Verotika, the flagship title for Los Angeles’ Verotik Publishing, is the Twilight Zone playground for adult sex comics. Now on its 10th issue, Verotika is published on an irregular schedule, but strives to always feature the most disturbing illustrated sex fiction that the comics industry can muster.

Glenn Danzig, this book’s publisher, seems to have all the right comics connections, snagging veteran writers Grant “Invisibles” Morrison and Nancy “Swamp Thing” Collins to script shorts in earlier issues and, most recently, publishing “Sewercide” by gore-god Rex Miller. Artistically, Verotika’s roster boasts newcomers Martin Emond, Adam Pollina and Kim Hagan, as well as a slew of others willing to bring visions of undead prostitutes and multi-vaginal transplant recipients to life.

The horror genre’s traditional gut-punch twist ending is found on the endpages of nearly every Verotika story. The treat is trying to guess who’ll wind up dead, de-sexed or chopping into a torso for a madman’s breeding lab. The stories in this experimental anthology are always chock-schlock full of butt shots, boobs and flying, severed labia. But some are actually thought provoking and lingering. How far would you go to please your lover and his six friends? Can places and things exude uncontrollable sexual frenzy-energies? If you’re a zombie and the skin around your penis comes off, could you re-attach it and resume coitus without disturbing your partner?

Some of the early Verotika issues are very hard to find and very expensive. Even though the first one came out in late 1994, it now fetches upwards to $20 or more at comics conventions. My favorite issue, number two, is close to being sold out by the publisher. Hopefully we’ll see a “best of” compilation or a trade paperback collection for latecomers.

Verotik Publishing was founded by former Misfits and Samhain singer/rocker-dude Glenn Danzig. He not only got his company off the ground with big industry names (like Frank Frazetta and Simon Bisley) but most of his books are in such high demand that they’re selling out of most comics stores the week they arrive. Verotik has received more than fan attention, though. Verotik books were among other adult comics seized by authorities in Oklahoma recently. The comics were dubbed “obscene material” and Planet Comics, the store that sold them, was shut down. Verotik generates about eight semi-regular adult comic books, not including sketchbooks and art portfolios, all of them centered around violent adventure stories or horror fiction. If you think publishers like Verotik have the right to produce adults-only cartoons, and stores like Planet Comics should be able to sell them, please contact the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at 1-800-992-2533. And if you’re in Oregon, come November, vote No on 31.