EDITOR’S NOTE: 1001 Erotic Tales is my tribute to a magic time and space for tales and histories, true love stories, erotic art history anecdotes, cheeky movie scripts, or pulp fiction dedicated to fantasy worlds and human imagination.
Since the beginning of time, stories have been braided into our lives, intertwining myth, art, and lived history. Erotic art has always been one of the most honest narrators.
Alberto Vargas, Fleurs Du Mal, 1978. Offset Lithograph via Artsy
Gil Elvgren - The Classic American Pinup Painter art
Telephone Girl Book, 1940s vintage pin-up girl poster designed by George Petty IV for Esquire Magazine
Alberto Vargas, Seductive Platinum Blond Hair and Blue Eyed Pin Up, ca. 1950s via Artsy
First Night of 1001 (or almost ) is dedicated to Pin-ups and Pulp: the perfect marriage of ink and desire. From tawdry dime novels to Roy Lichtenstein’s crying girls, from Tijuana Bibles smuggled into working-class pockets to Tarantino’s cult cinematic mash-ups, pulp and erotic tales have shaped how we imagine sex, danger, glamour, and the body itself.
This is not just nostalgia—it’s a living archive of fantasy…
I. Once Upon a Time in Cheap Paper Paradise
1940s sexually explicit comic 'Tijuana bible' Disney-themed. Donald and Minnie engaging in sexual intercourse
Pulp wasn’t born glamorous. It came from wood pulp paper—cheap, grainy, disposable, like the fast-food wrapper of the literary world. Yet on this fragile substrate entire empires of lust, terror, and adventure were built.
Before pulp, there were the penny dreadfuls in Victorian England: gruesome little paperbacks filled with crime, gothic horror, and melodrama. For a penny, you got Jack the Ripper in serialized form, highwaymen on horseback, ghosts, vampires, and working-class thrills that Charles Dickens was too respectable to deliver. Across the Atlantic, America had its dime novels: cowboy shootouts, outlaw love affairs, and eventually science-fiction.
Disney themed Tijuana Bibles, sexually explicit comic 8 page books, 1940s
After The Argosy from 1896 ruled—cheap paper, sensational tales, mass readership, - by the 1930s, pulp was an industry, a fever dream on newsstands. Their covers shouted in lurid color: women bound in ropes, men with fists cocked, spaceships ready to explode. Eroticism was never absent—it simmered under every whip, every gasp, every heaving bosom.
Disney-Themed Tijuana Bibles, ca 1940s. Mickey and Minnie engaging in sexual intercourse
'Mickey Mouse in the flood', sexually explicit comics 'Tijuana bible' 1940s
II. Cover Girls, Pin-Ups, and Painted Desire
The pulp cover was an erotic art form in itself. Long before Playboy centerfolds, the pulp girl reigned supreme: half-undressed, endangered yet defiant, always painted with luminous skin and impossible curves.
Marcel von Herrfeldt, Liegender weiblicher Akt, Reclining Female Nude, 1921
George Petty pin-up girl poster designed by the famous American pin-up artist, ca 1940s/ Pin up style illustration by Olivia de Berardinis, lithograph via MutualArt
Illustrators like J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and N.C. Wyeth lent pulp a sophistication it didn’t deserve but desperately needed.
And then came the kings of pin-up art: Gil Elvgren, George Petty, Alberto Vargas. Their women weren’t literary—they were libidinal. Cheeky, flirtatious, never fully nude but always suggestive.
World War II soldiers tucked these pin-ups into helmets and lockers—Vargas girls became mascots of masculine fantasy, both a morale booster and a reminder of what they were fighting for (or who).
Tijuana Bibles Vol. 09, vintage porn sexually explicit comix re-published in 2008 by Diamond Comic Distributors Inc.
Erotic pulp covers were never simply cheesecake. They told stories. The trembling secretary menaced by a gangster’s gun. The jungle girl in leopard print fleeing a python. The futuristic space babe in a glass bubble helmet about to be ravished by alien tentacles (H.R. Giger would approve). This was erotic storytelling in one frame—kitsch, yes, but also proto-cinematic.
Averardo Ciriello Art - Original cover made by Ciriello for 'Voglie inconfessabili', published in Segreti di Donne Special n. 22 by Ediperiodici in 1993
The above is an excerpt of the first night (part) of our arousing "1001 Erotic Tales" section that will be a 17-part cycle. You can check out more info about this unique project and the other sensual "Nights" and limited-time offer by clicking HERE !