Interview With the Erotic Cartoonist I - March 2023

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Hello watchers.  This is a new video series titled Interviews With the Erotic Cartoonist.  It's similar to Interview With the Vampire but I hope it’ll be less bloody.  Let's go with your questions.

     1. What art inspires you as an artist and a story-teller and how does that inspiration come across in the pictures you draw and the stories they tell? 

I must recognize that romantic manga and anime were my early artistic influences.  I was very young when I drew my first comic.  I was just ten years old.  So this first inspiration came from the hand of Candy-Candy and The Rose of Versailles.  Thinking about Lady Oscar, I have not lost my fascination with romantic female characters dressing as male characters. They have a lot of possibilities.  For example, they get the other characters to question their own sexual orientation.  And that gives a lot of play.

As an adult, I became interested in French and Belgian cartoonists.  One of my preferred authors is François Bourgeon with his comic "The Passengers of the Wind".  His female characters are well-built and full of eroticism although he's not an erotic artist.  Of course, my major influence are Italian erotic cartoonists such as Crepax and Giovanna Casotto.  Valentina by Crepax is a sample of elegant beautiful eroticism but it's perverse too. Crepax showed me that there's no light without a shadow.  So the nice and politically correct eroticism is a fake.  Or worst, it's boring.

Literature and films are other influences on my art.  I like the classics such as "Story of O" and "Emmanuelle", both novels and films. Something more modern?  Yeah, the "L Word" series.  It has the hottest lesbian sex scenes I’ve ever seen.  And the latest to appear on my radar is the film "Below Her Mouth" by Abril Mullen.  I think my artistic genre is just like that: romantic, erotic, and explicit.  I don't want to choose one of these definitions, I want the three.

Is there something about pirates?  Yeah, but not "Pirates of the Caribbean".  Although I'm fascinated by Jack Sparrow and maybe Jezzabel shares some of his folly.  My pirate sources are the novel "The Black Corsair" by Emilio Salgari and the biographies of the real female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny (plus other less known).  Unfortunately, it's very difficult to find good films about female pirates.  Most of fictional lady pirates are cheesy and weak, and you don't believe they really can command a pirate crew.  Mary Read would laugh in their faces.

     2.  Also, who would you cast in a live action version of the comic and would it be x-rated? 

I hadn't thought about this before.  Who would I cast?  Maybe Elle Fanning for the role of Anne, and young Naomi Campbell for the role of Janah.  The actress hasn't been born that could interpret Jezzabel.  The closest would be a mix between Lucy Lawless, Michelle Rodriguez, and the beauty of Pamela Anderson.

Yeah, it would be X-rated.  No way Jezzabel  allows me to cut the sex scenes.

    3. Would that be important to telling the story properly? 

I think so.  Let me give you just one example: "Fifty Shades of Gray" film.  Fifty Shades was released with an NC-17 rating because X rating is less commercial and unpopular.  And, therefore, the film has light sex scenes and the shadows are conspicuously absent because heaven forbid the perverse sex.  Result:  the film has no the passion of the novel.  And passion is the law for the erotic genre.  No passion, no eroticism. Would you take off the punches of a violent film?  So it's not possible to take off the sex of an erotic film.

However, I recognize that real sex or showing a lot of close-ups of genitalia are not the most important thing in a hot story.  I could accept simulated sex with sweat, loud moans, and nudity, of course.

And that's all.  I look forward to your questions for the next month :)