Above are assorted issues of the lowbrow Elvifrance comic Mafioso, which lasted for ninety-six issues between 1982 and 1992. Elvifrance comics were a favorite target of French censors, and 176 releases of various titles were banned for sale, which is no surprise considering their emphasis on violence against women. You can read an issue of Mafioso here. If you read French, that is. 

It’s been a while since we posted a comic book, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been reading any. Of late we’ve been enjoying Ramba, a sort of female revenge serial written and drawn by Rossano Rossi, Marco Delizia and Fabio Valdambrini. Ramba is filled with sex, castrations, murder, perversion and other pulpy goodness, all courtesy of the character of Ramba, who is basically an oversexed hitwoman. When she isn’t fulfilling contracts, she’s running afoul of random men and having to put them in their proper place—the grave, usually. In issue 1, for instance, she tries to masturbate in an alley and of course you know how men are—always sticking their noses where they don’t belong. After Ramba goes Benihana on them, it’s off to kill her target, who she stabs in the chest and then uses for a little sexual pleasure while his lifeblood is leaking out of him. Oh, and just for good measure, she also urinates in his face. It's fun for the whole family.

Assorted Super comics from the former Yugoslavia, circa late 1980s. 

Assorted covers of the French serial comic Tex Bill, with art that seems to be—how shall we say it—subtly phallic and/or centered on the groin. Yeah, we know—guns are phallic anyway, but even so, you see what we're talking about, right? Don’t even try to play us. You know you see it. 

Assorted Italian and Spanish covers of Nicola del Principe’s Sukia,1977 to 1986, borrowed from sources too numerous to name. Credit to all. Also, perhaps you noticed that the cover star looks like Italian actress Ornella Muti? Well, she is Ornella Muti. At least, the main character Sukia Dragomic is modeled after her. We’ll have the full story on Sukia later, along with more covers.     

Update: Okay apparently nobody got our headline and subhead, but that's because they didn't look at the first cover. Notice the snowman has a giant schlong, indicated by the shadow? So Season's Greetings is like a penile salute. And Ding Dong Merrily on High is a (not so) famous Christmas Carol. Not funny? Sigh. All we want for Christmas is more wit.

Here’s a rather disturbing 1977 cover by Spanish artist Prieto Muriana for the first of a six issue comic series about the assassination of John F. Kennedy (which happened forty six years ago today), and the events leading up to his brother Robert Kennedy’s killing. When we first saw this image at Blonde Zombies it made us cringe a bit, which makes it a successful cover, since it’s clearly intended to be an iconoclastic representation of this sad day. After our initial misgivings, we were able to appreciate the artistry involved. But then JFK is before our time. If you're old enough to have personal memories of the event, maybe there's nothing artistic here at all.

Métal Hurlant was published in France by artists Jean Giruad, aka Mœbius, and Philippe Druillet, with the help of writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. These four became known as Les Humanoides Associés, or United Humanoids, and their magazine focused on serialized sci-fi and fantasy stories paired with high-quality art by geniuses such as Richard Corben, Milo Manara, and Alain Voss. These efforts helped bring comics into the adult mainstream, where they were finally taken seriously as art. So next time you buy a graphic novel like Watchmen or 30 Days of Night, give a nod to Les Humanoides Associés and their creation. More covers below.

Assorted covers of Terror Blu, the Italian fumetto we mentioned a while ago for its hyperviolent content. As you can see, we weren’t exaggerating.

Rarely have we seen so recognizable an appropriation of a celeb’s image. Usually the Italian fumetti Terror Blu featured near-naked women on its covers, being assaulted or dismembered by robots, or perhaps stabbed and beheaded by aliens, so we can’t figure out what happened here. Maybe the publisher was sick and his niece was running the show that day. But even if the cover is out of character, the interior pages remain as unrepentantly misogynist as always. Cartoon LaVar brutally beats on several women inside, literally using them to train for a big fight. Considering how carefully celebs safeguard their images, we can’t imagine why LaVar didn’t call up Terror Blu and say, “Bon giorno, sono LaVar Burton, and you fuckers are so sued.” But then again, since we know nothing about the law, maybe Terror Blu didn’t infringe. Guess we’ll learn the legal ropes when Pulp Intl. gets sued. Should be any day now.

The image above was painted by Spanish artist Ana Miralles, and is the cover of book 1 in a series of graphic novels called Djinn. Created in 2006 by venerable Belgian writer Jean Dufaux, the Djinn saga tells of Kim Nelson, a young woman who travels to Istanbul seeking clues to her grandmother’s mysterious past. She soon learns that during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire her grandmother was a harem girl, the beautiful favorite of the Black Sultan. As more clues pile up and the mystery deepens, Kim finds herself dealing with shady characters and persistent paramours in bookshops, baths, and bedchambers all over the old city. These sorts of comics always remind us of Black Mask and other vintage mags that sometimes mixed romance with foreign adventure, but if you aren’t familiar with 1930s pulps, think of Djinn as Romancing the Stone crossed with Emmanuelle. We’ve posted some fantastically illustrated interior pages below from our copy of Djinn 1: The Favorite. We recommend this series highly.