Tijuana bibles (also known as eight-pagers, Tillie-and-Mac books, Jiggs-and-Maggie books, jo-jo books, bluesies, blue-bibles, gray-backs, and two-by-fours) were palm-sized pornographic comic books produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Their popularity peaked during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

era. Most Tijuana bibles were obscene parodies of popular newspaper comic strips at the time, such as " Blondie", "

Barney Google ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', originally ''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance'', is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appea ...

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Moon Mullins ''Moon Mullins'' is an American comic strip which had a run as both a daily and Sunday feature from June 19, 1923 to June 2, 1991. Syndicated by the Tribune Media Services, Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, the strip depicts the lives of d ...

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Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by E. C. Segar, Elzie Crisler Segar.Tillie the Toiler ''Tillie the Toiler'' is a newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Russ Westover who initially worked on his concept of a flapper character in a strip he titled ''Rose of the Office''. With a title change, it sold to King Features Syndicate ...

", "

The Katzenjammer Kids ''The Katzenjammer Kids'' is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949).Dick Tracy ''Dick Tracy'' is an American comic strip featuring Dick Tracy (originally Plainclothes Tracy), a tough and intelligent police detective created by Chester Gould. It made its debut on Sunday, October 4, 1931, in the ''Detroit Mirror'', and it ...

", "

Little Orphan Annie ''Little Orphan Annie'' is a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by the Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and it made its debut on Aug ...

", and "

Bringing Up Father ''Bringing Up Father'' is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George McManus. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, it ran for 87 years, from January 2, 1913, to May 28, 2000. The strip was later titled ''Jiggs and Maggie'' (or ''M ...

". Others made use of characters based on popular movie and sports stars of the day such as

Mae West Mae West (born Mary Jane West; August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American stage and film actress, playwright, screenwriter, singer, and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned over seven decades. She was known for her breezy ...

Clark Gable William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901November 16, 1960) was an American film actor, often referred to as "The King of Hollywood". He had roles in more than 60 motion pictures in multiple genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades ...

and

Joe Louis Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 – April 12, 1981) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1934 to 1951. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential boxers of all time. He rei ...

, sometimes with names only subtly changed. Before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, almost all the stories were humorous, cartoon versions of well-known dirty jokes that had been making the rounds for decades. The artists, writers, and publishers of these booklets generally remained anonymous as their publication was illegal and clandestine. The quality of the artwork varied widely. The subjects consisted of explicit sexual escapades, usually featuring well-known newspaper comic strip characters, movie stars, and (rarely) political figures, invariably used without respect for either copyright or libel law and without permission. Tijuana bibles featured

ethnic stereotypes An ethnic stereotype, racial stereotype or cultural stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype, or nationa ...

found in popular culture at the time, although one Tijuana bible ("You Nazi Man") concluded on a serious note with a brief message from the publisher pleading for greater tolerance in Germany for the Jews. The typical bible was an eight-panel comic strip in a wallet-sized format with black print on cheap white paper and running eight pages in length.

Characters

Tillie and Mac are thought to have been the first Tijuana bible stars, along with

Maggie and Jiggs ''Bringing Up Father'' is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George McManus. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, it ran for 87 years, from January 2, 1913, to May 28, 2000. The strip was later titled ''Jiggs and Maggie'' (or ''M ...

from the popular newspaper strip ''Bringing Up Father''. Tillie was soon followed by

Winnie Winkle ''Winnie Winkle'' is an American comic strip published during a 76-year span (1920–1996). Ten film adaptations were also made. Its premise was conceived by Joseph Medill Patterson, but the stories and artwork were by Martin Branner, who wrote t ...

Dumb Dora ''Dumb Dora'' is a comic strip published from 1924 to 1936 distributed by King Features Syndicate. The term "dumb Dora" was a 1920s American slang term for a foolish woman; the strip helped popularize the term. Publication history ''Dumb Dora'' ...

Dixie Dugan ''Dixie Dugan'' is best known as a long-running syndicated newspaper comic strip published from October 21, 1929 to October 8, 1966. The title character was originally modeled after 1920s film actress Louise Brooks and early stories followed Dix ...

Fritzi Ritz ''Fritzi Ritz'' is an American comic strip created in 1922 by Larry Whittington. In 1925, the strip was taken over by Ernie Bushmiller and, in 1938, the daily strip evolved into the popular '' Nancy''. The Sunday edition of the strip, begun by Bu ...

Ella Cinders ''Ella Cinders'' is an American syndicated comic strip created by writer Bill Conselman and artist Charles Plumb. Distributed for most of its run by United Feature Syndicate, the daily version was launched June 1, 1925, and a Sunday page foll ...

, and other familiar comic strip characters stamped in the same mold. Making the most appearances in the bibles,

Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by E. C. Segar, Elzie Crisler Segar.Blondie were the most popular characters in the 1930s. The first celebrity bibles were based on real-life newspaper tabloid sex scandals such as the Peaches and Daddy Browning case which made headlines in 1926. Ten years later, an entire series of bibles by one unknown artist obscenely lampooned

Wallis Simpson Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Simpson; June 19, 1896 – April 24, 1986), was an American socialite and wife of the former King Edward VIII. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused ...

and the King of England. By far the most popular celebrity character was Mae West, but virtually every major Hollywood star of the era was featured in the Tijuana bibles. A popular comic strip character such as Tillie or Blondie might appear in as many as 40 eight-pagers drawn by ten artists. An entire series of ten bibles drawn by "Mr. Prolific" was based on famous gangsters;

Legs Diamond Jack "Legs" Diamond (possibly born John Thomas Diamond, though disputed; July 10, 1897 – December 18, 1931), also known as Gentleman Jack, was an Irish American gangster in Philadelphia and New York City during the Prohibition era. A bootle ...

Al Capone Alphonse Gabriel Capone (; January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the ...

, and

Machine Gun Kelly George Kelly Barnes (July 18, 1895 – July 18, 1954), better known by his pseudonym "Machine Gun Kelly", was an American gangster from Memphis, Tennessee, active during the Prohibition era. His nickname came from his favorite weapon, a Thomps ...

were featured, while the artist working under the alias "Elmer Zilch" drew a set of eight comics about famous boxers such as

Jack Dempsey William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (June 24, 1895 – May 31, 1983), nicknamed Kid Blackie and The Manassa Mauler, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1914 to 1927, and reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926. ...

. Another set of ten bibles drawn by Mr. Prolific featured radio stars, including

Joe Penner Joe Penner (born József Pintér; November 11, 1904 – January 10, 1941) was an American vaudeville, radio, and film comedian. Early life Penner was an ethnic Hungarian born József Pintér in Nagybecskerek, Austria-Hungary, (present-day Zren ...

and

Kate Smith Kathryn Elizabeth Smith (May 1, 1907 – June 17, 1986) was an American contralto. Referred to as The First Lady of Radio, Smith is well known for her renditions of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" & "When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain". ...

. Blackjack drew a set of ten comics using characters from ''

Snow White "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and numbered as Ta ...

'', with each of the seven dwarfs starring in his own X-rated title. The ten-book series format was dictated by the limitations of the printing equipment used to print the bibles, which made it convenient to print a set of ten titles at a time, side by side on a large sheet which was then cut into strips, collated, folded, and stapled. Typically, a new set of ten would be issued every couple of months, all drawn by the same artist, featuring ten cartoon characters or celebrities. For several months in 1935, Elmer Zilch and his publishers experimented with a ten-page format, issued with two-tone covers in four sets of eight, plus one set of ten (the "Salesmen" series) in the eight-page format. Each panel in this series was surrounded by an intricate engraved arabesque border, possibly intended as an anti-counterfeiting device as it was hard to reproduce, and the series became known to collectors as the "Ornate Borders" series. Only 42 bibles are known by collectors to have been issued in this style, and most of them were soon being reprinted in truncated eight-page versions. Often the added two pages were simply filler gag panels drawn by Zilch. In addition to comic strip characters and celebrities, many bibles featured nameless stock characters like cab drivers, firemen, traveling salesmen (and farmer's daughters), icemen, maids, and the like. Very few original recurring characters were created expressly for the bibles; Mr. Prolific's " Fuller Brush Man" was one, in which a door-to-door salesman named Ted starred in a series of ten episodic eight-page adventures. To many collectors, this series was the epitome of the Tijuana bible genre. Tjbfullerbrush1

During the Senate racket investigations of the 1950s, a New York businessman named Abe Rubin was asked if there was any truth to the rumor picked up by a Chicago police lieutenant that he had once been the original printer and distributor of "the Fuller Brush Man series of comics". The Fuller Brush man stories made a very weak stab at continuity (e.g., "The following week I was sent to Tallahassee" or some such words at the commencement of each installment), but each eight-panel story was self-contained. The only real serial stories told in the eight-pager format were three tales by Blackjack, featuring original characters named Fifi, Maizie, and Tessie, in "To be continued" narratives which stretched through three or four installments each before concluding.

History

The term "Tijuana bibles" was first noted in Southern California in the late 1940s and refers to the incorrect belief that they were manufactured and smuggled across the border from

Tijuana Tijuana ( ,"Tijuana"
(US) and < ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. According to one possibly apocryphal tale, visitors spending the night at the cheapest hotels in Tijuana would find a Tijuana bible in the nightstand instead of a Gideons bible, hence the name. In the 1930s, many early bibles bore phony imprints of non-existent companies such as "London Press", "La France Publishing," and "Tobasco Publishing Co." in London, Paris, and Havana. The popular line using the "Tobasco" imprint was around the underground market for a couple of years and also printed a number of pamphlet-sized erotic fiction readers, in addition to about 60 Tijuana bible titles, most of them original. Tijuana bibles were sold under the counter for 25 cents in places where men congregated: barrooms, bowling alleys, garages, tobacco shops, barber shops, and burlesque houses. One commentator reminisces: In some senses, Tijuana bibles were the first

underground comix Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, ...

. They featured original material at a time when legitimate American comic books were still reprinting newspaper strips. After

, the quality and the popularity of the Tijuana bible declined. Comics artist and historian

Art Spiegelman Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade (comics maga ...

notes that records do not seem to exist of prosecutions against publishers and artists for making Tijuana bibles; the cartoonist added, however, that authorities occasionally seized shipments and people selling Tijuana bibles. According to Spiegelman, it is not clear whether

mom and pop ] A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gesta ...

outfits or

organized crime Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...

created the small salacious booklets. Old newspaper crime stories seem to indicate that most bibles were the product of a fairly small group of independent small businessmen with their own printing presses, invariably springing up again in a new location after a police raid shut them down. These businessmen manufactured a variety of pornographic products, including pornographic playing cards, gag greeting cards, and film reels, and created their own underground distribution routes around the United States. In the early days, Tijuana bibles could be shipped in bulk around the country through commercial express offices, usually the

Railway Express Agency Railway Express Agency (REA), founded as the American Railway Express Agency and later renamed the American Railway Express Inc., was a national package delivery service that operated in the United States from 1918 to 1975. REA arranged transp ...

firm. It was a serious criminal offense to send them via the US mail, and one mail order dealer was sentenced to 5 years in Leavenworth in 1932 for simply soliciting orders from his customers through the US mail (at a dollar per bible: "These are not the cheap kind"), even though he guaranteed to ship them by commercial express. When the mails were used, complex schemes were used to foil postal inspectors, involving mail-forwarding, one-time use postal boxes, and non-existent addresses. The high success rate of the postal authorities in defeating these schemes is the main reason that bibles were generally sold locally rather than through the mails. When a seller was arrested and prosecuted for violating a local ordinance, the penalties were far lower than if a federal offense was committed; usually a seller got off with a 30-day sentence, a $100 fine, or probation after a local arrest, at least on a first offense. Easy access to commercial shipping was suddenly cut off in the mid-1930s, so manufacturers began driving the products themselves to various underground depots around the country in cars and vans, taking advantage of a loophole making it not a federal crime (at that time) to take pornography across state lines in a private vehicle. The small size of the bibles made them easy to transport; 50,000 bibles could fit in the trunk of a car. Clandestine distribution centers were located in basements, lofts, and back alley garages in a chain of large cities on an east-west axis from New York City to Kansas City, loosely following the route of the old

National Road The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road) was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the Federal Government of the United States, federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, the road connected the Pot ...

and generally avoiding the South and New England which were regarded as dangerous places to be arrested for pornography. (Boston's

Scollay Square 300px, Scollay Square, Boston, 19th century (after September 1880) 350px, Scollay Square, Decoration Day, 19th century (after September 1880) Scollay Square (c. 1838–1962) was a vibrant city square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It was na ...

, however, was a notorious place where Tijuana bibles could readily be purchased at seedy, hole-in-the-wall novelty shops patronized by sailors on leave.) Business was always done on a strictly cash basis, with generous discounts for bulk purchases to the local distributors who then resold them to retail vendors. The local distributors were not members of organized crime syndicates, but seedy small businessmen in an illegal black market business. The same vendors also handled cheap, off-brand black market condoms. A distributor's "territory" might be a large city, several counties, or an entire state, with the territorial boundaries being assigned by the national distributors, who regulated things by limiting the amount of goods delivered to each local distributor to the quantity that could readily be sold inside his (or in at least one instance, her) assigned territory. Millions of Tijuana bibles were printed and sold in the 1930s, the heyday of the bibles. But the number of new Tijuana bible titles being produced took a nosedive at the beginning of World War II, and the industry never recovered. Factors in the decline of the Tijuana bibles at this time may have included police raids and the retirement of

Doc Rankin Ainsworth H. "Doc" Rankin (November 27, 1896 – January 1954) was an American army officer and freelance cartoonist. He was an editorial page cartoonist for the ''Brooklyn Eagle'' for a number of years and is best known for producing the touri ...

, who was called up by the military at the beginning of the war, along with wartime shortages of paper and printing supplies. Printing plates of older bibles were worn down through continued reprintings until they were nearly blank, and original plates lost in police raids had to be replaced with new plates crudely recut by hamfisted, untrained amateur engravers. The quality of Tijuana bibles available on the market suffered, and prices dropped as sales plummeted. When the business was revived after the war, the quality of new bibles was dismal: they were poorly drawn, badly printed, and the stories were amateurish and puerile compared to the work of a decade before. Mr. Dyslexic, the leading artist of the postwar era, was possessed of an almost staggering lack of drawing talent matched only by his bad taste and ignorance of the English language. His best-known work "Traveling Preacher" is a lengthy, labored-over retelling of a novel by

Erskine Caldwell Erskine Preston Caldwell (December 17, 1903 – April 11, 1987) was an American novelist and short story writer. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native Southern United States, in novels such as '' Tobacco Road'' (1 ...

(''Journeyman''), whom Mr. Dyslexic then proceeded to acknowledge by making Caldwell himself the star of another scabrous Tijuana bible ("Erskine Caldwell in ''Grandpa's Revenge''").

Artists

Little is known about the anonymous artists who produced the Tijuana bibles.

Wesley Morse Wesley Morse (June 17, 1897 – June 20, 1963) was an American cartoonist who is most famous for his creation of the '' Bazooka Joe'' comic strip for the bubble gum company Topps in 1953. He also created the Copa girl, which was the basis fo ...

(who later went on to draw ''

Bazooka Joe Bazooka Joe is a comic strip character featured on small comics included in individually wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubble gum. He wears a black eyepatch, lending him a distinctive appearance. He is one of the more recognizable American advertisin ...

'') drew many of those appearing shortly before WWII, most notably about a dozen titles inspired by the

1939 World's Fair The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purcha ...

. Morse was the only major Tijuana bible artist who did not parody the newspaper comic strips, preferring to create his own characters. A number of books have alleged that freelance cartoonist

was the creator of hundreds of Tijuana bibles in the 1930s, although this remains unproven.

Gershon Legman Gershon Legman (November 2, 1917 – February 23, 1999) was an American cultural critic and folkloristics, folklorist, best known for his books ''The Rationale of the Dirty Joke'' (1968) and ''The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bib ...

was around the New York City erotic book trade in the 1930s, and he claimed that Rankin was paid $35 weekly to produce two eight pagers, delivering the work to Louis Shomer, a gadfly book trade personality and publisher of a line of cheap pamphlet-sized jokebooks, chiefly remembered today for testifying against Ben Rebhuhn at the Falstaff Press pornography trial and as the author of a manual of tap-dancing. During World War II, with the production of new Tijuana bible titles shut down, Shomer employed Wesley Morse to produce hundreds of unsigned and uncredited cartoons, illustrations, cover art and advertisements for his line of digest-sized newsstand joke books, Larch Publications. In addition to his identification of Rankin, Legman also claimed to know that one of the major Tijuana bible artists was a woman. A declassified FBI memorandum from the early 1940s confirms that they knew one of the main artists to be a woman, but the artist's name has been redacted from the document. It is likely that the artist referred to was Blackjack, who has never been positively identified but may possibly have been Legman's acquaintance, the erotic illustrator

Clara Tice Clara Tice (22 May 1888 – 2 February 1973) was an American avant-garde illustrator and artist, who spent most of her life in New York City, United States. Because of her provocative art and public appearances, she was seen as representative of b ...

. Blackjack drew upon movie star fan magazines, both for story ideas and for visual reference, for titles like ''William Powell and Myrna Loy in "Nuts to Will Hays!"'', and followed the storylines of the daily newspaper comics closely and satirized them: the plot and characters of ''Annie and Rose in "Doughnut Girls Fill Up the Holes!"'' fits right in to the 1938 story arc in which Little Orphan Annie and her grownup friend Rose Chance tried to beat the Depression by starting a doughnut-making business. Blackjack's two baseball-themed bibles, featuring New York Yankees

Joe Dimaggio Joseph Paul DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "The Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yank ...

Lou Gehrig Henry Louis Gehrig (born Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig ; June 19, 1903June 2, 1941) was an American professional baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees (1923–1939). Gehrig was renowned f ...

and

Lefty Gomez Vernon Louis "Lefty" Gomez (November 26, 1908 – February 17, 1989) was an American professional baseball player. A left-handed pitcher, Gomez played in Major League Baseball (MLB) between 1930 and 1943 for the New York Yankees and the Washingt ...

, show a good awareness of the latest tabloid gossip about the Yankees' love lives as of spring training 1937, although the pairing of Lou Gehrig with Mae West seems to be purely a figment of Blackjack's imagination. Collectors have assigned names to several anonymous artists with recognizable styles: "Mr. Prolific" was the creator of the "Adventures of a Fuller Brush Man" series, and the master of a sure-handed, elegant steel-pen inking style. "Mr. Dyslexic" was a seemingly clumsy, semi-literate artist who produced numerous titles in the postwar period, some with political content (e.g., Senator

Robert A. Taft Robert Alphonso Taft Sr. (September 8, 1889 – July 31, 1953) was an American politician, lawyer, and scion of the Republican Party's Taft family. Taft represented Ohio in the United States Senate, briefly served as Senate Majority Lead ...

breaking a strike by sleeping with union members' wives). "Blackjack" was an artist active around 1938 whose work frequently depicted imaginary pairings of famous Hollywood movie stars, the artwork featuring large solid black areas and sometimes resembling linoleum block prints. The name "Elmer Zilch" appears on a number of bibles that appeared circa 1934. Zilch was an early and witty creator of the mid-1930s, rivaling Mr. Prolific in talent, popularity, and productivity, who may have been Doc Rankin. Rankin had a studio in midtown Manhattan, directly across the street from Macy's department store, where he produced commercial artwork on commission, so there is the possibility that assistants were involved. Commentators have claimed to discern the styles of from a dozen to twenty artists who produced 10 or more bibles during their heyday, with the most productive artists (Mr. Prolific and Elmer Zilch) each drawing from 150 to 200 titles; followed by the output of Wesley Morse, Blackjack, and Mr. Dyslexic, who each produced about half that many. These five artists may have drawn half of all the Tijuana bibles ever done. There were also two anonymous artists in the 1950s who each drew about 60 to 80 cheaply produced titles, sold for a dime each to a clientele which allegedly consisted largely of high school boys. These late-period bible series included such titles as "Bellhop Kicks Dog" and a number of "Archie"-themed comics. A few observers believe that Mr. Prolific and Elmer Zilch may even have been the same artist working in two styles to vary his output and extend his shelf life. The byline "Elmer Zilch" appears on a number of Tijuana bibles which evidently came on the market in 1934 and 1935, and the same artist's unmistakable "big-foot" cartoony style can be seen in many more. The name "Elmer Zilch" referred to a fictional character who was the mascot of the humor magazine ''

Ballyhoo The ballyhoo halfbeak or ballyhoo (''Hemiramphus brasiliensis'') is a baitfish of the halfbeak family (Hemiramphidae). It is similar to the Balao halfbeak (''H. balao'') in most features. Ballyhoo are frequently used as cut bait and for trolli ...

''. The total number of distinct stories produced is unknown but has been estimated by Art Spiegelman to be between 700 and 1,000. These were endlessly reprinted, redrawn, retitled, and pirated, with nearly illegible "nth-generation" copies circulating decades after the originals were first issued. The majority of old Tijuana bibles seen today are reprints dating from the 1950s. In addition to the eight-pagers, there were also the more expensive "16-pagers", printed in a larger page size with more pages, and usually more carefully drawn and better printed. These were high-priced and less common than the eight-pagers but showcased the artists' best work.

Police seizures

In 1930 the sale of two Tijuana bibles for 25 cents each, at the barber shop in the sleepy mountain hamlet of

Dover Plains Dover Plains is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 1,323 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie– Newburgh– Middletown Metropolitan Statistical Area. ...

, was front page news. The affair was uncovered when a maiden aunt, going through her 17-year-old nephew's clothes to prepare them for the wash, discovered the bibles in the back pocket of his jeans, and notified the police. The guilty barber blamed a mysterious stranger from

Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsi ...

who had supplied him with the merchandise (never identified, but possibly Abe Rubin, a pioneering Tijuana bible distributor, who was arrested in the nearby village of Wingdale in 1932). One of the two bibles sold in Dover Plains was identified as "The Old Man Steps Out", a Maggie and Jiggs title later reprinted by Tobasco. The earliest known Tijuana bible arrest occurred in

Terre Haute, Indiana Terre Haute ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, about 5 miles east of the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a ...

, in 1926, when a cache of bibles was discovered in a student's school locker at Wiley High School. Police traced the source back to a highly respected local newspaper editor named Charles Jewett (managing editor of the '' Terre Haute Star'') and his son, a job printer. A federal charge was also placed against them because some of the bibles had been shipped across state lines to

Rochester, Minnesota Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on rolling bluffs on the Zumbro River's south fork in Southeast Minnesota, the city is the home and birthplace of the renowned Mayo Clinic. Acco ...

, home of the

Mayo Clinic The Mayo Clinic () is a nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research. It employs over 4,500 physicians and scientists, along with another 58,400 administrative and allied health staff, ...

, where ''Cap'n Billy's Whiz Bang'', America's leading outlet for guardedly smutty humor, is said to have gotten its start a few years earlier as a risque joke sheet passed around among the convalescing soldiers. "Jewett was arrested following an investigation by authorities of the origin of a book of indecent pictures in which popular comic strip characters figure," a local newspaper reported. "The arrests grew out of an investigation, which had been quietly going on for three or four weeks, following the finding that several Wiley high school boys were in possession of an obscene publication based on a current strip in the Sunday papers. Further inquiry led to a search of the printing offices conducted by Jackson Jewett, under the name of the Jewett Printing Company, where a number of zinc etchings, from which the strips were printed, together with a quantity of booklets, bound and ready for distribution, were seized. It was said at the time that the elder Jewett had taken the contract for printing the strips and had attended to their distribution." Charles Jewett was sentenced to six months in a state workhouse, and father and son left Terre Haute afterward. It is not known today which particular bibles were involved, but the earliest bibles are sometimes dated to 1925, particularly early "Tillie and Mac" and "Maggie and Jiggs" stories which were issued without covers or titles at the time, and were not always eight pages long. The

Kinsey Institute The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (often shortened to The Kinsey Institute) is a research institute at Indiana University. Established in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1947 as a nonprofit, the institute merged with Indi ...

has in its possession an early Tillie and Mac story involving Mac finding a used condom in Tillie's wastebasket ("I wondered where that had gone", she says brightly), which has an archivist's notation "First seen Oklahoma 1926". On the rare occasions that the Tijuana bibles were mentioned in the press, they were usually described vaguely and without identifying detail as "cartoon books", an ambiguous term that could just as easily refer to licensed collections of newspaper strips such as the

Cupples & Leon Cupples & Leon was an American publishing company founded in 1902 by Victor I. Cupples (1864–1941) and Arthur T. Leon (1867–1943). They published juvenile fiction and children's books but are mainly remembered today as the major publi ...

reprint books. People would order "cartoon books" from the mysterious and ambiguously worded advertisements that appeared in the back pages of the ''Police Gazette'' starting in the late 1920s, but they had no way of knowing which they would receive. Buyers were sometimes advised to "state explicitly what you want". If a news story concerned a police raid, a clarifying adjective might be employed, such as "indecent", "lewd", or "obscene", as in the following 1930 news item about an arrest in midtown Manhattan: The scale on which Tijuana bibles were produced can be gauged from the large hauls announced in police seizures. Eight million bibles were reported seized in one November 1942 raid by

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

agent P.E. Foxworth and his men on a Manhattan warehouse and a printing plant in the loft over a garage in the

South Bronx The South Bronx is an area of the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of the Bronx. The area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Bronx, Concourse, Mott Haven, Bronx, Mott Haven, Melrose, B ...

. Small-time businessmen Jacob and David Brotman were arrested in that raid, along with several associates. The majority of the Tijuana bibles circulating in the country were being printed in this loft on a Babcock press. The lease on the 2250 square foot loft had been taken out a year earlier by the Brotmans' brother-in-law, who was their partner in a bowling alley located in Manhattan under the

George Washington Bridge The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting Fort Lee, New Jersey, with Manhattan in New York City. The bridge is named after George Washington, the first president of the United St ...

. According to the FBI, four tons of material were ready to ship across the country, and seven tons had already gone out and were being rounded up at regional distribution centers in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Akron Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

, and

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

. Jacob Brotman was identified as one of the main players in the Tijuana bible trade in Jay Gertzman's ''Bookleggers and Smuthounds'', and he had previously been arrested in a similar raid on a

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

loft reported in the New York City papers in 1936 which produced a large haul of bibles, erotic fiction "readers", pornographic playing cards, and nude photos, along with cutting and binding equipment and an expensive modern printing press which police could not confiscate because it turned out to be leased. The firm had been operating under the guise of a playing card manufacturer. During the

, men selling pornographic booklets on the midway at the fair were trailed to a warehouse near the

Brooklyn Navy Yard The Brooklyn Navy Yard (originally known as the New York Navy Yard) is a shipyard and industrial complex located in northwest Brooklyn in New York City, New York. The Navy Yard is located on the East River in Wallabout Bay, a semicircular bend ...

where David Brotman and Ben Reisberg (who was later arrested again with Louis Shomer in Virginia) were arrested and a cache was seized of 350,000 printed items and photos and 50,000 condoms, along with printing plates. Collectors have estimated that as many as 50,000 copies would be produced of a single title in this period, and distributed around the country through an underground network of independent local and regional distributors, many of them former bootleggers. A local distributor such as Andrew Hepler in

northern Virginia Northern Virginia, locally referred to as NOVA or NoVA, comprises several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is a widespread region radiating westward and southward from Washington, D.C. Wit ...

or Frank Lang in Pittsburgh would typically buy them in bulk batches of 20,000 or more as new product became available (typically 10 or 20 new titles), break the shipment into packets of 100 or so bibles, and drive around the distribution territory dropping them off at pool halls, gas stations, barber shops, and taverns. If the distributor did not cross a state line while making his rounds, it was very difficult to charge him (or her, in a few cases) with a federal offense, although in the Hepler case authorities were able to sentence him to five years in the

Atlanta Penitentiary The United States Penitentiary, Atlanta (USP Atlanta) is a medium-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Atlanta, Georgia. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice ...

—not for distributing pornography, but on the charge that he had cheated his business partner on the proceeds. In New York City, police raids on the business were carried out at intervals for decades, usually at the instigation of

John S. Sumner John Saxton Sumner (September 22, 1876 - June 20, 1971) headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), a New York state censorship body empowered to recommend obscenity cases to the appropriate prosecutors. He served as Associat ...

and the

New York Society for the Suppression of Vice The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV or SSV) was an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public, founded in 1873. Its specific mission was to monitor compliance with state laws and work with the courts and di ...

, which closely watched the trade in pornography in the city during the years of its existence. In

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, this function was carried out by the

Watch and Ward Society The New England Watch and Ward Society (founded as the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice) was a Boston, Massachusetts, organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th century to the middle ...

, which exchanged information with Sumner's organization in New York to coordinate their efforts. There was a similar group in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, the Illinois Vigilance Association led by Rev. Philip Yarrow; while in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

the energetic Rev. Mary Hubbert Ellis, a

Primitive Methodist The Primitive Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination with the holiness movement. It began in England in the early 19th century, with the influence of American evangelist Lorenzo Dow (1777–1834). In the United States, the Primiti ...

minister, assembled an ad hoc coalition and terrorized the local smut industry with a series of raids for two years until her enemies and their lawyers were finally able to turn the tables and force her to leave town after she accepted a $100 donation from one of the dealers in exchange for not raiding his premises. Mr. Prolific mocks these foes in one of his bibles, in the form of a guardian of public morals named "Smuthound" who apprehends Betty Boop while she is engaged in having sex with a lifeguard on the beach (''Betty Boop in "Improvising"''). The FBI monitored the Tijuana bible trade but rarely made arrests. A large file of specimen bibles was maintained at FBI headquarters, eventually comprising over 5,000 items, for the purpose of tracing printers and distributors. As a result of the 1942 raids the FBI came into possession of thousands of engraved printing plates used to print the original bibles; these gathered dust in a storage cabinet at FBI headquarters for years awaiting a final decision on their destruction.

Cultural references

Early in the graphic novel ''

Watchmen ''Watchmen'' is an American comic book Limited series (comics), maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins (comics), John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 a ...

'', the current

Silk Spectre Silk Spectre is the name of two fictional superheroines in the graphic novel limited series ''Watchmen'', published by DC Comics. Created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the original Silk Spectre, Sally "Jupiter" Juspeczyk, was a member of the cr ...

(Laurie Juspeczyk) visits her mother (past Silk Spectre Sally Jupiter) and briefly reads a Tijuana bible featuring her. Sally finds it flattering and keeps it as a reminder of her past sex appeal, but Laurie finds the comic obscene. The same Tijuana bible is later given away as a gift, owing to its present nature as a collector's novelty item.

Will Eisner William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series ''The Spirit'' (1940–1952) was no ...

features Tijuana bibles in the first pages of his book '' The Dreamer'', though nothing explicit is shown. His protagonist Billy is a young artist out looking for work who is offered a job illustrating them by a printer and a mobster. He is shocked and incensed and asks if they are legal. The vignette serves to focus conflict between the character's dream and reality, but also between legitimate and illicit comic production. Dejected, Billy says that he will think it over. The theme is reminiscent of a real-life episode described by Eisner about being asked by a shady Brooklyn businessman to draw for the publications at a rate of $3 a page, which was good money at the time.

Joe Shuster Joseph Shuster (; July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992), professionally known simply as Joe Shuster, was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in ''Action Comics'' #1 (c ...

drew Tijuana bible-like illustrations for an underground bondage-themed erotic series called ''

Nights of Horror ''Nights of Horror'' is an American series of Sexual fetishism, fetish comic books, created in 1954 by publisher Malcla, drawn by comic artist Joe Shuster, who is also one of the original creators of Superman. The comic stories were written by an ...

'' in the early 1950s. His male characters are strongly reminiscent of

Superman Superman is a superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, and debuted in the comic book ''Action Comics'' #1 (cover-dated June 1938 and publi ...

, and some of his female characters resemble

Lois Lane Lois Lane is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, she first appeared in ''Action Comics'' #1 (June 1938). Lois is an award-winning journalist for ...

. Thousands of copies of ''Nights of Horror'' were seized in a police raid on a Times Square book store, but Shuster's name did not come to light in the ensuing prosecution. The young

Hugh Hefner Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of ''Playboy'' magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obsc ...

experimentally drew several Tijuana bibles as samples for a projected series which was never published, when he was a struggling cartoonist in Chicago in the early 1950s, around the same time that he issued his self-published cartoon book ''That Toddlin' Town.'' The title character in the 1959 semi-autobiographical Canadian novel '' The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz'' by

Mordecai Richler Mordecai Richler (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are ''The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (novel), The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz'' (1959) and ''Barney's Version (novel), Barney's Versi ...

sells Tijuana bibles to his high school classmates, some featuring ''

Dick Tracy ''Dick Tracy'' is an American comic strip featuring Dick Tracy (originally Plainclothes Tracy), a tough and intelligent police detective created by Chester Gould. It made its debut on Sunday, October 4, 1931, in the ''Detroit Mirror'', and it ...

'', after buying them in bulk from a newsstand vendor who assigns him a small part of the city as his sales territory. He hears that the news vendor has been arrested, then panics and destroys all the bibles. The English garage punk band

The Flaming Stars The Flaming Stars are an English underground garage punk band. History The band was formed in November 1994 in Camden, London, England, by lead singer and Ex- Gallon Drunk drummer Max Décharné, guitarists Johnny Johnson (replaced in 1996 b ...

released the album ''Tijuana Bible'' in 2000. In the 2006 novel ''

Water for Elephants ''Water for Elephants'' is the third novel by the Canadian–American author Sara Gruen. The book was published in 2006 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. The historical fiction novel is a 20th century circus drama. Gruen wrote the book as part ...

'', the term "eight-pager" is mentioned in several locations, one of these when Kinko the dwarf is caught masturbating by Jacob Jankowski while reading a ''

Popeye the Sailor Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar.The Green Mile'' by

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...

, features a scene in which guard Percy Wetmore is caught reading a Tijuana bible with fictional character "Lotta Leadpipe", and is asked what his mother would think of such material; this is included in the film version. A 1954 episode of '' Dragnet'' ("The Big Producer") had Sgt. Joe Friday breaking up a high school smut ring which includes a teenage boy (played by

Martin Milner Martin Sam Milner (December 28, 1931 – September 6, 2015) was an American actor and radio host. He is best known for his performances on two television series: ''Route 66'', which aired on CBS from 1960 to 1964, and ''Adam-12'', which ai ...

) selling eight-pagers out of his school locker. They are called "joke books" by the seller. The term "Tijuana Bible" was used in the 1968 ''Dragnet'' episode "The Starlet". During Year Six (2007) of the

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be co ...

''Something Positive'', lead character Davan MacIntire discovers that the man whom he is named after, a cousin of his grandfather, had worked as a writer/artist of Tijuana bibles in the late 1930s.

Randy Milholland Randal Keith Milholland (born November 25, 1975), better known as R. K. Milholland, is an American webcomic author. His works include ''Something Positive'', ''New Gold Dreams'', ''Midnight Macabre'', ''Classically Positive'' and ''Super Stupor'' ...

, the creator of ''Something Positive'', then created a spin-off series called ''Something Positive 1937'' to tell the story of the first Davan. In the graphic 2007 novel '' The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier'' by

Alan Moore Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including ''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', ''The Ballad of Halo Jones'', ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman:'' ''The Killing Joke'', and ''From Hell' ...

and Kevin O'Neill, the titular Dossier contains a mock Tijuana bible (actually printed in cheap newsprint and included with the book) which, in the context of the story, was published by Pornsec, a department of the government of Big Brother (from George Orwell's novel ''

Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final ...

''). In 2008, comic artists

Ethan Persoff Ethan Persoff (born November 24, 1974 in Denver, Colorado) is an American cartoonist, archivist, and sound artist. His work as an archivist includes a complete digitization of Paul Krassner's counterculture magazine ''The Realist'', and the websit ...

and Scott Marshall created an eight-page mock Tijuana bible lampooning President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

and Presidential hopeful

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms ...

entitled ''Obliging Lady''. The comic was distributed at the

2008 Democratic National Convention The 2008 Democratic National Convention was a quadrennial presidential nominating convention of the Democratic Party where it adopted its national platform and officially nominated its candidates for president and vice president. The conventi ...

. In a 2018 issue of

Howard Chaykin Howard Victor Chaykin (; born October 7, 1950) is an American comic book artist and writer. Chaykin's influences include his one-time employer and mentor, Gil Kane, and the mid-20th century illustrators Robert Fawcett and Al Parker. Early life ...

's scathing satire of the comics industry, ''Hey Kids! Comics!'', two freelance comic book artists are shown furtively delivering artwork for upcoming Tijuana bibles to the (fictional) offices of the Tobasco Publishing Co.

References

External links

Tijuanabible.org

Tijuanabibles.org

Cover gallery

''Police Gazette'', October 1955. * {{Animation industry in the United States American culture Erotic comics Pornographic magazines published in the United States Underground comix History of comics Unofficial adaptations Parody comics Parodies of comics Satirical comics Comics based on real people Obscenity controversies in comics Comics controversies

Characters

History

Artists

Police seizures

Cultural references

See also

References

Further reading

External links