Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s

This is the kind of book that is happily pulled out at ADULT dinner parties and laughed at over drinks. Don't let Mickey Mouse and Popeye fool you - this is bawdy, crude, and yes, downright pornographic. But it's also an important part of American history and is highly enjoyable. Richard Merkin taught my husband at RISD and does a great job of explaining the whys and whos of Tijuana Bibles. NOT for children or the faint of heart!

Tijuana Bibles, containing sexually explicit cartoons, fulfilled an evident social need in the 1930s through 1950s. They were directed at an apparently avid public appetite for salacious imaginings on the fringes of popular culture, such as those of Hollywood and other aspects of the popular ‘celebrity’ press. This book provides a superb introduction to this phenomenon, including a wealth of amusing (and titillatory) examples, together with a helpful, brief analysis, in the form of brief informative essays, which places on record the sort of detail relating to production, and indeed subject matter, that might otherwise become evanescent. The pornographic licence enjoyed by this ‘art form’ in the otherwise morally repressive show more climate of the USA at the time is essentially due to the fly-by-night quality of the publishing process, although I imagine that suppression would have been deeply unpopular in certain parts of society, even if it had been capable of prohibition. The large format of the book is in character with its subject, and the volume is a valuable addition to the browsing area of an enlightened library. show less