Penthouse Comix - Issue no 1 - Collector's Item!! RARE... very RARE

Penthouse Comix - Issue no 1 - Collector's Item!! Very, very RARE

These were never available in South Africa! This is 96 pages of top quality adult comic adventure!

Penthouse, famous for its sexually explicit magazines, introduced Men's Adventure Comix in 1995. It became one of three Penthouse ventures into comic books, including Penthouse Comix and Omni Comix.

Men's Adventure Comix bills itself as “The Illustrated Pulp Magazine for Men,” and is an anthology that features work of comic industry legends like Boris Vallejo, Mark Texeira (Union), and Joe Rubinstein. The stories in the series are diverse and really only have sex as the common element. The stories range from sexy super-heroines to Westerns. The latter includes “Slim & Nun,” a considerably more adult take on the John Wayne film, “A Mule for Sister Sarah.” Penthouse Men's Adventure Comix was the first spin-off of the popular Penthouse Comix, and most of the stories were done by well known comic professionals.

Wikipedia states the following:
Penthouse Comix was an American mass-market, magazine-sized comic book, published by Penthouse International/General Media Communications from spring 1994 through July 1998. Founded and initially edited by George Caragonne and Horatio Weisfeld, it ran 32 issues plus one special edition. Penthouse Comix began after publisher Bob Guccione agreed to a budget that was designed to cherry pick top art talent from competitors. This resulted in Penthouse Comix offering a per-page art rate to freelancers of $800, the largest ever established as a standard for comic book line art.

After a thee-issue instalment trial run as an insert feature in Penthouse Magazine, Penthouse Comix was expanded into a stand-alone magazine. The first issue, a 96-page, colour, glossy magazine, appeared in spring 1994. It featured work by Adam Hughes, Garry Leach, Kevin Nowlan, Mike Harris, Arthur Suydam, Jordan Raskin, Horacio Altuna, and Milo Manara. Subsequent issues contained work by comic book artists such as Richard Corben, Tony Salmons, Bart Sears and Gray Morrow. Early issues eschewed hardcore sex in favour of soft-core nudity and satiric humour.

Sold on newsstands, the periodical debuted in a squarebound magazine format 27.5 centimetres high and 20.7 cm wide. With issue #11, the size was reduced to 26.7 cm high and 20.4 cm wide. From issue #26 to the end of its run, Penthouse Comix was published at standard modern comic-book size, with saddle-stitching, card-stock covers, and glossy interior pages. Issues #6-7 were published in both a magazine-size newsstand edition and a comic-book sized direct-market edition for sale in comic-book stores.

Two additional titles were later added to the line: The seven-issue Men's Adventure Comix (cover-titled Penthouse Men's Adventure Comix) (April/May 1995 - April/May 1996), and the three-issue (March/April 1995 - Oct./Nov. 1995) Omni Comix, the latter a companion to the science magazine Omni.

In 1995, Caragonne was accused of embezzlement by Penthouse, was fired, and later committed suicide. General Media then seized control of its comics-related publishing from the deceased Caragonne's packaging company, and installed Dave Elliott as editor.

The Penthouse Comix line was whittled to the original magazine. Elliott edited the remainder of the magazine's run, largely printing sub-par material which had been contracted by Caragonne after Weisfeld's departure. General Media went bankrupt a few years later.

In June 1994, Canadian authorities warned that they would prohibit distribution of Penthouse Comics issue #2 (July/August 1994) because of "six panels of comics dealing with the subjugation of women and other sexual themes."

Some European countries also altered a story that featured Adolf Hitler (under laws which prohibited depiction of the Nazi leader). Editor Carragonne then went out of his way to inflame the issue by prominently featuring a swastika on the cover of Penthouse Comix #3. Although the cover had clearly been modelled on 1960s men's pulp magazine covers (which routinely featured Nazi villains), for foreign markets the swastika was altered to become an "X," and depictions of Hitler's head and swastika ring (in one story written by Caragonne) were replaced with a smiley face.
 

(I will be listing this original issue # 3 with the swastika as well!)

There are three more items that are listed in the Penthouse Men's Adventure Comix series, which is issues # 1, # 2 and # 3.

The following Penthouse Comix issues ( # 1 to # 5 ) are also listed:

These items are no longer available in printed format and are highly collectable!