VloMo08 - Day 12 An Overview of Tijuana Bibles

I have books. I really like books. So I'm looking around for something to talk about and well, this is an overview of a type of underground comic book. The person that really did the leg work was Bob Adelman who wrote the book "Tijuana Bibles : Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s" published by Simon & Schuster, 1997.

So this is my way of giving a shout out to that book. You should know a few things before checking out Tijuana Bibles:

• These were underground comics and the majority of them were probably created by men. Tijuana Bibles have nothing to do with religion or the city in Mexico. They are sexual explicit comics that were created as sexual parodies of mainstream media cartoon characters, movie stars and know celebrities of the day.
• The comics were a reflection of their time. There is misogyny, racism and homophobia present in many of the comics. Some just focused on the sex but others well, yeah they can be icky.
• There is a wide range of art work from crappy to really well done art pieces with most falling smack dab in the middle.

For more information about this form of underground comics check out:

• Charlie Rose has a video interview with Bob and Richard Merkin from 1998.
• Art Spiegelman, who wrote an introduction, to the book talks about the comics in a Salon.com article.
• Tijuana Bible.org has history, collectibles and Popeye doing something to some woman in the lower left corner.
• Quinn at Tijuana Bibles.org has full page scans of some of the comics, including what Archie has been doing with Veronica all these years.

To see more International Videoblogging Month/VloMo08 videos you can:

• Search Blip.TV with the keyword VloMo or VlogMo08
• Visit Vimeo VloMo Group at http://vimeo.com/groups/vlomo or
• Dig everybody at the VloMo08 Mefedia Channel http://mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08