtful, insightful, engaging, funny, poignant, political, and/or exceptionally well-drawn.

IF YOU ARE PRIMARILY A LITERARY COMIC ARTIST:

Submissions to "Best Erotic Comics" should not simply be about sex. They should also be hot. We are looking for thoughtful, insightful, engaging, funny, poignant, political, and/or exceptionally well-drawn comics that make the reader want to have sex and/or whack off.

IF YOU ALREADY WORK IN LITERARY SMUT COMICS:

Excellent! Send us your best work.

We are looking for a wide variety of erotic content -- straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and other; kinky and vanilla; from the points of view of women, men, and others. Both single-panel and multi-panel comics will be accepted. We are primarily looking for black-and-white work, but will be including a limited color section. We are accepting both original and previously-published comics; previously-published work should have been published or reprinted fairly recently, ideally after January 1, 2000. You can submit individual stories or excerpts from longer works. Work should be in English or wordless. Deadline for submissions: November 30, 2006. The pay starts at $20 a page, depending on length and other considerations.

The editor of the anthology is Greta Christina. Greta has been writing about sex professionally since 1989. She is editor of the anthology "Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients," and author of the erotic novella "Bending," which appeared in the three-novella collection "Three Kinds of Asking For It" edited by Susie Bright for Simon & Schuster. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, and the Skeptical Inquirer, as well as several anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2003 and 2005. She has worked for Last Gasp Books and Comics since 2002.

Please send submissions to:

Last Gasp
Attention: Best Erotic Comics
777 Florida St.
San Francisco, CA 94110

Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Do not send originals, or your only copy. All submissions with SASE will be answered, but submissions will not be returned. Deadline: November 30, 2006.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]

Comments

[Iamcuriousblue]

About a month ago, I was going through my collection of Last Gasp's Young Lust series (having finally completed my set after finding YL #3) and was wondering if anybody would bring that series back. That was an excellent series (particularly from #5 onward). Really more political than erotic, though.

I take it "Best Erotic Comics" is going to be more along the lines of Crepax or "Small Favors" than the kind of political satire in Young Lust. It sounds like it has potential and I'm looking forward to it.

[Greta Christina]

"I take it "Best Erotic Comics" is going to be more along the lines of Crepax or 'Small Favors' than the kind of political satire in Young Lust. It sounds like it has potential and I'm looking forward to it."

Best Erotic Comics is going to be diverse as I can possibly make it. My main two criteria are: it has to be hot, and it has to have strong literary/artistic quality in addition to being hot. I definitely would not say no to political smut -- as long as it also made me want to put my hand in my pants. (The rest of my criteria are mostly spelled out in the call for submissions.)

But now I'm curious: When you say "along the lines of Crepax or Small Favors," can you spell than out a little more? Those seem like pretty different lines to me.

[PAul Bamborough]

I was abouy to publish my own adult comic, 'ZNOOT COMIX' last year. but the deal with uk Sport publications fell through . I am still seeking a publisher. I will be happy to send you a copy of an issue if you are still in business? You may be interested in one or two strips for your next anthology, unless you would like to colaberate in publishing it?