"... My cost varied, but usually it was between a dime and fifteen cents apiece. That's because I bought in quantity, between three and seven thousand copies at a crack. A couple of times I went as high as ten thousand when they'd give me that many. They didn't exactly ration shipments, but they knew just about how many a distributor could handle and that's all they'd set for him in their print run. I think they had me figured at about four thousand, because when I'd ask for more than that I'd have to do some arguing. And they had their own credit system. If a distributor couldn't come up with cash, they'd give his shipment to someone else. That was how I'd get extras now and then ...

"... Well, 'distributor' is a pretty fancy word. That's what they called me, but I was just a guy who sold the comics in an area. I didn't have dealers or anything like that, and I operated mostly on my own ... Businessmen and working men for the most part. I had a regular run in about seven cities, garages, a few factories, some office buildings. The only guys I had working for me were a couple of college kids. Between them, they'd dump a thousand or so every couple of months. I guess they sold them at the schools ... I'd sell them to the kids for forty cents and they'd get a buck for them ... I'd say that most of them I sold went for fifty cents, but in some places I could charge a buck and get away with it. I had one office where I used to get two bucks a copy, so I always saved them the best...

"I'd say when all was said and done, I'd pick up maybe a grand a month. But in the depression that was pretty big money. Some months I'd make maybe three grand, but then I'd dry out for a while because I couldn't get merchandise ...

"... No, I wasn't very big. I once met a guy who sold in New York and he was pushing about four thousand a month regular. And another guy in Kansas City used to sell more than that. The funny thing was, the more religious the community, the better the sales. I always did better in little towns. I guess those people weren't getting any action so they had to read about it... "

From everything the author has been able to learn, this man was a typical "distributor" among those handling the eight pagers in the thirties and forties. It was a relatively small, loosely organized, highly secretive business which yielded excellent mark-ups. The fact that there was no regular supply seems to be supported by the markings on a majority of the original eight-page comics. These markings, which indicate series and print runs, show that large numbers of these were produced in groups. Several collectors agree with the author that the publishers apparently waited until they had a number of different comics from the artists and then commissioned a gang run with a willing printer. This would explain the distribu­tor's statement that he could only purchase a new shipment every three or four months.

The interesting point here is that the eight pagers were not a product of the underworld, which was far too organized to do business in this manner. Instead, they appear to have been produced by a number of small, closely knit groups which sprang up in different parts of the United States. A close study of the originals indicates that different printing equipment and even different plates were used by the same publisher. There is additional evidence that the publishers were transient, moving from one city to another over a period of time. Apparently few found it profitable to own their own printing equipment and preferred to hire a printer or lease his presses for a week when they made their long runs.

At no point was any real effort made to put quality into the printing of the eight pagers. Several publishers attempted Jo add color by using small amounts of red on the covers, but these were limited to a few series in the entire history of the erotic comics. Sophisticated art, color and printing techniques such as we see in the currently popular Cunt and Snatch erotic comics were simply not necessary when the original eight pagers were produced.

The basic sales appeal, then, of the erotic comics of the thirties and forties was the content and not the packaging. And here we enter our discussion of erotic humor to understand the process involved in both the creation and appeal of this particular form of erotica.

A sense of humor is not universal in man, and humor itself is a highly subjective thing. What makes one person burst into gales of laughter may well leave the next man cold. Humor depends on many factors, among them situation, experience, conditioning and individual personality structure. And as the ability to appreciate humor varies, the ability to operate it is even more limited. All too few individuals possess this gift, and only a small percentage of those who do have it make any real use of it.

Sigmund Freud pointed out in his Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious: "Though wit-making is an excellent means of obtaining pleasure from the psychic process, we know that not all persons are equally able to make use of it. Wit-making is not at the disposal of all; in general there are but a few persons to whom one can point and say that they are witty. Here wit seems to be a special activity somewhere within the region of the old 'psychic faculties,' and this shows itself in its appearance as fairly independent of other faculties such as intelligence, fantasy, memory, etc."

An argument is often advanced here that fantasy is an integral part of wit, particularly in view of the fact that often humor is achieved through a given measure of in appropriateness, fantastic exaggeration or complete irrelevance. And when humor involves protest, which it so frequently does, there is a certain amount of intelligence involved in its creation and execution.

As any comedian will quickly attest, there is no set formula involved in the creation of successful wit. And many argue that its execution is as important as its creation. Be that as it may, there are certain basic ingredients found in the pattern of all humor. These vary according to situation, audience and the type of humor involved, yet unless basic formulas are followed the humor is often subject to failure.

It is important to remember here that successful humor depends on mass appeal. If there are one hundred in an audience and only two laugh at a humorous portrayal, the humor failed. Almost every human being will laugh at something, yet successful humor must appeal to a wide audience.

While this must be stated only in the most general terms, it is accepted that the most successful humor deals with real situations—albeit in an exaggerated or irrelevant form. And frequently this involves an exaggeration of reality. Within this same format, it has been found that the most successful forms of humor based on reality involve human beings. People like to laugh at people, which is another psychological pattern which we must simply accept rather than examine here. The point is that a joke about a computer making a mistake never has as wide an appeal as a joke about a human being making a mistake.

Accepting these two premises as basic to the successful humor syndrome, we can move into the field of erotic humor. Here we see one particular facet of the human being exploited for the purpose of wit, and there is certainly nothing new about combining eroticism with humor. Some of the earliest forms of eroticism combine humor with erotic portrayal (see Sex, Censorship and Pornography, Volume I). There are several basic reasons for this. First, sexual behavior in most societies has a certain amount of shock value, and this serves as a factor for exaggeration. But even more important is the fact that the more intimate the human activity, the greater the potential for humor. And certainly sex is a very intimate form of human behavior.

It is not meant to imply here that humor and eroticism go hand in hand. It is simply that one is compatible with the other. This is not only true from the aspect that every human being harbors some reservations about his or her sexual adequacy and ability, but also from the standpoint of social proscrip­tion which in the past tended to make any form of sexual behavior naughty. Thus the guilt anxiety attached to sex plays a part in both the creation and appeal of erotic humor.

This was particularly true in the Elizabethan period when humor was dominant in most erotic poetry. We also see it reflected in the broadly erotic and scatologic art of that period.

What is the secret to the combination of eroticism and humor? Freud once expressed the opinion that it is one of the fundamental desires of mankind to see the sexual exposed. His view was that this in itself was a sign of civilized development, the more primitive pleasure being that of touch. "... the smutty joke is