COMPLETE CREPAX HC BOX SET VOL 07-08 (2025)

"Italy's Guido Crepax is one of the most acclaimed cartoonists in the world. In the 1960s and '70s, he created and chronicled the adventures of Valentina, arguably the strongest and most independent female character in European comics up to that time, and legitimized the erotic genre. Fantagraphics' ambitious Complete Crepax series launched in 2016 to international acclaim, and this handsome boxed set contains our third and fourth columes, Evil Spells and Private Life. Vol. 3 introduces Baba Yaga, the villainous witch of folklore, and includes Crepax's sinuous adaptations of several literary masterpieces by Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, and Edgar Allan Poe. In Vol. 4, the author's sexy proto feminist heroine Valentina becomes a mother, outwits a gang of jewel thieves, flashes back to her childhood and adolescence, encounters a mysterious cello, and much more!"

Bonnie and Clyde, Louise Brooks, Venus in Furs, Casanova, and Milanese photographer Valentina embark on adventures in this collection of classic erotic Italian comics. These erotic comics stories span 1968-1989. In Vol. 5, Bonnie and Clyde, Louise Brooks, and the globetrotting photographer Valentina (a movie and TV star herself!) take center stage, while "The Man from Harlem" is Crepax's ode to boxer Joe Louis and jazz. In Vol. 6, Valentina ages in "real time." First, she saves Effi, a German heiress, from kidnappers, and they become lovers. Valentina also has an affair with Bruno, a young cellist. Dangerous Liaisons follows our heroine into middle-aged home life with her longtime partner, Phil, with whom she has a grown son, Mattia. Two of Crepax's lauded graphic adaptations: "Venus in Furs" and "The Memoirs of Casanova" are featured in this volume.

The latest box set of our bestselling Crepax series is devoted to the artist's comics adaptations including Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye and the groundbreaking BDSM Story of O by Pauline Réage. Collecting more than 500 pages of the influential Italian cartoonist's most famous adaptations of the erotic literary canon in a beautiful slipcase box set. In Vol. 7, "Story of a Story" (1981) stars Milanese photographer Valentina. Finding herself home alone, she cheekily decides to fantasize about Georges Bataille's infamous novella Story of the Eye - with a twist: she's playing all the roles! In the stories "Emmanuelle" (1978) and "Emmanuelle: The Anti-Virgin" (1990), Crepax follows the titular heroine on her sensual journey as the polyamorous wife of a French diplomat in Thailand. While the character is best known as the star of a series of pornographic movies, most notably the 1974 film starring Sylvia Kristel, she originated in a banned 1959 novel by Marayat Rollet-Andriane (pen name Emmanuelle Arsan), a Thai French woman. Emmanuelle has a sexual encounter on a plane, plays a steamy game of squash with a countess, falls for a woman named Bee, and has an intense experience at a temple, among the many other transgressive exploits Crepax details from the novel. And, in an innovation of Crepax's own - she crosses paths with King Kong! Vol. 8 contains Crepax's longest graphic novel - "Story of O." A woman finds fulfillment when she subsumes her identity by sexually submitting to a secret society. Crepax sumptuously draws every strike of the whip and taps into the sensuality of body modification in his adaptation of this groundbreaking work. Also included is his short story "The Unexpected Exchange," filled with the sensual delights you have come to expect from Crepax: lingerie, bisexuality, the 1920s, and the most symbolically drawn train you've ever seen outside of a Hitchcock film. In addition to the usual accompanying essays putting Crepax's stories into historical and cultural context, this volume also features Nouveau Roman novelist Alain Robbe- Grillet's (The Voyeur, Last Year at Marienbad) introduction to Story of O.