Dian Hanson – författare

In the late 1960s specialty bookstores selling magazines under the counter were replaced by sex shops, or “adult bookstores” in the U.S., at which point every subject, with few exceptions, was freely available. It started with Swedish Private and its shockingly explicit covers. Denmark’s Theander brothers countered with Rodox and Color Climax, with equally explicit content. Soon they were supplying most of Northern Europe, with the Netherlands pitching in. In the U.S. Reuben Sturman was hailed King of Porn, with affiliates churning out hardcore of every kind to fill his 800 bookstores. Suddenly men used to taking what was offered could be picky. Lesbian dominance? Hot housewives? Black and Asian women? Hippie nudists espousing free love and drug use? Hairy women? Shaved women? Shaved women giving hairy women enemas? It was all there. For the kinky, every fetish was represented: spanking titles Zap and Smack cuddled up to dominance titles Bitch and Aggressive Gals, and to Wet Dreams, Diapered and Dominated and Enema Pick ups. For rubberists there was quirky Atomage, and even quirkier Belly Button. Yes, Belly Button. Are you familiar with the name Edw. Wood, Jr., called the world’s worst film director? Then you’ll enjoy his little-known porn magazines, including Balling, Skin & Bones and Party Time. What a decade. Warning: everything in this volume is uncensored and for mature adults only. The photos do not represent the majority. Volume 6 features over 600 covers and photos from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the U.S. with the usual, amusing text.

From the time The Big Penis Book was published, readers anticipated The Big Book of Pussy. Granted, perhaps not the same readers, but the seed had been planted and the calls and letters began flowing in. Once they had that long-awaited book, some found themselves overwhelmed by the variety and abundance, as well as the sheer size of the book. As one reviewer wrote, “let’s give credit to Amazon for…the strength of its packaging. Who wants a 2-ton pussy book being ‘exposed’ for the mailman…?”For those who worry that there can be too much of a good thing, we’ve made a pared down, “best of” edition of The Big Book of Pussy, a petite little kitten of a book that puts those in-your-face photos in proper perspective. Now you can follow the evolution of genital exposure with ease, through 100 years of photos with one thing in common: the exhibitionistic pleasure with which the models present their feminine pulchritude. And with over 150 photos—36 new to this book—of the pet we love to pet, no bothersome text to interrupt the flow, all in a package that won’t stress the mailman’s back, we just may have produced the perfect self-gifter of the year.

The Little Big Book of Breasts features over 150 celebrated big breast models from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, including Michelle Angelo, Virginia Bell, Roxanne Brewer, Joan Brinkman, Lorraine Burnett, Lisa DeLeeuw, Uschi Digard, Sylvia McFarland, Chesty Morgan, Roberta Pedon, Rosina Revelle, Janie Reynolds, Candy Samples, Tempest Storm, Mary Waters, June Wilkinson, and Julie Wills, plus Guinness Book of World Records bra-buster Norma Stitz in a compact and inexpensive format.Photos come not just from the original 398-page edition, but from subsequent Big Breast Calendars, meaning that 40% of the content is unique to this edition. Add reduced text to make more room for the stunning black-and-white and color photos and how could anyone—big, small, or in-between—ask for a better deal?

Pubic hair appeared on the American newsstand in 1970 compliments of Penthouse magazine. Within a year it was everywhere, and in 1975 Midwest redneck Larry Flynt parted the hair and made the pink beyond the centerpiece of Hustler. In Northern Europe censorship laws fell like dominos after Berth Milton confronted Swedish parliament with hardcore photos in 1967, asking what it would do if he published them in Private magazine. The answer was nothing. Denmark followed, producing magazines for France as well. England, always lagging, finally got the knickers off, but kept its censorship laws. Japan, long suppressed, found release in bondage magazines like New Roman Porno and SM Select, though pubic hair stayed forbidden. Italy passed a law in 1975 exempting newsstand dealers from responsibility for the content of magazines; much like in Sweden hardcore was suddenly everywhere, while just five years before divorce was illegal. The Pill removed pregnancy fear and couples embraced swinging, the suburban sexual revolution, with swing magazines in the U.S. and Europe helping to hook them up. Behind much of it was politically motivated idealists and oddballs. Peter Wolff and the “Love family” made reader written magazines, bringing publishing power to the people. Al Goldstein challenged American censorship with Screw, while a Texas ad exec tried to keep tasteless hillbilly humor alive with Sex to Sexty. History of Men’s Magazines Volume 5 includes over 600 hair-raising covers and photos from Denmark, England, France, Germany, Japan, the U.S. and more, with the usual inspired text.

Frank Frazetta has reigned as the undisputed king of fantasy art for 50 years, his fame only growing in the years since his death. With his paintings now breaking auction records (Egyptian Queen sold for $ 5.4 million in 2019) he’s long overdue for this ultimate monograph.Born to a Sicilian immigrant family in Brooklyn, 1928, Frazetta was a minor league athlete, petty criminal and serial seducer with movie star looks and phenomenal talent. He claimed to only make art when there was nothing better to do – he preferred playing baseball - yet began his professional career in comics at age 16. Strip work led him to the infamous EC Comics, then to oils for Tarzan and Conan pulp covers. Both characters were interpreted by many before him, but as he explained in the 1970s, “I’m very physical minded. In Brooklyn, I knew Conan, I knew guys just like him,” and he used this first-hand knowledge of muscle and macho to redefine fantasy heroes as more massive, more menacing, more testosterone-fueled than anything seen before. As counterbalance he created a new breed of women, nude as censorship allowed, with pixie faces and multiparous bodies: thick thighed, heavy buttocked, breasts cantilevered out to there, yet still, with their soft bellies and hints of cellulite, believably real. Add in the action, the creatures, the twilit worlds of haunting shadow and Frazetta’s art is addictive as potato chips.

In 2007 TASCHEN released The New Erotic Photography, followed in 2012 by The New Erotic Photography 2. Each book featured hundreds of fresh and provocative images from the world’s most intriguing erotic talents. Now the best of both books is available in The New Erotic Photography, featuring 62 photographers from 10 countries, exploring the global variations of erotic photography, as well as the evolution of photographic media over the last decade. We see film give way to digital, while those who persist with film are as likely to use Polaroids and primitive cameras like the Lomo and Holga as traditional SLRs.The featured photographers include new names Gregory Bojorquez, Jo Schwab, Tomohide Ikeya, Frédéric Fontenoy, Andrew Pashis, and Jan Hronsky, as well as established artists Guido Argentini, Bruno Bisang, Eric Kroll, and the late Bob Carlos Clarke. Several outstanding women are also featured in this edition, including erotic film star Kimberly Kane, digital pioneer Natacha Merritt, heavy metal skateboarder Magdalena Wosinska, self-portraitist Jody Frost, and cover artist April-Lea Hutchinson. It all adds up to an awful lot of nudes for a tantalizingly low price.

First, The Big Book of Breasts, then The Big Penis Book, The Big Book of Legs, and the weighty Big Butt Book. What could follow but an in-depth exploration of the female pudendum, that coveted orifice man spends nine months trying to escape, and a lifetime attempting to reenter? The Big Book of Pussy, not to be confused with a book of big pussy, closes out this popular series with an offering sure to be as controversial as it is popular. As in previous volumes, editor Dian Hanson delves into the historical significance of this humble os, to show how the yoni has been coveted, feared, reviled, and worshipped by civilizations worldwide, from New Guinea to old Ireland. The text is supported by playful photographs of women exposing their vulvas, from 1900 to the present day. Because depiction of this body part has long been wrapped in unwarranted shame, The Big Book of Pussy reframes the subject, featuring models who expose their most private part enthusiastically, happily, with smiles spread wide as… well, you get the picture. And with 400+ photos the point is made emphatically, in images both naturally furry and stylishly groomed.Included are interviews with the auteur known as Pussyman, the ex-cop who turned masturbation into millions with a toy called the Fleshlight, Vanessa del Rio, squirter Flower Tucci, vaginal performance artist Mouse, and the singular Buck Angel. Contemporary photographers Terry Richardson, Richard Kern, Ralph Gibson, Jan Saudek, Guido Argentini, Ed Fox and others share their favorite pussy photos, so that by page 368 even the shiest reader will be calling, “Here, kitty, kitty!”

Frank Frazetta has reigned as the undisputed king of fantasy art for well over 50 years, the value of his paintings now climbing as high as his fans’ admiration. Each year his works break the previous year’s auction records, with the cover for Lancer books 1967 Conan bringing $13.5 million in September 2025.Born to a Sicilian immigrant family in Brooklyn, 1928, Frazetta was a minor league athlete, petty criminal and serial seducer with movie star looks and phenomenal talent. Self-described as lazy and difficult, he often started a painting the night before it was due, completing it in mere hours, yet delivering a masterpiece—often still wet, but a masterpiece, nonetheless. He started in comics  at age 16, including the infamous EC Comics, moved on to film posters, then to Tarzan and Conan pulp covers. Along the way he produced magazine covers for National Lampoon, though at odds with the editors’ “hippy politics,” made the animated film Fire & Ice with director Ralph Bakshi, and learned to paint left-handed at age 68 after the first of many strokes paralyzed his right hand. As he explained in the 1970s, “I’m very physical minded. In Brooklyn, I knew Conan, I knew guys just like him.” Using this first-hand knowledge of muscle and macho he redefined fantasy heroes as more massive, more menacing, more testosterone-fueled than anything seen before, and their female counterparts as thick-thighed, heavy-buttocked, and pixie-faced, yet still, with their soft bellies and hints of cellulite, believably real. All in all, Frazetta’s art is addictive as potato chips, and now available in a compact, attractive and affordable package.

Sexual revolution, civil rights, Flower Power, miniskirt, women’s liberation, The Pill, Black Panthers, hippies; all these words and phrases entered our language in the turbulent 1960s. The decade started as an extension of the domestic ’50s and ended with worldwide chaos as baby boomers reached sexual maturity. What a fun decade for men’s magazines. While Playboy’s world dominance grew, with France, Germany, England, and Italy producing “men’s lifestyle” titles, diversification spread in the U.S. The first big breast magazines debuted, with Fling, Gem and The Swinger; men’s adventure titles – with nudes – provided nostalgia for mid-life veterans; humor magazines hung on – barely – while hippie nudist titles exploited a legal loophole allowing them to show pubic hair. Italy finally joined the party with sexy fumetto photo comics and a hero named Supersex. Latin America clung to the old burlesque format, mired in religious restriction and political unrest. France retained post-war favorite Folies de Paris et de Hollywood for an older audience and launched elegant Playboy clone LUI for its sons. While the world donned miniskirts England did England, reveling in bloomer and petticoat fetishism with Spick and Span digests. But no one topped Germany, where Ulrike Meinhof edited Konkret in 1969, a magazine of sexual and political revolution, before forming Red Army Fraction with Andreas Baader to bomb, kidnap, and assassinate her way into domestic terror history. Volume 3 contains over 650 groovy covers and photos from Argentina, England, France, Germany, Italy, and The U.S., plus text.

WWII was devastating to Europe, but the U.S. emerged with a robust economy. People who were encouraged to save every cent for the war effort now spent freely, including on magazines. The U.S. quickly came to dominate the men’s magazine market. Playboy, launched in December 1953, made a huge impact on publishing, but it was not the only American men’s magazine in the 1950s. The quirky burlesque titles Beauty Parade, Wink, Titter and Eyeful, featuring Bettie Page and covers by artist Peter Driben, inspired a spate of competing titles. Much loved WWII pin-ups, often of aspiring starlets, led to “news and nudes” titles with cover girls Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, and to more lurid titles like Shock, blending burlesque and celebrity scandal. In New York City a clandestine fetishist magazine industry, bankrolled by the mob, emerged, first with John Willie’s Bizarre, then Lenny Burtman’s female dominant Exotique. Argentina, with a strong European influence, produced sophisticated Vea (Watch), while England, suffering paper shortages, produced little magazines with big buxom models, charting a path it would maintain through the 1960s. Then came Playboy. Eschewing the strippers, Hugh Hefner offered up “the girl next door,” eroticized innocence, and espoused consumerism as the route to sexual success. This combination made Playboy the most successful men’s magazine in history, shaping international publishing for decades. Volume 2 in this series contains over 650 magazine covers and photos from the U.S., Mexico, Argentina and England, plus informative essays.

In 1958 Milton Luros left his New York job designing and illustrating detective pulp magazines for North Hollywood, California. A year later, with a loan from an underworld figure, he founded a publishing empire that revolutionized men’s magazines in the 1960s. His so-called “California slicks” borrowed bad-girl themes from pre-Playboy burlesque titles, featuring big hair, heavy make-up, cigarettes, and cocktails, but in west coast mid-century settings with better photography, paper, and printing. With no redeeming articles, they were too strong for newsstands, but outsold Playboy in tobacco shops and specialty bookstores. Californian Elmer Batters invented leg art photography the same year, with titles Black Silk Stockings, Leg-O-Rama, Tip Top, Elmer’s Naked Jungle and more. Back in New York, Irving Klaw introduced fetish digests in the same specialty bookstores, leading to a ’60s fetish boom, with Lenny Burtman’s High Heels, Satana, Striparama, and Leg Show. A simultaneous uptick in sexploitation films spawned sexploitation film magazines, including Blazing Films and Banned. Sixties freedom spread to England too, where George Harrison Marks launched Kamera and Solo magazines with totally naked models posed to barely hide the banned bits, inventing “top shelf” titles: those not on public display. And lastly, up north, Swedish Sin was coined, with the first magazines challenging European censorship; a challenge they’d soon win. Volume 4 in this series contains over 650 ground-breaking covers and photos from the U.S., England, and Sweden with descriptive text.

The Kama Sutra gives detailed instructions on how to spank it. Contemporary Italians touch it for luck before placing a bet. Americans are having it cosmetically enhanced at rates approaching breast enlargement surgery. The female butt, tush, culo, or derrière has always inspired awe, fantasy, and slavish devotion.Curiously, its primary purpose is functional rather than aesthetic: butts balance our bodies while running, according to biologists. But ask any pygophiliac—as fundament fans are clinically termed—and you’ll get the same answer: female hindquarters exist to please the eye, the hands, and parts south. A pert posterior causes instant arousal, as Zora Neale Hurston observed in Their Eyes Were Watching God: "The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets." Or, as rapper Sir Mix-a-lot proclaimed, "My anaconda don’t want none, unless you’ve got buns, hun."Having all but disappeared from western culture in the breast-obsessed second half of the 20th century, the fully formed fanny is currently enjoying a massive resurgence, attributed by some to American actress Jennifer Lopez, by others to the rise of booty-centric hip hop culture. Yet this rage for shapely butts is nothing new. The ancient Greeks worshipped at the temple of Aphrodite Kallipygos, Goddess of the Beautiful Buttocks, while a womanly rump has always been an object of worship in most of the southern hemisphere.The Big Butt Book explores this perennial fascination with female booty—from small and taut to large and sumptuous—in the fourth installment of Dian Hanson’s critically acclaimed body parts series. Over 400 photos from 1900 to the present day, including works by Elmer Batters, Ellen von Unwerth, Jean-Paul Goude, Ralph Gibson, Richard Kern, Jan Saudek, Ed Fox, Terry Richardson and Sante D’Orazio, of butts ranging from petite Pam Anderson’s to sumptuous Serena Williams’, are contextualized by interviews with porn icon John (Buttman) Stagliano, filmmaker Tinto Brass, artist Robert Crumb, bootylicious butt queens Buffie The Body, Coco and Brazil’s Watermelon Woman, plus Eve Howard and her life-long spanking obsession.

An album cover collection exploring 70 years of surprising, shocking and frankly hilarious nude and provocative art. Sexy covers sold all musical genres, from funk to punk, and the silly German schlager. Comedy albums range from mid-century “stag party” pin-ups to the undeniably raunchy ’70s sensation, Blowfly. Steamy, seamy and adults only.

In 1998, TASCHEN introduced the world to the masterful art of Touko Laaksonen with The Art of Pleasure. Prior to that, Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, enjoyed an intense cult following in the international gay community but was largely unknown to a broader audience.In 2009, TASCHEN followed up with the ultimate Tom overview: Tom of Finland XXL, a beautiful big collector’s edition with over 1,000 images, covering six decades of the artist’s career. The work was gathered from collections across the United States and Europe with the help of the Tom of Finland Foundation, featuring many drawings, paintings, and sketches never previously reproduced. Other images had only been seen out of context and were finally presented in the sequential order Tom intended for full artistic appreciation and erotic impact.The elegant oversized volume showed the full range of Tom’s talent, from sensitive portraits to frank sexual pleasure to tender expressions of love and haunting tributes to young men struck down by AIDS, and was completed by eight commissioned essays on Tom’s social and personal impact by Camille Paglia, John Waters, Armistead Maupin, Todd Oldham, and others, plus a scholarly analysis of individual drawings by art historian Edward Lucie-Smith.The only thing missing from Tom of Finland XXL was a widely affordable price tag—until now. The new Tom of Finland XXL is still big enough to work your biceps, and includes all of the original content, but costs a fraction of the original price. You’re welcome.

Some call it the American obsession, but men everywhere recognize the hypnotic allure of a large and shapely breast. In The Big Book of Breasts, Dian Hanson explores the origins of mammary madness through three decades of natural big-breasted nudes. Starting with the World War II Bosom-Mania that spawned Russ Meyer, Howard Hughes’s The Outlaw and Frederick’s of Hollywood, Dian guides you over, around, and in between the dangerous curves of infamous models including Michelle Angelo, Candy Barr, Virginia Bell, Joan Brinkman, Lorraine Burnett, Lisa De Leeuw, Uschi Digard, Candye Kane, Jennie Lee, Sylvia McFarland, Margaret Middleton, Paula Page, June Palmer, Roberta Pedon, Rosina Revelle, Candy Samples, Tempest Storm, Linda West, June Wilkinson, Julie Wills, and dozens more, including Guinness World Record holder Norma Stitz, possessor of the World`s Largest Natural Breasts.The 396 pages of this book contain the most beautiful and provocative photos ever created of these iconic women, plus nine original interviews, including the first with Tempest Storm and Uschi Digard in over a decade, and the last with Candy Barr before her untimely death in 2005. In a world where silicone is now the norm, these spectacular real women stand as testament that nature knows best.

In 1928 commercial artist Hal Foster took a job to turn Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Tarzan of the Apes into a 60-installment black and white newspaper comic. Initially, no American papers wanted it, so it premiered in England, to great acclaim. When U.S. papers picked it up and wanted more, Foster wasn’t interested. It was only in 1931, with the Great Depression threatening his family with starvation, that he consented to take it on as a full color, full page Sunday comic, still calling the low-paid job “a bit of pottage.”That bit of pottage fed him for the next seven years, as Tarzan became the first adventure comic, and one of the most beloved Sunday strips in America. Though newspapers complained about the violence (Burroughs countered that Tarzan’s success was the result of a “human weakness for gory and gruesome situations”) and the incessant nudity (the writer’s script notes asked for “a great deal of female nakedness”) readers found Tarzan’s adventures with ancient Egyptians, modern criminals, Vikings, dinosaurs, killer apes, and a slew of provocative queens and princesses mesmerizing, right up until Foster handed off the strip to Burne Hogarth in mid-1937.Produced from original newspapers, preserving the color and texture of the Ben Day dot coloring process distinctive to vintage comics, Hal Foster’s Tarzan carries you back to Sunday morning, belly-down on the living room rug, “funnies” spread before you, lost in a world of exotic adventure while mom whips up your own bowl of oatmeal pottage.Tarzan Hal Foster newspaper strips © ERB, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Tarzan® owned by ERB, Inc. Used by Permission.

At the height of the Jazz Age, when Prohibition was turning ordinary citizens into criminals and ordinary criminals into celebrities, America’s true crime detective magazines were born. True Detective came first in 1924, and by 1934, when the Great Depression had produced colorful outlaws like Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger, the magazines were so popular cops and robbers alike vied to see themselves on the pages. Even FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover wrote regularly for what came to be called the “Dickbooks,” referring to a popular slang term for a detective. As the decades rolled on, the magazines went through a curious metamorphosis, however. When liquor was once more legal, the Depression over and all the flashy criminals dead or imprisoned, the “detectives” turned to sin to make sales. Sexy bad girls in tight sweaters, slit skirts, and stiletto heels adorned every cover. True Crime Detective Magazines follows the evolution and devolution of this distinctly American genre from 1924 to 1969. Hundreds of covers and interior images from dozens of magazine titles tell the story, not just of the “detectives,” but also of America’s attitudes towards sex, sin, crime, and punishment over five decades. With texts by magazine collector Eric Godtland, George Hagenauer, and True Detective editor Marc Gerald, True Crime Detective Magazines is an informative and entertaining look at one of the strangest publishing niches of all time.

In 1965, Tom of Finland began flirting with the idea of an ongoing character for his panel stories, the ultimate Tom’s Man. He tried out a blond named Vicky—a common male name in Finland—followed by a Tarzan-inspired Jack. Then in 1968 Tom settled on Kake, a dark-haired, mustached leatherman who often wore a tight white T-shirt bearing the motto “Fucker.” Kake lived up to this moniker, a sort of post-Stonewall, hyper-masculine Johnny Appleseed traveling the world on his motorcycle to spread the seeds of liberated, mutually satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex. Tom lived out many of his most personal fantasies through Kake, and Kake’s international fans made him the template for what came to be known as the gay clone look of the 1970s. Between 1968 and 1986, Tom published 26 episodes of Kake adventures, most as 20-page booklets.Tom of Finland – The Complete Kake Comics collects all of these stories in one volume. Return with Kake to the days when men were men, sex was carefree, and everyone wore a big thick mustache.

After the bust out success of The Big Book of Breasts TASCHEN presents the perfect companion, The Big Penis Book.When it comes to pleasure, size doesn’t matter; as we all know it’s quality, not quantity, that counts. But let’s admit it: a big penis is undeniably compelling. Big shoulders, big lapels, and big hair may come and go, but the big penis never goes out of fashion. With those possessing more than 8 inches (20 cm) making up less than 2% of the world’s population, this rare accessory will always fascinate.In The Big Penis Book we explore the centuries-old fascination with the large phallus, a fascination common to men and women alike. This hefty book is profusely illustrated with over 400 historic photos of spectacular male endowments, including rare photos of the legendary John Holmes. The majority of the photographs are from the 1970s, when the sexual revolution first freed photographers to depict the male entirely nude. Photographers include Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild, David Hurles of Old Reliable, Colt, Falcon, Sierra Domino, Third World, and Champion Studios, with each of these iconic photographers interviewed or profiled, along with information about each of their models. And if this isn’t enough, the book closes with a special surprise comparable to the Guinness Book of Records’ Norma Stitz featured in The Big Book of Breasts! Can you guess what body part Dian is dissecting next?

It’s the old story. When TASCHEN released the first limited edition of Crumb Sketchbooks 1982–2011, fans drooled over the gorgeous packaging of this six-volume boxed set, the artist’s thoughtful editing, the hand-written introduction, marbleized page edges, and signed Crumb-colored art print. Not all, however, could afford the steep price. So they whined and coveted, with the wail growing louder when the second boxed set, 1964–1982, was released the next year.Covet no more. Robert Crumb. Sketchbook, Vol. 1: June 1964 – Sept. 1968 combines the two earliest volumes from the limited editions, produced directly from the original artworks now belonging to an ardent French collector, into one fat 440-page Crumb feast, selling for an irresistible price.This book contains hundreds of sketches, including early color drawings from the master of underground comic art, cover roughs for the legendary Zap and Head comics, the original Keep On Truckin’ sketches, the first appearance of Mr. Natural, plus his evolution and refinement, Fritz The Cat, the Old Pooperoo, and many, many voluptuous Crumb girls, all wrapped up in a quality hard cover featuring an illustration newly hand-colored by Crumb himself.

Ren Hang, who took his life February 23, 2017, was an unlikely rebel. Slight of build, shy by nature, prone to fits of depression, the 29-year-old Beijing photographer was nonetheless at the forefront Chinese artists’ battle for creative freedom. Like his champion Ai Weiwei, Ren was controversial in his homeland and wildly popular in the rest of the world. He said, “I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.”Why? Because his models, friends, and in his last years, fans, are naked, often outdoors, high in the trees or on the terrifyingly vertiginous rooftops of Beijing, stacked like building blocks, heads wrapped in octopi, body cavities sprouting phone cords and flowers, whatever entered his mind at the moment. He denied his intentions were sexual, and there is a clean detachment about even his most extreme images: the urine, the insertions, the many, many erections. In a 2013 interview VICE magazine asked, “there are a lot of dicks … do you just like dicks?” Ren responded, “It’s not just dicks I’m interested in, I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way.” True though that may be, the penises Ren photographed were not just fresh and vivid, but unusually large, making one wonder just where he met his friends.In the same piece, Hang also stated, “Gender isn’t important when I’m taking pictures, it only matters to me when I’m having sex,” making him a pioneer of gender inclusiveness. Young fans still eagerly flock to his website and Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. His photographs, all produced on film, have been the subject of over 20 solo and 70 group shows in his brief six-year career, in cities as disparate as Tokyo, Athens, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Vienna, and yes, even Beijing. He self-published 16 monographs, in tiny print runs, that now sell for up to $ 600. TASCHEN’s Ren Hang is his only international collection, covering his entire career, with well-loved favorites and many never-before-seen photos of men, women, Beijing, and those many, many erections. We take solace remembering Ren’s joy when he first held the book, shared by his long-time partner Jiaqi, featured on the cover.

It’s the old story. When TASCHEN released the first limited edition of R. Crumb Sketchbooks: 1982–2011, fans drooled over the gorgeous packaging of this six-volume boxed set, the artist’s thoughtful editing, the hand-written introduction, marbleized page edges, and signed Crumb colored art print. Not all, however, could afford the steep price. So they whined and coveted, with the wail growing louder when the second boxed set, 1964–1982, was released the next year.Covet no more. R. Crumb Sketchbook, Volume 2: Sept. 1968 – Jan. 1975 combines the two middle volumes from the second boxed set, produced directly from the original artworks now belonging to an ardent French collector, into one fat 444-page Crumb feast, at an irresistible price. This book contains hundreds of sketches from the master of underground comic art, including cover roughs for Zap, Motor City and Despair comics, the introduction of Aline, the first female Yetis, Flakey Foont and Mr. Natural, Honeybunch Kaminski, San Francisco drug culture and big buoyant butts, all wrapped up in a quality hard cover featuring front and back illustrations newly hand-colored by Crumb himself.

The first three volumes of this series were met with fervent acclaim from our readers, most of whom have been lying in wait for an affordable trade edition since the $ 1,000 boxed sets appeared. They laud these 440-page editions for their quality hardcover, elegant matte paper, and impeccable reproduction as the best of the best—the perfect tribute to the world’s favorite dirty old man.Expect this book to be no different. Combining volumes 7 and 8 from the first boxed set (confusing, we know), it spans the years 1982 to 1989, a period when the artist was comfortably ensconced in rural California, raising his young daughter Sophie, who appears throughout this volume. But Crumb was still Crumb, declaring in one drawing, above a lovingly rendered tree, “As I get older I get more twisted, convoluted, depraved, cynical, embittered, self-centered, jaded, debauched, ruthless, greedy, conceited, set-in-my-ways, long-winded, absent-minded, prejudiced, closed-minded, misanthropic, nervous…”To prove this self-flagellating analysis he fills the pages with his signature perversions (in country settings), scathing social commentary, cruel self-portraits, experimental cubism… and some lovely sylvan landscape. His mastery of the Rapidograph pen is at its zenith here in his 40s; we only wish he’d chosen to include his prescient comic of Donald Trump from 1989.

As this volume opens we find our hero at age 46, solidly into the midlife crises years. Crumb has lived his entire life in anxious, introspective, self-flagellating crises, however, so the middle years bring only a refinement of his lifelong turmoil and further honing of artistic talent. More words accompany the drawings, demonstrating Crumb’s brilliant powers of observation, as in a long paragraph devoted to an encounter with one of brother Maxon’s vegan turds, and a poetic paean to the heartbreak of life and aging. The family’s move to Sauve, France, in 1991 is heralded by a switch from portraits of apple-cheeked American girls sketched while waiting for food in California cafes to portraits of girls in French cafes, by pastorals of rampant French countryside, and by haunting tableau of homeless beggars in the Metro.The most notable new character in this sketchbook is a turbaned holy man named, by young Sophie Crumb, Roman Dodo, who seems loosely inspired by Robert’s brother Maxon. Patricia Pig, a cheerful human/porcine hybrid also debuts, alongside portraits of girlfriends present and past.As the artist advances into his mid-50s, towards the end of the volume, fantasies of regression to childhood dependence on strong female figures, and even of a good death, carried away on the back of a sturdy young angel, speak less of angst than acceptance of the aging process. Our curmudgeon finds a measure of peace, a certain French acceptance, of the cruel whims of fate. Until the final pages, when he pronounces himself, out of nowhere, “such a fucking QUEER.”All in all, another killer volume.

“Silly Fool Comics” fills the final page in this final volume, with a devilish creature telling the anguished Crumb, “YOU Will Soon Be DEAD!” He was a mere 67, but in his self-absorbed Crumbish way was obsessing about death, when not making intimate and loving portraits of his wife Aline and all the other women who’d tormented his libido since boyhood. Most impressive in this book are his historic tableau, some single page, others multi-page strips, including Piers the Ploughman of 14th century England, My Secret Life by “Walter,” Rough Women of the Dark Ages and The Apache Dance, from a 1930s Parisian postcard. His Rapidographed cross hatching is superb as ever and we are treated to long screeds displaying his undimmed brilliance at analyzing the human condition, in a morbid but nonetheless amusing way. One could say there are no surprises in content, as Crumb has produced a consistent body of work over the last 40, if not 50, years, yet each page is also jarringly different from the one before, due to his personal juxtaposition of images. So much is packed in you can spend an hour and find you’re only a quarter of the way through, with Crumb bemoaning his mortality, while continuing to prosper, every few pages. A fine stand-alone volume, and must-have completion for the sketchbook set.

Fantasy art, that colorful blend of myth, muscle and sexy maidens, took off in 1923 with the launch of Weird Tales magazine, was reinvigorated in the 1960s with The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers, and the late ’60s emergence of fantasy psychedelia. It went big in the ’70s with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the brilliant French magazine Métal Hurlant, and the first Star Wars film. The number of active artists peaked in that decade, but a new generation of fans discovered the genre through fantasy trading card games in the ’90s, leading to a massive interest in the art form today. Frank Frazetta’s oil paintings—when they infrequently come to market—have sold for more than $ 5 million in recent years. Fans line up at Comic-Cons to meet Boris Vallejo, Rodney Matthews, Greg Hildebrandt, Michael Whelan, and Philippe Druillet, and memorialize dead icons HR Giger, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, and Frazetta. Imagine how eagerly they’ll welcome TASCHEN’s History of Fantasy Art, including all the artists listed above and more. This monster-sized tome features original paintings, contextualized by preparatory sketches, sculptures, calendars, magazines, and paperback books for an immersive dive into this dynamic, fanciful genre. Insightful bios go beyond Wikipedia to give a more accurate and eye-opening look into the life of each artist. This collection will reign as the most exquisite and informative guide to this popular subject for years to come.

Since TASCHEN released The Great American Pin-up, international interest in this distinctly American art form has increased exponentially. Paintings by leading artists such as Alberto Vargas, George Petty, and Gil Elvgren that sold for $ 2,000 in 1996 are going for $ 200,000 and more today. Pin-up—drawings, paintings, and pastels of an idealized female face and figure intended for public display—was produced between 1920 and 1970 for calendars, magazine covers, and centerfolds. The majority of original paintings were discarded by publishers and calendar companies after printing, making the surviving art that much more precious. Based on the formidably sized Art of Pin-up, this accessible edition gathers nearly 100 artists alongside in-depth showcases of the top 10 names in the game. Each chapter opens with a reproduction of an original calendar or magazine cover by that artist. The reproduction quality of the paintings, pastels, and preparatory sketches that follow—largely sourced from the original art—invites the viewer to trace the brushstrokes, while the exquisite period calendars, vintage prints, and original model photos document the artists’ creative process. Much of these ephemera were photographed on-site at the historic Brown & Bigelow Company, home to the world’s largest archive of vintage pin-up calendars. In addition to the chapters on the 10 featured artists, the book includes bios and art of 85 painters, the most complete compendium of pin-up artists ever compiled. All this adds up to a hard-to-beat book on this popular subject.

“Sirs” begins the missive from our imaginary correspondent. “It’s not that I don’t love your original Big Penis Book, but that, perhaps, I love it too much. I now become anxious leaving the house without it, and long business trips are simply torture. Couldn’t you make a smaller, less obtrusive edition, still packed with men whose generative members measure over 8 inches, that doesn’t form a suspiciously large bulge in my carry-on luggage? And while you’re at it, could you make it highly affordable, since my pockets are as shallow as this premise?”Done! The Little Big Penis Book features over 150 massively endowed models from the 1940s through the ’90s, including photos by Bob Mizer of AMG, David Hurles of Old Reliable, Rip Colt of Colt Studio, Craig Calvin Anderson of Sierra Domino, Hal Roth of Filmco, Jim Jaeger of Third World Studios, Falcon Studios, Mike Arlen, Fred Bisonnes, Carlos Quiroz, and Charles Hovland in a compact and inexpensive format.Photos come not just from the original overstuffed 384-page edition, but from subsequent Big Penis Calendars, meaning that 30% of the content is unique to this edition. Add a reduced text to make more room for the stunning black-and-white and color photos and how could anyone—big, small, or just right—ask for a better deal?

How can we pack so much big booty into such a tiny and inexpensive package? Sorry, but it’s a trade secret we can’t divulge, except to say that shoehorns and spandex were involved.The original Big Butt Book featured a great cross section of delectable rears from the 1950s to the present day. Here, since life is such an ironic deal, we decided to pare the original content down to just the biggest and the best, in-your-face phatties to which the great Sir Mix-a-Lot alluded when penning, “My anaconda don’t want none, unless you’ve got buns, hun.”Then we added in about 30 new photos, just to be generous. Now in these 150 plus photos you’ll see the big and the bountiful, then the bigger and more bountiful, in black and white and in color. The models may be largely anonymous, but their curves are legendary, and now that they’re collected in a discrete little package affordable by all in these financially trying times, why hold back? Your badonkadonk is calling.