When it comes to artbooks, graphic design, formerly known as commercial illustration, is where the action is, or at least where the after-market prices quickly become ridiculous. (Buy your artbooks while they're still in print, folks.) I'll begin with Gary Lovisi's DAMES, DOLLS & DELINQUENTS (Krause, 2009), a gallery of lurid cover art from exploitation paperbacks of the '50s and '60s -- femmes fatale, juvenile delinquents, cheating wives, nymphos, thrillseekers, dopefiends, women in peril, and hard-as-nails lesbians -- they're all on display here, and a side-by-side comparison of a couple of original cover paintings with their muddy little reproductions shows us how much of the detail and beauty of this pulp art was lost from the moment the paperbacks first hit the store shelves.

It's pure camp -- every pose, every situation, every title is so over the top you can't take any of it seriously. Same goes for the covers in Susan Stryker's QUEER PULP (Chronicle, 2001), a scholarly history of the gay/lesbian exploitation novels of the '50s and '60s, reproducing covers with laugh out loud come-on text from the publishers: "It was a haven for oddballs...sex weirdos in search of offbeat thrills!" (Hangout for Queers, 1965). "A novel of obsessive desire -- the nightmare world of the trans-sexual!" (I Want What I Want, 1968). "Most men fall in love with women -- but some men fall in love with themselves!" (Muscle Boy, 1958).

Another scholarly tome, B. Astrid Daley and Adam Parfrey's cover gallery, SIN-A-RAMA (Feral House, 2016) examines the history of the softcore sleaze sex paperbacks of the '60s, a history that would've been lost without the time and effort of several dedicated collectors of this trash. Uniquely unsatisfying pornography, the covers always promised more than the stories were allowed to deliver, yet the books permitted a dedicated cadre of young, professional genre fiction writers (including Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Donald Westlake, and Lawrence Block) to earn a comfortable living when their magazine markets abruptly dried up in the late 1950s. There's something salacious here for everyone: "His nights belonged to the man-hungry widow who paid his salary...his days to her hot-eyed daughter who wouldn't leave him alone!" (Handy-Man, 1965).

The obscenity charges brought against the softcore smut publishers ironically led to several liberal-minded, free speech victories in court, paving the way for the stroke books of the '70s and '80s. Crude, rude, aimed squarely at readers craving in-your-face, hardcore sex scenes, there was no time for come-on text or coy descriptions: a black and white cover drawing and a three- or four-word title had to inform the customer exactly what they were getting, with no ambiguity whatsoever. Michael R. Goss's YOUNG LUSTY SLUTS! (Erotic Print Society, 2004) presents covers from (mostly) 1972 - 1989, boasting such titles as Mom Loves Big Ones, The Best Balling Daughter, Stepsister's Skillful Mouth, The Landlady's Dog, The Nun and the Choirboy, Dark Meat Eaters, and Anal Rider. (No gay male one-handers included, unless you count Switch-Hittin' Summer.)

Cinema Sewer editor Robin Bougie's two-volume GRAPHIC THRILLS: AMERICAN XXX MOVIE POSTERS 1970 - 1985 (FAB Press, 2014/15) appreciates the craft that went into designing movie posters to attract the raincoat crowd; in fact, he appreciates it more than the poster artists themselves, most of whom don't want to be found, let alone interviewed. The posters are compiled and annotated by a connoisseur of smut, who argues that these feature-length porn films, good, bad, or mediocre, are part of America's pop culture heritage. I'm sympathetic to that argument, even when the movie, the poster, or both, are virtually worthless. That these films exist at all is because of economic factors; they're commodities that once made a number of people (but never the performers) a lot of money, and now they're objects of nostalgia for collectors. But nostalgia for what?

Isn't it difficult telling one porn movie from another? Aren't the titles more or less interchangeable? Is there anything about Inspirations (1982) or Expectations (1977) or Sexcapades (1983) that grabs you and makes an impression, besides the poster art? Home video and the internet upended the business model for the adult film industry; now they profit by selling subscriptions to the sites hosting the porn, selling your data to third parties, third party advertising, etc. Maybe the old XXX movies and posters really do seem like reminders of a simpler, more "innocent" time. Nostalgia is a comforting illusion.