Upon hearing the news, current as of May 1816, of the order’s restoration by Pope Pius VII, John Adams remarked in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, “I do not like the late Resurrection of the Jesuits.... If ever any Congregation of Men could merit, eternal Perdition on Earth and in Hell... it is this Company of Loiola. Our System however of Religious Liberty must afford them an Assylum." History assures us the conditions of that restoration were in sum designed to defang the formidable, a task at which they have proven so far successful.
I was reminded of these trivial remarks on the occasion of finding a new issue of Penthouse Comics this side of the new millennium. Why is there a new issue of Penthouse Comics? Ultimately, we may never know. Scientists have vowed to investigate the matter. But that it exists is not in doubt.
From one direction, it would appear that the reappearance of Penthouse on the comics shelves—or, rather, behind the comics counter—sits at the confluence of certain outsized trends in the Direct Market. In the first place, sex has had a good few years in comics, with quite a few more or less explicitly sexual comic books gaining a not insubstantial corner. I’ve written not that long ago about Katie Skelly’s deserved success, for instance. In more mainstream spaces, Mirka Andolfo and Maria Llovet (the latter of whom provides a variant cover for this issue) are just two prominent artists working with explicitly erotic material published under the Image banner. A third is Guillem March; a few more words about him below.
Even Marvel and DC seem far more willing to publish sexy material; certainly as far as their myriad of variant covers is concerned. Have I ever purchased a comic book primarily because the cover featured an excellent drawing of a beautiful woman? Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies. Merely allow me to say, I have never regretted a comic book purchased for the sake of a beautiful woman.
The other trend to which I alluded is a more quotidian matter regarding format. Magazine-sized comics have made a significant return. Just last week saw the resurrection, from Titan, of that most venerable example of the format, Savage Sword of Conan - once again thick in black & white on pulpy newsprint. No one bought magazine-sized comics for the longest time. DC’s Black Label did more than anyone to promote the format, but they’re far from the only ones doing it in 2024; newcomer outfit DSTLRY is having success with a new erotic series by Becky Cloonan & Tula Lotay, Somna, at the same dimensions. (Lotay is slated to provide the cover for the second issue of this relaunched Penthouse Comics, incidentally.)
So: perhaps not quite such a surprise. There’s room now on the shelves of comic book stores for both sexually explicit material as well as nonstandard-sized magazines. Imagine that.
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In honor of the blessed event, I went back to have a glance at the original run of Penthouse Comix (note the “x” in the earlier title). That regime produced two series: the namesake Penthouse Comix, which produced 33 issues from 1994 to 1998, and Penthouse Men’s Adventure Comix, which only lasted 7 issues between 1995 and 1996. Have you ever seen these comics? Probably not; their contents haven't been reprinted.
Now, in hindsight, the idea of Penthouse producing a line of sexually explicit comics across the mid '90s might not seem that unusual. Fantagraphics was going full-steam ahead with Eros at the same time, after all. Mainstream comics was embroiled in the mid-decade fascination with “bad girls,” a tendency seen in the success of characters such as Witchblade, Lady Death, the Jim Balent Catwoman, and Harris Comics’ revived Vampirella.
One question that remains to be answered, real brass tacks: was it any good? Well. A scan through the opening run of Penthouse Comix reveals names such as Adam Hughes, Kevin Nowlan, Arthur Suydam, Horacio Altuna, Gray Morrow, Dan DeCarlo - oh, goodness, you’ve popped your monocle! I’m sorry. I won’t even bother to go down the list for Men’s Adventure, or we’d be here all day. If it were named anything other than Penthouse Comix, any anthology with the same lineup would be remembered as a great, generational achievement in publishing... or at least in the same breath as, say, Instant Piano. But alas.
The hallmark of the first run of Penthouse Comix was a focus on assembling an array of the best talent available and paying them accordingly. Was it always material near to the heart of the artists? Hughes, for one, has sounded almost apologetic in interviews when asked about producing work for Penthouse. It’s a time-honored tradition in the comics field that men’s magazines pay remarkably well. Hand-in-hand with that convention goes the traditional observation regarding Hugh Hefner’s aesthetic preferences: good eye, but terrible taste. As a frustrated cartoonist the man seemingly held no profession in higher regard, but as a patron of the medium he was quite happy to pay top dollar for the creation of trifles such as Little Annie Fanny. With all respect to Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman, no one involved in the production of that strip was under any illusions regarding its quality, save for the man writing the checks. It was cut to order for the client.
And so too for the cartooning that saw print under the banner of Hefner’s primary rival. Bob Guccione started as a cartoonist, just as Hefner had. Penthouse even sponsored a rival for Little Annie Fanny, in the form of Oh, Wicked Wanda! by Frederic Mullally & Ron Embleton. Sadly, Wanda is absent from our subject today. Guccione’s name is also absent from the masthead of the current Penthouse Comics, as dear old Bob has been dead now for 14 years.
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All of which is to say, the current revival is filled with good-to-excellent cartooning drafted from the cream of the industry, albeit with a pronounced European bent. The most notable inclusion, and the one that ensured my participation in the enterprise, is Guillem March, who is working here with the Belgian writer Jean Dufaux. Their lead story is part one of something called “The Dream,” and it is absolutely gorgeous.
A much larger article remains to be written on the subject of March, when the occasion presents itself. I’ve become sort of a fan in recent years. Admittedly, there’s a touch of absurdity to the idea of an artist finding success in the superhero mainstream on a style constructed at least partially from the example of Milo Manara. And yet, the man has drawn a lot of Batman, and even some Vampirella. If you want to understand March’s work I have two suggestions. In the first place, in 2021, Image comics serialized in five parts a book of March’s called Karmen, originally published in French (as was this); and in the second, that same year, Ablaze put out a three-issue collection of an earlier work, titled simply Laura, after the series’ heroine. The former is a whimsical fantasy that suggests a much hornier Neil Gaiman, the latter something more resembling slice-of-life romance. An artist of surprising versatility within his field.
In any event, it’s too early at one chapter to tell whether or not “The Dream” will add up to much of anything. It certainly feels very European - a soapy thriller featuring handsome and terrible people having hard-R adventures. It also feels of a piece with March’s other work, which is a significant hurdle in itself given the generally high quality of his other books. If you doubt March’s skill, I invite you to look at the final spread of this initial chapter, not a sex scene but two figures talking at an outdoor table. In itself, perhaps not a challenging setup, but they’re sitting under tree cover in the light of day, so everything is dappled in leafy shade. Almost unbearably good.
The second comic is another serial, part one of “Gun Crazy,” by writer Steve D. and "Jef," a French cartoonist who does not appear as yet to have much of a presence in the American market. It’s a story about two girls who drive around the country taking drugs, shooting rednecks and exotic dancing, although not necessarily in that order. This after a lifetime spent killing people for Uncle Sam, and having a grand old time in underground women’s fight clubs in Afghanistan. It's genre material with an eye towards outright sensationalism, very much within the spirit of the enterprise. Scantily clad ladies in hot pants killing Nazis with axes: an idea of America as it exists in the eyes of oversexed European artists and precisely nowhere else. Jef is a real talent, in any event, seeming to sit at an intersection of Sean Phillips, Kev Walker and Dan Hipp. Excellent use of hyper-saturated color.
The third feature is the first part of a serial called “Miss October,” a noirish period piece about someone killing beautiful women in early 1960s Los Angeles, by Stephen Desberg & Alan Queireix. A strong one for period detail, down to the customary crisp stiffness of well-heeled period fiction. I’m not one for noirish period pieces as a rule, and this one especially feels quite indebted to James Ellroy. If that’s your cup, have at it. Queireix draws very nice cars, and buildings, and evening gowns. Quite nice indeed.
The fourth and final comic is the first part in an ambitious adaptation of I Spit on Your Grave - not the '70s horror film, but the 1946 hard-boiled sex novel by Boris Vian, working under the name Vernon Sullivan. Another mid-century period piece ensues, with an art team fronted by Rey Macutay, a Filipino artist seemingly without North American exposure. I quite like his work here. I’m sure everything will go sour sooner or later in the story, but right now it’s too early to tell.
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And with four features, the comics section of our program comes to its conclusion. Is the magazine over? Friend, I fear to report, the magazine is not over. Turning the page following the first part of "I Spit on Your Grave," the reader is confronted with a feature called “Here’s a List of Some of the Most Expensive Adult Films Ever Made,” credited to the magazine’s editors. This exists seemingly to provide context for the next two pages, a short article on the 2005 release of Pirates, apparently one of the most expensive adult films ever made. Were there no further comic strips that could be pressed to purposes? Penthouse used to publish actual journalism, back in the day, and writing on various kinds of art. This is a $10.00 comics magazine; in all candor, it stings that four of the pages are filled with listicles about porn movies.
Still more baffling choices follow. There’s a two-page discussion of AI art, inspired by the unfortunate fact that one of the magazine’s many variant covers was produced using AI. (The cover pictured at the top of this review is by Matteo Scalera & Elia Bonetti, two living humans.) The magazine assures us that the piece was purchased in good faith, and only discovered to be AI a while later. “Unfortunately, we were not aware until after the art was in production,” states Editor-in-Chief Adriana Yocum. “We decided, after much deliberation, to still include this cover. Why? So we can talk about it!” Ah, yes, having one’s cake and eating it too, I am familiar with this boffo rhetorical maneuver.
Such discourse gives the magazine an opportunity to seem even-handed on a manner that most definitely does not call for the even-handed approach. They give the artist in question (not identified in the feature, but it’s somebody calling themselves "stimograph") the opportunity to justify themselves before concluding, “we here at Penthouse Comics are committed to giving work to people, and not robots.” This appears to be an unambiguous statement, especially paired as it is with unequivocal statements of disapprobation on the part of artists Mark Aspinall, Joshua “Sway” Swamy and Marguerite Sauvage. However, while the magazine seems to draw a hard line in the sand, they stop just short of a categorical abjuration. Maybe I’m just paranoid. We shall see.
And then, do you know what awaits the wary reader once this colloquy has run its course? Why, it’s a genuine pin-up section! Yes, 13 pages of good old-fashioned photographs of a naked woman. Upon seeing this, I must confess my first reaction was sheer bemusement. There was a necessary moment of adjustment, as if to reorient myself in the new universe created by this revelation. Are we really doing this? In 2024? My brain rebelled. Actual printed pornography. Not drawings. Were they out of drawings of naked women? Surely there should be an inexhaustible supply of those.
No offense is intended towards Ms. Sania Mallory! She appears, based on the evidence presented, to be a perfectly healthy young woman. Robust, even. I don’t really know if I can say hers and photographer Michael Ninn's diesel garage-themed pictorial adds anything to the present package. I also don’t necessarily recommend motorcycle repair as a vocation for anyone with such carefully applied ceramic nails, but I fear my warnings in the matter shall remain unheeded.
Still, the first two-thirds of Penthouse Comics #1 consists of four features' worth of good-to-great cartooning on European genre fiction more or less willing to drop trou at a moments’ notice. They had me on board with Guillem March. Excellent production values throughout. Comics cost a lot of money these days as a matter of course, and this is certainly a better value proposition than most of Marvel these days. In this context, the final third of the magazine seems a strange wasteland, and a lost opportunity for what is otherwise a decently curated anthology built around pleasing, well-drawn sleaze.
