Undeniably, sex sells. On the internet where access is open to just about anyone, the porn industry has became a gold mine. But apart from that, free sites with sexual content draw relatively a lot of attention. In less liberal (and easier to control) environments, things are different. For instance, NC-17 label for a film is equal to financial murder (or euthanasia?).

Art can deal with sex in two different forms: graphic and contextual. Basically, comics that show sex versus comics that talk about sex. But despite what you might expect, these two approaches don’t often go together. In fact, works that use sex in just one of those two ways are more common; On one side, we have stories that involve sex as a side dish, but their main interests are somewhere else; On the other side, we have stories that talk about sex yet never feel the need to show it graphically (for instance films such as “Sex, Lies and Videotapes” or “Closer”).

More often, sex is just a formal element, not a subject. There is no problem in naming an average adventure or action story that happens to contain a lot of graphical sex. But this isn’t necessarily a drawback; it’s an individual decision of the author. The thing is, different people have different limits as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. These limits changed largely through history and artistic medium: in 19th century, the mere mention of sex as a subject for a book would be considered a scandal; In the 1940's, graphic nudity was largely prohibited in USA... in Europe, even though it was not prohibited, it was still considered scandalous. The sexual Revolution changed this view so that today, a display of nipple in film is nothing unusual and covered sex scenes are obligatory for some directors. And yet, in painted artwork, nudity was a standard subject since the renaissance. Long ago, sex in art was considered a morality issue; today, morality seems to be an issue of real life, and artist’s moral is not judged based on what he or she draws (writes, makes).

But not all limits are erased; in fact, every artist now has his or her own limit and view of sex and its use in their art. This view becomes a part of artist’s style, just like many other artistic decisions that he makes during his artistic growth. Also, this view is mirroring their real life outlook at sexual tastes and preferences, his own sense of morality, and his or her person in whole.

The problem begins when artists start looking at sex as a novelty; if the artist accepts sex as just one segment of life, something common, a topic that has the right to be discussed just like any other topic, sex appears as such in his comic.

But when we can see that the artist is more amused and fascinated by the appearance of the naked body in his comic is when we can start talking about fanservice. We aren’t necessarily talking about an artist as a sex-starved teenager who enjoys drawing nudity even if, due to lack of skills, he draws woman breasts disproportionally big and placed too high; No, once you get enough drawing skills to shape anything under your fingers, one often finds it hard to resist shaping something sexual; A popular director will hardly resist making a film with the actress he has a crush on. But whether it’s going to be a good comic or film is an entirely different matter. Umberto Eco claimed that he had a sure-fire system for recognizing porn films from regular ones – no matter how much sex they contain. It was the scenes between the sex scenes, he claims, that are a clue: if they’re shot in real time, that means if character’s actions are shown in real time and the film is pornographic in nature. Take, for instance, that character gets up and takes something from the fridge; If the scene lasts just as long as it takes him to go to the fridge, open it, and take whatever he wants from it – the film is porn. This is because in porn films, sex scenes are the centerpiece and scenes between them serve only as a relaxation, a moment of rest. Thus, they contain idle, unimportant actions; the director of a non-pornographic film would want to cut down on these unimportant actions and focus more on the overall story. A porn director, however, needs to fill the time between sex scenes, so he doesn’t cut them down. Comics, however, have had a good reason to include sex from the very beginning. In order to destroy the reputation of comics as fun for children, which comics have had since the beginning, it became necessary to include content that is obviously not intended for children. At one moment, nearly every comic artist on the French comic scene had a highly sexual side-series, and USA etched its mark through their horror comics. Today, the situation has changed: nearly every artist has a child's comic as a side-series which, though still tipping a hat into the childhood obsession of comics, is a good sign that the situation changed, perhaps even to the other extreme.

Now, as for comics that talk about sex rather than using it as means to support a story – well... there aren’t many. Webcomic artists, especially artists of non-comedic comics, aren’t very willing to write a comic that will explore topics of a sexual nature very deeply. The thing is, sex is a very personal issue to everyone. No matter how impersonal their comic is, artists have to put a part of their intimate life and experiences into the comic if they want to deal with sex. People are very unwilling to be that open. Even though romance is very often in webcomics, most artists stop at the door of the couple’s bedroom and refuse to follow them further. Sexual frustrations, doubts and other questions are still a no man’s land for webcomics.

However, webcomic artists have found a way around opening private parts of their brain in order to still talk about sex. The solution was simple: a parody of pornography and other graphically explicit genres.

This is nothing new and original. Very often, artists will turn to their trashy influences for inspiration, even though they're fully aware of just how trashy the original subject matter was; their save is adopting a parodying view on the subject matter, using slight exaggerations to give the whole piece a campy feel, and cynical self-awareness. This is the approach that allows directors like Tim Burton and John Carpenter to re-film their old, B-production horror influences without feeling guilty and even with an affectionate look back at how far they'd come. This is also the approach that allows many webcomic artists fond of porn or any other sexually charged content to adopt elements of it – without actually making porn.

What does this add to interpretation of sex as a topic? Practically nothing. The twist is, these artists don’t draw comics about sex anymore. No, they draw comics about popular culture, and because sex was an important element of that popular culture, in their webcomics it becomes a means of presenting that popular culture in a more convincing manner. So again, we are back to sex being a means, and not a subject. Take, for instance, the best-known examples like “Ghastly comic” (http://www.ghastlycomic.com/), “Sexy losers” (http://www.sexylosers.com/) or “Exploitation Now” (http://www.exploitationnow.com/ - WARNING: all three comics contain explicit sex). Are these comics about sex? No, they’re first and foremost comics about hentai. Sex is naturally one of their important elements – perhaps even a necessary element – but not the only and defining subject. They are comics about popular culture seen through it’s treatment of sex.

So now, many people have begun to draw comics with a lot of graphic sex. I feel that most of them don’t do it because they hope it will bring them publicity. They do it for various other reasons: because they are influenced by similar comics; because they like drawing sex and nudity; perhaps for the same reason they like hearing a dirty joke...

Me? I personally still miss the very beginning of “Alex and Ilia” (http://www.alexandilia.com.br/ , now on hiatus). Back before it went into a rather bland sf-adventure story (which I feel was at least a bit rushed by the requests of readers who, for some reason, thought that action is the best that the comic could give), it was a shameless (read: honest) peep into a bedroom of a newlywed couple: it was not beautified; It was not exaggerated to the point where it would gain a cartoonish nature; It was genuinely intimate. That’s why it took you no more than one page to get into it’s characters.

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