THE COMPLETE CREPAX Volume 10: Surreal Stories

These erotic comics stories—ranging from 1968 to 1991—chronicle the surreal adventures of Guido Crepax's heroine, Bianca. Introduced in the aptly named “An Expansive Story,” Bianca appears for the first two-thirds of this volume to be trapped in (or haunted by?) a gothic boarding school, whose administrators and pupils have untoward and sinister designs on her.

Bianca bounces back and forth between the school and multiple dreamscapes—she becomes a plant, talks to fish while diving under the sea, is served up on a silver platter, gets thrown out with the garbage, witnesses a double homicide, and much more—unfazed as she is drawn into ever-more-absurd scenarios. Then, Bianca faces the trials and tribulations of Gulliver before she hands the baton to Valentina, Crepax’s most famous heroine who, feeling introspective, “speaks” to both Bianca and Crepax before modeling in a spectacular, full color “fashion dream.”

Black-and-white and full color illustrations throughout.