Expert: Chris Brown - 7/2/2009

Question
QUESTION: I have come across these that my father had. Can you tell me a little about them

ANSWER: Hi Linda

8-pagers had their heyday in the 30s and 40s.  They tended to feature cartoon characters, movie stars or other celebrities.  They likely could be considered the earliest mass-produced graphic smut/pornography distributed in the U.S.

They were never what you would call legitimate, as you might suspect by the lack of any publishing or copyright info.  They would have been sold under-the-counter, by a guy at a truck stop, or in other similar illicit methods.

Probably the mainstream availability of magazines like Playboy in the 50s and pornographic films in the 60s and 70s helped kill off interest in these little booklets.  However, collectors still seek them out for their humor, lampooning of famous people, alternate portrayals of cartoon characters, etc.  They generally sell for $5 to $20 each, though some can go higher.

If you have other questions, feel free to follow up.  There are also a few good books on Tijuana Bibles that you can buy or possibly borrow at a library.  One good one is

Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies by Bob Adelman

Chris



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Can you just let me know if the ones with the white covers, are they reproductions?

Answer
Hi Linda

Sorry there is no easy way to tell which of these are original and which may be reproductions, especially from looking at a photo.  Nobody actually knows on what printing presses these booklets were originally produced, so there are no records of what they originally looked like, how many print runs there might have been, what changes were made between various print runs, whether one printing press might have copied (that is, stolen) something originally produced by another printing press and ran off some of its own, etc.

 Various booklets were made with colored-paper covers or with white covers, some with colored ink on the cover and some just black and white, some with a sturdier cardboard cover and some with a paper cover.

There were some reproductions done in the 70s but generally they still don't identify themselves as reprints or give any publishing info (probably since they still could be sued for copyright violations by the owner of the cartoon character pictured).

Your best bet is just to judge by condition whether it looks old.