 Can you hear me? I don't even have to project for my diaphragm. OK, so you're here just trigger warning. This is an adult-only panel. We'll be showing some graphic imagery and talking about some graphic stuff. Yeah. You can be really immature, but just not be an adult. But you can be plenty immature if that's your jam. But I figure actually first, why don't we, as the other panelists, start coming in? We should introduce ourselves because we've got two fabulous people here who we can start a conversation with. So my name is Justin Hall. I'm the chair of the MFA and Comics Program at California College of the Arts. I'm a cartoonist as well. I did a dirty book called Hard to Swallow with Dave Davenport. And then one of the co-organizers of Pride and Panels. So thank you very much for being here, as I said. And let me turn it over to Mari. You can introduce yourself as well. Hi. Can you hear me through this mask? OK. My name's Mari Naomi. I don't know why I'm here, because I'm a fucking prude. So I'm. We'll see about that. I've been making comics since the 90s. I am the founder and admin of the Cartoonists of Color, the Queer Cartoonists, and the Disabled Cartoonist Databases. I have eight books published, I think. Most of them, Autobio. A few young adults, one of them got banned in Texas. Yeah, that's about it. And your stuff is bisexual stuff. Yeah, they, them, non-binary, bisexual, non-bi, but bi. Well, I'm just saying the, because we're going to talk about erotic stuff, it's good to know. I'm a prude. I've never had sex. We're in all ways. No, just kidding. Your Autobio stories did not suddenly they came from a prude of space. But OK, all right, we'll dig in. Well, my first book was about my sex life as a child and teenager. So I don't know. Trinidad is next, actually. Hello. Hello. I'm sorry I'm late. Hello, everybody. Hi, Mario. How are you? We're just introducing ourselves. So yeah, yeah. Oh, I am Trinidad Escobar. I am the cartoonist of Arriving My Hands, a collection of queer, lesbian, erotic poems. And I also make just queer comics smut online for free. And then I also do YA children's books. Thank you. John Mason and I have done a lot of graphic novels that have a lot of sex in them. And so no surprise that I'm on this panel. I started out in gay comics and then meet men. Who remembers meet men? Meet men, yes. I used to be afraid to buy those. I'd read them in the store because I was too afraid to purchase them. Because it would mean you were a perverted homosexual? Yeah. So anyway, lots of books. And happy to be here. And this has been a great show. I'm really enjoying it. Thank you, Justin. Yeah, thank you. John, I remember you actually now. I don't know that clicked something in my head because you wrote a Goodreads review about my first book saying that you were reading it on the subway and you got really embarrassed. I think there was some nudity on the back cover or something. No. Well, the book that I was reading on the bar had, the cover was fairly tasteful, but the back cover had full guys ass sticking out. And everyone is smiling and looking at me. And I'm just like, until I finally looked at it. Comics is advertisement. We have one of Mari's dirty produce illustrations up behind us here. So yeah, so Mari does bring the dirty thoughts and images. I wanted to start with a sort of, I'm curious about the political nature of erotica in comics. One of the things I do as a teacher is once a semester I come in and slam down a big pile of erotica comics on the table and I tell my students, you should all make pornography. Because sex, sexuality and desire is one of the great mysteries and profundities of the human experience and we should be making great art about it, right? And the problem is not erotica pornography, it's bad pornography. And especially if you're a woman, a person of color, a queer person, you shouldn't let other people colonize your sexual space, right? You should be making your own erotic work and doing that authentically and people will love you for it and you can make the world a better place. That's my pitch. And my students sort of, their jaws hit the floor a little bit, but I really do believe that. So I'm curious, the panelists here, do you think of making graphic content and you're all coming at this from different angles? I mean, Mari, I don't think you think of your work as erotica necessarily, but you have graphic content in your work and then obviously the two of you have also made pure erotica. So do you think of this content as having political dimensions? I mean, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just you're making a statement and you're outing yourself and I don't think doing pornography as a student I think is a fantastic idea because it'll make you fearless. You don't have to revealing your naughty bits on the publicly, nothing's ever gonna scare you again. So I think it really frees you up as an author, but politically it's like, I came from an indie comics, Love and Rockets, that was the kind of my thing. I wasn't doing anything erotic until I had to say, I did it on purpose because I wanted to have the gay relationships very in your face. So like, there's no question, this is very gay and just won't peek at it. And that was my political, I'm not an activist, so that was my way of doing it. Show of some bravery by doing it that way. I think about Howard Cruz, who is the sort of godfather of queer comics in a lot of ways. When he created the gay comics anthology series, he had a, when he called out for artists, he asked them that it was time to take risks in service of the truth. And I think that's just such a beautiful way to think about art in a society that doesn't always accept people, right? And you have to have authentic voices. Yeah, this is Leah. What did you wanna introduce yourself? Sure, my name's Leah. I also go by Lee. I've been making comics since high school, but actually self-publishing for about six years, roughly. And I recently have been wanting to get more involved in creating erotic comics, because I wanna see more sapphic content with plot. That's pretty much the general version of it. So the question we started was how I come into the classroom and slam a big pile of boring comics. So it was my student, and you saw this happen. Oh, it was beautiful. It was transcending. Do you think of, this is the question we're asking about, do you think of doing erotica as having a political element to it? Yes, I think it certainly can just in general. And I think just like a lot of aspects about being queer, like it is inherently political. It might not be the intention necessarily, and that might not be what you are going for when you create your work, but we still live in a very sex-negative society, unfortunately, so by putting yourself out there, you are inherent, by existing, you are inherently being contributing to the conversation. When I was making comics in the very beginning, like in the late 90s, I was self-publishing these little zines called Estris, and one of the first comics I made, probably actually like the second comic I made was about this sort of threesome I found myself in the middle of, and it was like, it was... What's that? He proved. But it was really just me trying to hook up with this girl, and then suddenly her boyfriend was there, and it was like, oh, no. That's sad. It was sad. I got out of there, but... So this was my little zine thing, and I'm bi, and I think the zine or the comics was kind of my way of coming out. Actually, the comics were how I inadvertently came out to my parents, which I didn't realize would show up at the Alternative Press Expo that day, and actually looked through the zines that I hadn't given them, but anyway, that's a totally different story. But so I made these zines, and there was someone I was friends with at work. This was back when I worked in video games. I was working at Sega, and this guy, like, you know, I thought we were good enough friends, and I showed him the comic, and he was so offended, and it was like, and this was something that I got a lot. There was not a lot of bisexual representation at the time. Like very briefly, lesbians were in vogue for like a second on Newsweek. I still have that issue. Your time, I don't know, the two, anyway, they're in Canadian tuxedos. So, yeah, it was really uncomfortable, and he was just like, this is too personal. You really shouldn't show this to people, is what he said. I mean, maybe he meant at work, and maybe he was right, but I don't care, because it made me want to do it. So I don't know. I don't know if that's political or if that's just me just hating people telling me what to do. Yes, and. I just wanted to add as an Asian person, when I was growing up, I grew up with a lot of imagery that sexualized Asian women and hypersexualized them. And then when I looked at porn, you would just see like the most popular searches are like Asian women, right? Or like some other variation of a person of color, a black person that's fetishized. And I didn't have anything that felt good to me. And I got into erotica by finding my mother, my Filipina mother's erotica, like her prose that was hidden in her bathroom, right? And for a Filipina, you're simultaneously hypersexualized by other people and your own people. And then you're also a sexual being who would like to express how they are, but cannot because of how the world views them. That pisses me off when you don't have control over that kind of a narrative and I wanted to have some semblance of control and also to give something to another queer person who was like me. I think that's inherently political and Audre Lorde writes about that. The erotic is political, the personal is political. And so anytime that I do that and I make sure that people know that it's a queer person, it's a Filipina because of her tattoos or it's a brown person because of their skin color, then I'm making it very clear that this is for a particular person's eyes and it was not meant for like the white cis male gaze who consumes porn, you know. Yeah, the interesting idea of like who produces porn for what audience, right? And we can get more control back about that, right? And the way that we want to with our own authentic voices. John, your book, Fear for Hunter is also a sort of direct political response to Prop 8. Yeah, Prop 8 just passed and I wanted to, I wanted to show sex, but I also wanted to show intimacy and make it really humanized, like two gay guys because a lot of times the sex is so hardcore that they're not people anymore, you know. Even the ones we do for ourselves just focus on the sex and I really wanted to show these are really people who love each other, who deserve, these deserve to be able to get married. So that was definitely good. But you know, I am not a stickler about it. I don't care who's writing it. I know a lot of women writers who write gay porn and they got it, they nailed it. So I don't, I just go with it. Yeah, there's also something remarkable I think about looking at porn that is sort of maybe not meant for me, but like I can see through the artist's eyes. Like I think about Small Favors, which is this book by Colleen Cooper. It's one of my favorite erotica books and it's all women. And in a way that I would be less interested in filmic or photographic images of women having sex, I'm very much drawn to this book because I see, I feel like by seeing the stroke of her ink on the page, I'm viewing her desire through her eyes. So I think the illustrative quality of comics has this other transcendent effect where we can sort of bridge into that sexual imagination. I've heard a lot of gay women, lesbians, you might call them, who only watched Male Porn. Yes, yes. But it's really, I feel like it's really about just the expression and just watching someone be very, like thrilled and happy. I mean, and I don't know why they didn't watch Lesbian Porn. Maybe, I mean, it is very different from Male Porn. And also, I mean, it can be, you know, there's all sorts out there, but also sometimes there's baggage. You don't want to like be watching porn and look, there's someone who looks like your ex or, you know, is your ex in a small community. Yeah. Could be that. I don't know. I didn't ask. I mean, I'll also add to that a couple of things. I think a lot of the time you find queer women or queer AFAB people drawn to gay porn because a lot of lesbian porn is not produced by other queer AFAB people. Like you can tell, not to tell on myself, but you can tell when, you know, sapphic porn or sapphic erotica is created by a queer person or even just an AFAB person because there's just a different feel to it. And like, I've had several conversations recently with friends of mine that even written erotica, like when it is written by someone who is heterosexual, like it's not bad. It just has a very different feel to it. A bad feel. That's what you're saying. It's not, everyone is allowed to have their tastes. Let me just, I'm not trying to get canceled on this panel. Listen. But it's just like, like even content that features a heterosexual couple that is written by queer people has such a different exploration of intimacy and sexuality to it than stuff that is written by like cis-hetero people, at least in my opinion. I don't think I've ever read any like, hetero porn made by gay people. It exists. Oh, sure, I'm sure. Oh wait, yeah, ew. Yeah. But I think also maybe the authenticity is something that can draw one. I mean, again, thinking about small favors, like I'm drawn to the authenticity of Colleen's depiction of female sexuality as opposed to sort of straight man's version of production of female sexuality and sort of lesbian porn created by enforced straight men. I also think about Yaoi, right, or BL comics, right? So there's, and these are manga created by women for primarily female audience about man-on-man sex and romance. And it's interesting. I mean, it's in the same way that so much lesbian porn is created by straight men, forced straight men. This is all gay male porn created by women for women. And sometimes I feel seen, and sometimes I do not feel seen. So any sort of... It's not for gay men at all. So if it doesn't register with me, it wasn't made for me. So I can still enjoy it. But the thing I like about people who do porn comics is they have to draw, you know, just not just the end and outs, but they have to draw like all the feet and the fingers and the ears. And so you can really get to know them, like where their it is, you know, like where it's going. So that's the charming part of it. Like, because if you're just filming it, you're picking people who you find attractive. But it's really telling when it's like, you know, extremities. Yeah, the less sort of nature. I try to add to you, I mean, when you draw, like I'm looking at some of your stuff here, like I mean, when you're drawing, I mean, you're also a poet. So you're sort of picking words are very important here too. But describe your process. I mean, do you think about what you're drawing and sort of the extremities and, yeah. Oh yeah, if you look at my stuff, you can see that I just fudge on feet because I do not pay attention to feet. But yeah, I do have to know how to draw human form and or at least know how to, you know, finesse it on the page. But I draw a lot of like monster sex or creature human sex. And so a lot of that is also making up anatomy. And then you can also see what I'm into there. But I think that it's when you're, I specifically draw dark skin Filipinas or dark skin mixed Asians that are usually part black just because of the communities that I grew up with. And that is what I find beautiful and that what I don't necessarily see on TV in the way that I do it in my neighborhood or with my friends. So I try to like, oh, it's kind of embarrassing. Some of my friends will see themselves in, not that I'm depicting my friends as if I'm imagining them, but I think they're beautiful. And so somehow they'll like make it into something. It's a compliment. They should take it as a compliment. But yes. That's a good question. For you, for you. Do you find yourself always drawing like the same vagina? Or do you have a variety? The same vagina you said, yeah. Different ones. Yeah, because, you know, for genitalia, like everyone's genitalia looks so different. So why perpetuate the same things that you would find in porn? Like where everyone has like a surgically enhanced, beautiful, shaven, like prepubescent vagina. Like I think that it's important to show variation in genitalia too. And that that is beautiful and attractive. Because I guess I'm sorry to go on about this, but there's just that I find that a lot of cartoons, when they get aroused by their own, when they're working in their process, they go to a place in their head, where it's, you know, the first one you saw or whatever. Or usually it's your own, you know? And so that's where you learn to draw. And then you just stick to it. And I was doing that. But then I got called out because I was drawing the same foreskin. They're like, who's is that? I got ripped to shreds. I had to go back and go and bite him out and have a whole look. Like I had to, what's it say about their personality? I get that. I actually had this situation where I was drawing this hard to swallow comics and I would, I kept on drawing the penis flipped. So the, you know, the head comes like this and there's the frenem, you know, it kind of comes up like that. I've done that. And I kept on flipping it like this. I've done that. That's like when people get the thumb wrong on the hand. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's like we're AI or something. Not an AI penis, Jesus. I think of it as my dick's lexia. I mean. Chuckle, chuckle, haha. But also this sort of sense of maybe I'm looking down on my own dick all the time and so I'm only, I'm not seeing the underside of it. So, yeah. Perspective. Perspective issues. But this brings up an interesting, another question I had for you all about sort of the nature of representation in erotic erotica and also erotic scenes. Like do you feel like you need, what are your responsibilities? Is your primary responsibility to your own erotic imagination and the stuff that turns you on and that authenticity has to come out? Or do you feel like you want to need to show different kinds of bodies, different kinds of people, different kinds of ethnicities, different kinds of, you know, in order to sort of make the world a better place with erotica? May I? I feel a little bit of both. There's a part of me that at the end of the day I want to make whatever I want to make, however that manifests. However, I also don't want to contribute to the problem. I don't want to continue to perpetuate a specific body type or a specific type of queer person so on and so forth. Like I want to have a level of mindfulness of, you know what, there's no reason that this character, that we can't have like a bisexual or a pansexual character or like, I feel like a lot of my characters are very skinny. Why don't we experiment with that a little bit? So I don't want to be so strong armed to it that I end up losing my own sense of authenticity as an artist because I do want to do whatever the hell I want. But again, like I said, I don't want to contribute to the problem. So if I can add my own little bits of representation while still having my own sense of like, this is my work and nobody can tell me what to do, that's what I'm going to do. All my erotic stuff is memoir or gags. So I'd... What? Fair. I'm not sure if I'm quite answering this correctly, but I just, when you said that, I thought about being like a neurodivergent person, being autistic and someone once came up to me and said, I love your erotica comics because they're so cheesy. And I actually liked that. For most people, they would say like, oh, I don't like being called cheesy or being called cheesy is something that's like frowned upon or cringy. And for me, as an autistic person, I'm very sensitive and emotional. I cry about things when I'm happy and when I'm sad. And then sex can be both sad and erotic. Like, all of that can be one. And for someone to say like, oh, I like your stuff because it's actually emotional and people don't talk about that or it's frowned upon for a femme to be very emotional. And I like being seen in that way. I think it should be mixed up. Like, you should be pushing yourself to challenge your own medium. And not even just porn comics, but all comics. Just like really, it's a... You just take it, once you think you've gone too far, just one more step. Yeah, yeah. I think about, you know, Thomas Finland is sort of a giant in the room in terms of gay male comics. And his characters all look the same, right? All of his penises look the same. All of the faces look the same. And he's a brilliant artist, but like, wow, that's obsessional and interesting and also sort of disturbing in how same everything everybody is. So, yeah, and so the sort of response then would be, okay, do you sort of shoehorn? Is it shoehorn in your diversity or of different body types and everything, or is it actually acknowledging and allowing the world to come into your erotic imagination, which is in fact flexible? I love Thomas Finland. Yeah, he's amazing, yeah. He also clearly has a type. Oh yeah, absolutely. Like, that's what that's really about. There's a guy who, oh, he's a cartoonist and I don't know his name. He starts with a J, he's Japanese. Chariah. Is that who it is? Who made the massive art? And I have some of his sweaters and clearly has a type. Oh, hell yeah. That is like the most beautiful. Like, when I wear that, I feel so romantic. Like, I don't know. It's just like these big, sweaty men looking at each other. They're just so beautiful and it's just so sweet. Like, it just, it hits my sweet spot. I don't know. I think it's okay for people to have what they're good at and do their thing. I get bored when I do the same thing over and over again, so that's just not something that I can do artistically because as soon as I feel like I've gotten something, they've gotten good at something, then I get bored and I need to move on. But if you can just go with something and perfect it and keep being perfect, I don't see a problem with that because someone else could do something else. I don't know. I think ultimately you shouldn't feel forced to do something because if you're trying to force diversity, it is very obvious. Oh my God, I just bought a bumper sticker from my car that says art is like a fart. If you have to force it, then it's probably shit. I cannot wait to stick that on my car. This was a nice panel. Sorry. I'm also curious about how the form of comics handles the content of erotica, the genre of erotica, and what does it do that's different than filmic production, for example, or even single illustrations? So do you all think about how you engage comics as a medium, like how you paste things, that sort of the build of tension and release of tension in the form and talks about some of that. John, by the way, I would just say like your work in particular, sort of looking back at some of these page designs that you develop, you clearly think a lot about tension and release. The form of comics. Yeah, like I started using fractals because I had an orgasm that was very visual. And I remember as a young boy, having it when I had dry orgasms, it was more visual. And it's almost, well, it's kind of like ketamine, actually. So maybe those things are connected somehow. But I was trying to express that, the hallucinations of being so turned on or being so in love with somebody that you can't kiss them hard enough. And you want your faces to merge into one gooey mess or something and just be inside their body in every way possible, even ways that are impossible. And just to get to that little feeling that I was trying to express. That's so romantic. Oh my God. Oh my God. Love it. That's it. Mic drop. Well, how about there, I mean, Mari, I think you were about to say something too. I think I cut you off when I, there's something about the form of comics that you think about in terms of erotic material. I mean, I don't think I've actually ever published any of the sequential art that I've made that was erotic because honestly, I was too embarrassed to. Cause again, I do memoir. And some of it's just like, oh no, I cannot go that far. Nobody needs to see that. You do draw it. I have and then I just let it sat there. I don't know. Again, I said I was a prude and I actually am kind of a prude. Like the times that I've had to draw sexy things, sometimes I'm just like, not looking at the page. I'm just like, I can't, this is, like I need it for this story, but this is really embarrassing. But like my sexuality is so weird. Like I don't, I feel like I'm not turned on by things that normal people are turned on, like by just, it's not, it's more of a feeling. Like, like if I remember, like, I don't know my first kiss with my partner, I mean, like that's really hot, but like. You would be surprised. Okay. But like when I, when I see like erotica or porn, like it never really does anything for me, except sometimes go, oh, they look like they like each other, how sweet. Like that's, that's my response. We also like in this, in this page, for example, you create the image of the two people having sex. This is sort of, you know, allegorical image of two bodies together. Talk about making that decision in terms of cartoon, the cartooning of it. I don't know, she and I are still friends and it's weird to think that we slept together. I just didn't want to draw that. She was going to see it. That's what makes it good. I'm comfortable about it. It's really hot in here. That's a mask. Is she here? Right exactly, she's right here. Stand up. By the way, we're gonna, we will have some time for Q and A, so please, if you've got some questions, keep them in the back of your head here as we keep on going. I mean, this is one of the things I love about comics though. You don't have to, and sometimes it's better not to show something because it just lets the person, you know, go with their imagination. With a movie it's, like you could still kind of do that with other media, but like I feel with comics it's more like you could explicitly, implicitly, just not show something and have it just, you get to choose when people use their imaginations and like when it's something that goes by really quickly like a movie or video or whatever, like people might miss it, whereas like you're just really like, okay, now you're gonna have to think what's happening in between those two panels, like you decide which is, that's a lot of fun control that you could do with one person drawing. You also have the power of building anticipation in comics. Like I think about some of the erotic comics that I've read, like I'm a huge fan of Smutpedlar with the Iron Circus comics, highly recommend. And like I have blushed harder reading their stuff than like any piece of pornography that I have watched because there's such a level of intimacy and it is so intense but also tender. And like the page turn, the power of a page turn is so palpable in erotica, in horror, in any genre really within comics, but especially with erotica, like building up to that moment of orgasm and really exploring like the build-up, like I love that shit and I hope I can be able to do that as I continue to create erotic content. I mean that is the thing, like anticipation and stuff, like I'm just thinking about like what is sexy well to me personally and like I don't know, for me genitals are funny looking and I mean just out of context, if you're like here's a twat, like ha ha. Here's a twat. I mean, like sometimes it's like you just like pick up a porn book, you're like boing, okay cool. You get a twat and you get a twat and you get a twat. It's sweet but good for them, I don't know. Anyway, sorry, I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm warm again. Trinidad, you're a poet as well as I mentioned and poetry also feels to me like the sort of pure text version of this idea of where you're sort of saying things and so much of what you don't say is as important oftentimes in poetry as what you say. So can you talk about how, does your background as a poet sort of affect the way that you approach erotic comics and illustration? Mm-hmm. Well, often people ask me if I write and draw in a particular order, if I do them at the same time, to determine what words are used versus what images are used. And I have to explain that everything starts with, everything is poetry, everything that I do is poetry. So all the erotica or the sex is still poetry to me even if there's no words. And I go back and forth. So when I'm writing something in words, I'm also drawing and then I eliminate things. And so I have like pages and pages of stuff, both drawings, sketches, and then I eliminate like a sculpture, a sculptor would, to like later reveal what I actually want to show. And so much of that is withholding. I do a lot of withholding because that's hot to me. It's like the equivalent of when a lot of fems have trouble flirting with other fems, for instance. If a fem imagines she has a crush on someone, she wants to see them at school, she anticipates seeing them at work, whatever. It's that that I want to capture. It's that like longing and desire and maybe or maybe not. And I got a lot of that from watching movies and wanting to be able to capture and slow it down. So one of the movies that I watched as a kid was basketball diaries, which is about a real poet, Jack Carroll. And in it, Leonardo DiCaprio, a young Leo is like masturbating to the view of the stars above him. And he can't explain it. It just turns him on. His whole body is awake and he's doing it, right? By himself. It's so cute. It's so cute. And I wanted to capture that in writing, like both images and in words. And I still try to do that in some way with comics, like you were saying, Lee, you know, you're building up anticipation. And with comics, you can concentrate that anticipation really quickly. So you can show anticipation and actually incite it in a reader within a page. It's really easy to do. Yeah, yeah. I've definitely used that sculpting technique with my own comics before. That's really cool. The sense of the gutters too, right? The space between the panels can be this incredible opportunity for the erotic imagination of the reader to sort of engage with what's in front of them, right? In a way that's not true with film porn, for example, where you're not encouraged to see what, to think about what happens between the cut of, you know, within a film cut, but you're encouraged in comics to throw your own erotic imagination into the gutter. I literally didn't even realize I was saying that until I said it. That's what he said? Into the gutter. They're mine. Oh, my God. Um, so, uh, I want to try. Okay. Take your time. Yeah, there we go. Actually, I do want to open it up for the audience as well. So if anyone has a question here. I just want to point out one thing that you were with your student, and Trinidad was one of my first students when I worked at SSA. Oh, my God. I just want to say too, Mari said that she's a prude. We literally had a moment in school where we had to be like, Mari, Mari in class, like, don't share all of that. You're not a prude. Oh, my God. I don't remember that at all. Hero. One of my heroes. If you contain multitudes. We are multifaceted people. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yes. I'll give you a mic. So, uh, this has been touched on a little bit with the discussion of including people from different body types. But, um, everything is always politicized. And sex is politicized in all sorts of ways. And I wonder if there's any, how, I would like to hear people discuss maybe if they have any conflict ever about, um, well, you know, I want to be true to my personal taste or predilections or at least what I want to portray. And all this really isn't a very positive image. And these kinds of images got, get presented a lot in mainstream media in very negative ways. And do I want to contribute to that? Or not. Yeah. And I'm a creator too. And I struggle with this. Yeah. Like with every issue. Actually, I think as long as you're respectful, of course, but as long as you're playful with it, it solves a lot of your problems. So it, you can touch on things without the factor, you know, as long as you're being just a little bit more playful and fun. That's what I find. Very playful. So like, if stumps, stumps sex. I mean, you have to make it cute. But this, by the way, is from Hard to Swallow. And this was actually a true story about a, Batman is not real people. Neither is Robin. But some friends of mine were hired to be, to dress up as Batman and Robin and break into this guy's house who was dressed as Evil Bearman. And Evil Bearman sprayed them with his Evil Bear Musk and then they had to fuck each other in front of him. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, indeed. And so I had to draw that. I mean, it was my contract, contractually obligated to draw this. But it does sort of bring up to what John was saying about a playfulness, right? So can humor be part of comic, of erotic comics? And I feel like maybe humor is easier in erotic comics than in erotic film. Why is that? Oh, gosh, because people are snobs and when they watch erotic films, they're like, I need to see cinema. You know, like, they're like cinema. But really, you don't really want that when you want to read an erotic book. You want to be turned on and you want to be fascinated and titillated. And I think a lot of cinema is too fast for that. Have you ever seen, like, a porn actor and the director's obviously, they want to do a little story. And every time, like, you know, they get the, you know, Turkish dude and he's really hot and he's ready to go. And soon as they're like, OK, action. And he's, you know, go up and you say, and cruise him or talk to ask him his question. All he says is like, all right. You know, he just immediately goes into sex mode. So he can't act. And I find also, I can see, like, sometimes I'll see it in a cartoonist where they're halfway through the story and their strong abilities are going downhill. I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Another question? You had one here, yes. Oh, I'm sorry. OK. I've so been wanting to hear people have the, is Yahweh good or OK conversation for so long? In your opinions, like, which ones are better and which ones are worse? That's a really interesting question. Which country has better porn? There's a lot of, like, Crepex. And, you know, there's... Hugo Pratt doesn't do a lot of sex, but when he does it, it's very romantic. But yeah, the European communists always have, like, a lot of full frontal, but they don't take it very far after that. It's really subjective. Yeah. Like, I, but I was very, very little. I found a bunch of Tijuana Bibles, which I thought they were funny. Tijuana Bibles are sort of, they were horizontal little pamphlets. Like, Chick Tracks, except sexy. They were sexy and they were really popular in the beginning of the 1900s and through the Depression era. And often they were unlicensed, licensable products, like the ones that I remember best are Popeye who would eat spinach and then his penis would grow to, like, 50 times his size and then he would do... They're not very consensual. I'll just put it that way. But I think maybe your question is more specifically about Yaoi and about... And I don't know enough about the genre to be able to give specific names or anything. I don't know if anyone else is. But I just would say in terms as a gay man, seeing some occasionally... I mean, I understand to John's point that they're not made for me, right? But then it's sometimes a little weird to see yourself so completely fetishized. I mean, you know, women know this every day of their lives, right? But like, to see oneself completely fetishized is the point where the author didn't give a shit about what actually happens between two men. And it's a little... I guess I'm okay with that, but it's also a little weird. I don't want to have to read it. I don't know. It makes me think about women's night at this... I don't know if it's still there. It's a club. It was sort of a sex kink club and my friend decided to go there and they'd have a woman's night and we walked in. First of all, there's no one there. And second of all, all the walls had videos of just the worst straight porn depicting women. And I wanted to meet a woman. I didn't want to see these horrible images. I mean, I don't know. Maybe some people like it, but me and my friend who was a lesbian were just not looking at the walls until then there was nothing else to look at. So we were just staring at her and going, oh my God, I never want to have sex again. Hi, yes. My question is kind of building off of that, but I'd like to know for each one of you, where are you finding joy in queer erotic comics these days? Or what are the queer erotic comics that when you're like, I can't draw for shit, you read them and you're like, you know what? This could be good or bad, actually. But you're like, you know what? If this person can do it, maybe I can find something in myself to put it forward. Smut-Pelliers sometimes where I turn to. I love that word. But where are you all finding joy? Where are you finding inspiration in creating erotica and erotic comics? Like when I did Tellony and I was adapting a novel, so there was straight sex in it too. So I had to draw those straight sex as well, but I wasn't really into it. So what I would do is I put this big white scary poodle that would appear every time, like dancing on his hind legs, every time that... And that's where I found a lot of joy. That is some very weird advice. I don't particularly find inspiration outwardly usually, but like I love reading comics. There's a... At some zine fest, I bought like a big bag of tiny comics, or maybe I found them online, but I mean, I guess they kind of remind me of Tijuana Bible some that they're so small, but they're these like indie... It's just like funny little sex stories. I don't know. Those are my favorite. It was funny little sex stories. So before I discovered Smutpedler and actual good erotic comics, I would just like go on Google Images and be like erotic comics to see what I could find, to see if I could find something. Oh, they're all terrible. They're all poorly drawn, and it's just a lot of... It's like if you could imagine shitty porn in comic format, and I look... I think back to that now, and I'm just... This is horrible advice. Don't do this. But I'm like, if you ever need to pick me up, just look at... Just search up erotic comics on Google Images, and you'll be like, oh, this is terrible. I'm doing fine. And also I want to... You know, it inspired me to want to create erotic comics that actually depict intimacy and not just sex for the sake of sex. To humble myself, obviously, everyone is into whatever they're into, and comics are subjective and all of that. Hate reads are important. Look. Oh, my God. I get more inspiration from hate reads than reading something that is far beyond my capabilities. Yes. Oh, my gosh. The amount of times I've been like, oh, my God, I could draw this so much better. So much better. It starts thumb nailing immediately. You know, I once got hired to do this strip for Bunkhouse Magazine. It was one of the bear... And I was... It was cowboy sex, and I was like... I don't know. It wasn't connecting with me. So what I did was I went into the back. They have the... the Wannads. It's like paper. Then you have a little... It's like before the internet. We know what Wannads are. It's okay. Thank you, though. I wrote... I said, I'm going to put every single thing that they're asking for. I'm putting it in the... in the comic. And one guy says, I want a dick that's the size of a 64-ounce can of pork and beans. I'm like, so I had to go to the store and look at the can. It's almost square. And I drew it. Research. I love it. And sales went up. That's it. I would also say if you do have a comic book store in your neighborhood, that happens to have a really cool back section. Go to that back section. Yeah. As a woman or anyone else who maybe isn't a cis man, it might feel uncomfortable going there at the first. I found the one woman who works in my comic book store and I said, I'd like to go in the back and I want to find something. And she's like, girl, I've been waiting for someone to take me back. You know, because she wanted other people to know what was back then. They needed to sell things. She had stuff in there from like 1980 something because so many people are afraid to physically go and do that. They'd rather go online or, you know, I don't know, get out of the zine fast or something. But here at the store you can peruse. You can look at things from Japan or Spain or wherever. And you might have shame and you might not. It might be actually really joyful for you. I actually feel joy when I go there. Bill Verst Brockett has an amazing study section. Amazing. I would also just to you mentioned Jariah and Gengar Otagame. Huge inspiration for me. The first place I really saw that you could, how far you could push erotic comics in what they, not only the sort of fantastical nature of drawing centaurs and giants and stuff like that, but fantastical nature in terms of showing realistic sex but with fantastical viewpoints. So for example, he would show a cock ejaculating inside of an ass, right? You can't do that with film in case of surgical procedures. And or, you know, he would show a guy getting fucked but with, you know, the top removed. So you get the full shot of the bottom in the throes of ecstasy in a way that would be impossible in film because you, unless you turn the top invisible, right? So that was kind of cool to see. I'm getting inspired to do Shrinky Dink porn right now. What? What? I've been playing with Shrinky Dinks. I just made a piece of art for Giant Robot. I'm going to some people with Shrinky Dinks are. Everyone knows who doesn't know what Shrinky Dinks are. Oh, really? What I said? They're plastics that you draw on and then they shrink and get really condensed and in hard. And yeah, this could be very interesting. You can bake them too. Yeah. Well, you have to bake them for two minutes. It's really easy and super fun. Kids play with it. Okay. Moving on. I think we've got time for the last question here. One more question. It's only going to make this. This is for the entire panel. And it comes from something that Mari said earlier. In terms of your practices, is there any concepts that you as artists find difficult to either make or that you are challenged by within your own work? Everyone says them is beautiful, but there are challenging aspects to it. And I'm curious as to what some of those may be for all of you. So like challenges? Like concepts within sex that are challenging for you folks. Okay, so I was thinking just art-wise, but you're talking about a sexual act or something or a feeling that you would have during sex and how to express that. Because artistically, I always had trouble with ropey strands of saliva and cum. Like you can learn a lot from an artist, by the way, they do their cum shots. Yeah, okay. I feel like that image that we just saw of yours had a lot of ropey strands where you really like, that was a beautiful image, by the way. That was because Canada would burn our books every time we would, the customs officials would seize your books and burn them if there was any connection between like fluids connecting bodies. So I, now I do it every chance I get. I'll do like, you know. A workaround. That's amazing. It looks so good. Sometimes our limitations are what really pushes us to do like more interesting things. That is something about just art in general that I love. It's the ropey strand haiku effect. Or if they're just, you don't want to show full frontal, but you want to show nudity. So there's those shadows and there's always vase in the way or something, you know what I mean? But that makes for a more interesting composition potentially. Yeah, yeah. When I was drawing Kiss and Tell, which is my book about when I was having sex as a child, like I didn't want to draw, you know, what could be considered child pornography. So like I had to really kind of work around that. I mean, I was, I wasn't a little kid, but like, I don't know. It wasn't like Phoebe Glechner style, but it was, you know, stuff happened. It's an amazing book. Thanks. Um, I think for me, especially with the thesis I'm working on right now, one of the things that I want to consider is navigating conversations about consent, because that can be very tricky, because like, at least in my opinion, consent is a lot more than getting a verbal yes or a verbal no, because there are grays that happen. Sometimes you might be doing an activity that you consented to, but then you find out, oh, I wasn't actually okay with that. How do you hold those conversations? How do you hold conversations when mistakes happen, especially when you are depicting more kinky scenes, or if you are engaged in more kink-related activity or just higher risk sexual activity. So navigating those conversations for me, I would say would be my biggest challenge, or not challenge, but something that I'm trying to be mindful of is like, okay, how can we participate in healthy conversations of what consent can and probably should look like? But then sometimes the erotic, I mean your erotic creative content doesn't necessarily have to align with what your real practice, sexual practice would be, right? I mean we can have fantasies of, rape fantasies and not believe in rape, right? So it's something I think about a lot again in terms of the work of Gengar Otagome, for example, his work is about lack of consent. I mean that's clearly he finds that erotic. And I asked him at one point what his most challenging work was, and it was when he had to for, primarily for a western audience, he created this story for this anthology and it was, it involved entirely consensual sex. And he had never done that before. It became this sort of like, you know, challenge for him, which is really fascinating. I will say with my own work in Hard to Swallow, there was one pirate story that sort of was darker and darker and darker and rapier. And it freaked me out as I was doing it. But I knew I needed to finish it, to carry it through to see what happened to those characters and how things turned and it did turn around, but I needed to go through some really dark places and that has to be okay also for creators, right? We can't just do stuff that's okay, kind of safe territory. I find one of the hardest things for me to do is explain my art sometimes after I've made it. Like, when I'm making it, I'm just making what I feel like making. I don't actually put a lot of thought into it as I'm drawing, like, beyond what the story is or whatever. So like, when I was doing this dirty produce stuff, I mean, my publisher was asking me questions because I'm like, okay, well, this is all consensual fruit and vegetable porn. And they're like, I see someone up there's doing this. You know, when you're being paid for it, do you feel like a sex worker? Sometimes you actually get sex worker problems. Well, I had to explain how certain things were consensual. Like, if someone seemed unhappy, I'm like, well, maybe, you know, just because it's consented doesn't mean they're happy. I don't know. This P in a pod is like, it does not necessarily want to be left out of this threesome, but they consented to be there. This is a very odd way to end this panel, but let's just edit by saying everybody go out and make awesome porn, please. Like, make the world a better place of porn. So, thank you so much for being here. And let's give it up for the panelists. Incredible. So, thank you. I brought a small handful of dirty, well, dirty produce stickers. Probably not enough for everybody, but I'll, for whoever comes up to me first, I'll give them out. I think I bought, like, 10 or 15. Oh, oh, it's a garlic and an onion making out sexily. See me afterwards. I sent you one, actually.