Lorna: spanish erotic science fiction comic

Those of you who have been around here for a while will have already seen several of my blog posts where I talk about my inspirations for erotic science fiction photography, my point of view about the genre, new discoveries or some behind the scenes anecdotes...

Today I want to talk about a Spanish author and one of his works that I love. Alfonso Azpiri was an illustrator who worked on a lot of projects for magazines (magazines like Heavy Metal, Cimoc and Penthouse Comix) and his own comics like Mot. He became best known for his work as a cover artist in the videogame industry during the 80s and 90s. But among his many projects and comics, today I want to tell you about his erotic science fiction comic (and character) Lorna.

Lorna is a series of science fiction, humor and erotic comics created in 1980, with first scripts by Cidoncha and drawings by Alfonso Azpiri, and later developed only by Azpiri who continued with his original character also as a scriptwriter.

Lorna was an erotic character initially created for very short stories in magazines. She first debuted in the erotic magazine Mastia and then continued her development in Cimoc. Lorna has also been published in Penthouse and Heavy Metal where she grew as a character thanks to the American industry where Azpiri had to co-work with different letter writers and editors who they made him work harder on his sense of narrative. As you can imagine Lorna's stories at the beginning were very light and simple, just a few excuses that quickly led the character to have erotic encounters filling just one or two pages. But little by little, Lorna's character developed a more complete identity and her science fiction stories also grew along with Azpiri's concerns, until he created a richer world with more elaborate scripts and longer comic books.

-2nd number of the Spanish erotic magazine where debuted the comic Lorna first called: "Lorna and her lewd robot"-

Lorna is a spacebabe with imposible blonde hair, armed femme fatale, who travels the galaxy with a golden droid that reminds us of C-3PO. Azpiri explained in an interview that he was explicitly asked by the magazine editors to make the main character companion a robot very reminiscent of the Star Wars movie (just one at that time) to appeal to younger audiences... But gradually, as his stories became less humorous and more serious, Matias the robot companion became less and less prominent.
Azpiri always said that of all his undenied influences he had never been inspired by the character of Barbarella, despite the similarities... For me it's hard to believe, because although the original French Barbarella comicbook was relatively little known, the Jane Fonda film was an explosion of fame very well known to its generation. But that's another story.

Azpiri had a very beautiful and traditional style, using watercolors for coloring and at rare ocasions (some covers) aerography. The character of Lorna was Azpiri's project for 3 decades, and before he died he was able to see his character published in long comic format compiling all his Lorna stories from the 80s to the 2000s.

-Sample of the Lorna animated series which did not survive its production phase (2011-2012)... Here a trailer for the unfinished animation project: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfdbCDnTrfk

Lorna is not a super famous character even in Spain today, she never made the leap to the cinema like Barbarella, and she never left her status as a simple erotic comic for old adult magazines. But it is very interesting to read the whole work together and see how it grows and gains in quality with each story that progresses.