Tjuana Bibles

These are some examples of the underground phenomena called "Tijuana Bibles."

For those unfamiliar with the term, "Tijuana Bible" meant an underground comic produced by persons unknown, starring famous characters (like Superman, Archie, Terry and the Pirates, Annie, etc.) engaging in...let's say adult-oriented activities, to be kind. In many cases, these books went further than that, featuring stuff that went way beyond what most people would label "pornography."

Of course, these books were totally unsanctioned, created, bought, and sold via the underground. They were produced mainly from the 1920s to the 1960s (when, I would guess, Playboy's place in the culture made such material less than compelling anymore).

Normally, I wouldn't cover this topic on the Shrine, because, as you might have guessed from the covers you see above, only the biggest names in pop culture (before that term was even coined) were used as subjects: Popeye, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Tarzan, and The Phantom all got put through the ringer. Aquaman just wasn't a big enough "star" for anyone to think to use him in such a manner.

Or was he?

A few years ago, in the late, great magazine Comic Book Heaven, editor Scott Saavedra featured this startling scan:

Green Arrow and Speedy, in a Tijuana Bible?!?

That completely floored me (I am easily floored)--never in a million years would I have thought Green Arrow was a big enough "name" to appear in one of these. I did a little research, and found the cover to this:

Now, of course, even though Green Arrow and Aquaman debuted in very same comic, I guess DC immediately considered GA a bigger star, featuring him and Speedy on the cover of almost every issue of More Fun Comics, while Aquaman was relegated to just appearing on the insides.

Maybe just being on the covers was enough, though the artist of the Green Arrow Tijuana Bible clearly knew enough about the characters to draw what looks like The Arrowcar, so maybe he/she (oh come on, surely it was a he) was some sort of fan...or was so dedicated to his craft he did research!

Anyway, I did some more searching on the TBs, and found no evidence there ever was an Aquaman one. I wrote the webmaster of a site all about them, and am awaiting a definitive answer. But, for now, I'm going to assume an Aquaman Tijuana Bible doesn't exist.

So...is that a good thing? On the one hand (no pun intended), we're spared the image of Aquaman engaging in some pretty humiliating behavior (Porn + Aquaman + sea creatures = yeesh). On the other hand, an Aquaman Tijuana Bible would be an incredibly interesting artifact, an early piece of Aqua-Arcana that would be a great example of the Sea King's burgeoning presence in the culture.

So I'm not ready to label this post a "Missed Opportunity"...yet.



(BTW, if you want to learn more about Tijuana Bibles, check out the Wikipedia page. As I mentioned, there are sites devoted to them, but they are definitely NSFW. Google with caution!)


Update: Todd F. Sheffer (our newest F.O.A.M.er!) of Hakes Americana and Collectibles was nice enough to send the Shrine some more examples of Tijuana Bibles:

Seeing these, I'm trying to decide whether these mean there's a better or worse chance there's an Aquaman one of these around somewhere.

I have to admit, TBs starring Plastic Man and Captain Marvel Jr. are pretty surprising, but both did have their own comics series, and the Captain Marvel family of comics were, at one point I think, the best-selling comics on the market. So in the 40s and 50s, way more people had heard of CM Jr. than Aquaman, I'm sure.


I was also contacted by the webmaster of TijuanaBibles.org, who told me he has never seen one starring Aquaman. But of course, who knows...?


Fun Fact: I should have mentioned this in the original post, but of course Tijuana Bibles show up in Watchmen. In the final issue (#12), we see there's one of Sally Jupiter (the original Silk Spectre), sent to her by an overzealous fan. Thanks to F.O.A.M.er Eric Stettmeier for reminding me!