The Scandalous Flap Book History

People gripe about stumbling into a site with naughty pop-up ads, and I find them a bit of annoyance myself. But not because they’re naughty. Naughty is in the eye of the beholder.

The history of literature is replete with erotica and pornography of all sorts, including my favorites, the Tiajuana comics that were still around during my youth. Playboy and the far more graphic underground comics killed them, but they were funny and fun and I wish I still had a few to display for my friends with those Jack Chick comics that had us all bound for hell if we didn’t walk the Roman Road.

It’s hard to tell at what point art becomes erotica, and erotica becomes porn. I know that the ads from Brassers and Vivid that pop up in my mailbox fall clearly into the latter category and the Mona Lisa in the former. That being said, I look at a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer and the prints in a flap-book and think, “an artist has to make a living however she can.” Comic artists were just as important and sooner or later they would turn to sex as their inspiration.

Don’t be Church Lady. Check out Sarah Laskow’s post on Renaissance era flap books. You might have fun.

Nicholas C. Rossis

Mary Natalie reading a story about an insomniac bear who bears (heh heh) an uncanny resemblance to her dad.

Mary Natalie loves her flap books so much that we now have an assortment of them. My personal favorite is probably Spot, although that was before I realized what a scandalous history flap books have, courtesy of Sarah Laskow of Atlas Obscura. To my great surprise, flap books were first conceived not as innocent children’s companions, but as titillating mementos of tourists’ good times in what can only be described as Renaissance Europe’s own Las Vegas: 16th century Venice.

What Happened In Venice…

Sixteenth-century Venice was a cosmopolitan, wealthy city, known for its diversity, romance, and relaxed mores. As a republican port city, it was tolerant of all sorts of people and all sorts of behavior in ways that other European cities were not. All this made the city a popular…

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