Garden of the Flesh

The Fritz B-Movie Books

by Gilbert Hernández

As only the unfettered Id of Gilbert Hernandez could conceive, Garden of the Flesh is a sexually explicit retelling of the story of Adam and Eve up to Noah’s Ark. Hernandez presents a straightforward adaptation of the Bible parable, but one that also blurs the lines between erotica and pornography, as only Hernandez can.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Religion, Graphic Novels Comics, Adult

96 pages, Hardcover

First published July 23, 2016

About the author

Gilbert and his brother Jaime Hernández mostly publish their separate storylines together in Love And Rockets and are often referred to as 'Los Bros Hernandez'.

Gilbert Hernandez is an American cartoonist best known for the Palomar and Heartbreak Soup stories in Love and Rockets, the groundbreaking alternative comic series he created with his brothers Jaime and Mario. Raised in Oxnard, California in a lively household shaped by comics, rock music and a strong creative streak, he developed an early fascination with graphic storytelling. His influences ranged from Marvel legends Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the humor and clarity of Hank Ketcham and the Archie line, as well as the raw energy of the underground comix that entered his life through his brother Mario.
In 1981 the brothers self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets, which quickly drew the attention of Fantagraphics Books. The series became a defining work of the independent comics movement, notable for its punk spirit, emotional depth and multiracial cast. Gilbert's Palomar stories, centered on the residents of a fictional Latin American village, combined magic realism with soap-opera intimacy and grew into an ambitious narrative cycle admired for its complex characters and bold storytelling. Works like Human Diastrophism helped solidify his reputation as one of the medium's most inventive voices.
Across periods when Love and Rockets was on hiatus, Hernandez built out a parallel body of work, creating titles such as New Love, Luba, and Luba's Comics and Stories, as well as later graphic novels including Sloth and The Troublemakers. He also collaborated with Peter Bagge on the short-lived series Yeah! and continued to explore new directions in Love and Rockets: New Stories.
Celebrated for his portrayal of independent women and for his distinctive blend of realism and myth, Hernandez remains a major figure in contemporary comics and a lasting influence on generations of artists.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a glance I was puzzled by the low rating of this book and what I see as people not getting the joke at the heart of it. The Hernandez brothers--Jaime and Gilbert--love fifties and sixties pulpy, trashy sci-fi-fantasy, noir, B-movies, and not sleek and sophisticated stuff, so they have a series of comics versions of the B movies Fritz starred in, the very "trash" they love and laugh at. And most people respond: Ugh, such bad writing! What is going on with those guys?! But have we lost all sense of what B movies (Reefer Madness, The Night of the Living Dead, and so on) and "midnight movies" were all about? So bad that's it good?

Garden of Flesh is a retelling of the Book of Genesis as a Tijuana Bible, which these guys would have been familiar with growing up, cheap/nasty/funny/quickly done, eight pages.

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/t...

Fantagraphics does a funny production: Small and short as Tijuana Bibles would be, with an embossed (fake) leather cover as if it were a cherished family Bible. And it is clearly marked: For Adults Only, because the version of Genesis Hernandez jokingly relates here is one as if by and for smirking juveniles, one that is almost exclusively focused on explicit sexual acts, missing any spiritual or religious meanings intended by the original text. Hilarious, if you see it that way, but very possibly offensive if you only pick it up to skim through it. So this is a parody, not porn. Still, maybe it's not the kind of joke you would enjoy, involving graphic depictions of Adam and Eve and their descendants having sex, maybe it sounds like Beavis and Butthead depicting the Bible as only the "begattings," and in a way maybe it's not far from that, so you are hereby forewarned, but it made me smile. Los Bros remember comics and youth as rebellion.

[Ademption · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gilbert Hernandez knows lots of free porn exists on the internet, right? Briefly, Garden of Flesh is a short summary of the Book of Genesis with money shots on every other page. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and their ladies, Noah and his kids and their respective partners-- all doing the things they are known to do in the Bible and also boning. It seems like this full color Tijuana Bible is what happens when a Hernandez brother owes a publisher a book. The only utility I see for this book is leaving remaindered copies in Sunday school rooms for sheltered christian teens to find, or maybe giving them in response to someone trying to hand me a Jack Chick tract.

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sexualized retelling of Genesis. Pretty simple line work and color. Gilbert takes the numerous "begat"s in Genesis and shows us how they happened! Not quite as graphic as Birdland because of how simple the artwork is.

[Jesús · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book that pitches itself as a “Tijuana Bible” version of the Book of Genesis, Garden of the Flesh is neither as raunchy nor as revelatory as Gilbert Hernández’s work regularly is.

It’s not clear to me why he felt this needed to be published. It’s less sexually explicit than his long-running work for Love and Rockets. It’s also not obviously about anything. And the line work is far below Hernández’s usual craft and looks like it was rushed out the door. I’m honestly confused.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

PDF - It doesn't seem like Beto was really trying this time out.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genesis told like an 8-pager; a real Tijuana Bible. I usually like Gilbert's work and there are some fun moments here (the devil turning into a snake is fantastic), but mostly it's repetitive and a little boring. Kind of a one-idea booklet. Nice presentation though.

[Nore · Rating 1 out of 5]

A handful of pages of repetitive sex. There's nothing wrong with that, but I didn't find this particularly exciting. (Also, what the hell was up with Eve's eyebrows... ?)

[Tom Ewing · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sort of unrateable, in that it clearly achieves what it’s aiming for but what it’s aiming for is… well. It’s Gilbert Hernandez retelling the actual Bible as a Tijuana Bible, which is a good gag at 10 pages and perhaps not quite as good a gag at 100. Because it’s a Tijuana Bible the dialogue and art is deliberately wooden/rushed with compositions - or in this case positions - repeating continually. There’s an innocence to it all which Hernandez generally swerves away from - readers of his other explicit comics will be expecting nastiness which never really manifests. But it’s a quick, consciously throwaway work, and probably best seen as a tribute to an archaic form of smut that I’m sure gave young Beto many happy hours.

[Erin the Avid Reader ⚜BFF's with the Cheshire Cat⚜ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely classic Gilbert Hernandez, with a heavier mix of retro exploitation and sacrilegious erotica. I completely expected this book to have low reviews, which I simultaneously understand but at the same time, find rather befuddling. You should not take this work so seriously; it’s a pornographic parody of the book of Genesis with a mix of Hernandezesque surrealism and satire. A strange book for sure, but I do recommend checking it out…just don’t read it on the bus.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gilbert Hernandez is a crazy person.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that exists simply to indulge Beto's infatuation with the way we think and engage in sex. Beto's tested this water plenty of times and I was actually kind of excited for this interpretation of it, but after the Garden of Eden scene is played out, the book's conceit is overdone and exhausting. Plenty of other reviews point out the obvious allusions: Crumb's Genesis, Tijuana bibles, even Beto's own (and much better) series 'Blubber' as well as the 'Fritz B-movie comics'. Each of those works offer something that the prolific (perhaps too much so?) Beto is able to- something of substance. Here, the book's design elements shine brighter than the work inside. The illuminated candy-eyed coloring seem to parody those innocuous Illustrated Bible comics that we've all seen, and the black on black leatherette softcover packaging will make it so that you can try to pass this book off as a pocket Bible and get away with reading it in public.

[Hope Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was kind of funny but I was bit let down because it was not what I expected. It's a 'retelling' but of Adam and Eve up to Noah's ark. But really it's a retelling if their sex lives. Sex part is not the problem, problem is that's there is nothing else other than sex.

[Adan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd retelling of some Bible stories with a whole lot more hardcore sex... for some reason.

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

No where near as good as Crumb's adaptation of "The Book of Genesis", but it's also pretty clear that Beto Hernández was shooting for something much more transgressive. Crumb's graphic adaptation goes for the near word-for-word, while Beto takes some generous liberties with the source material.

More akin to classic Tijuana Bibles, Beto's Garden of the Flesh is a lurid, raunchy take on the biblical events as original described in Genesis. Fitting in firmly in the "Fritz B-Movie" series, this does read like a story with a subpar script that is only spruced up due to the heavy leaning on the more pornographic elements. The dumbed down script lends to the hilarity of the situations depicted, but it is something that feels like it could get old quickly. Fortunately, Beto seems to realize this since this comic wraps up quickly in its relatively brief page count and doesn't really overstay its welcome. Compared to the more dense comics from his "Luba"/"Palomar" series, Garden of the Flesh is light in both narrative and complexity with respect to artwork. But as someone who admires Beto's adherence towards being as rebellious and transgressive of a cartoonist one can find, I had a pretty fun time with this.

[Alex E · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you ever wanted to combine the bible with porn, boy do I have the comic for you!

So this is another in the "Fritz" series of movies that she alluded to in the Love and Rockets book, and it's basically just a porn retelling of some of the early bible stories. We get Adam and Eve -with fucking, we get Noah's ark - with fucking, we get Cain and Abel - with fucking, you get the gist.

I honestly kind of laughed out loud at the book, as it's pretty ridiculous. Obviously he is going for that B movie style he has been doing with the Fritz series, but this dips its toe into more X-Rated, with hardcore sex being prominently displayed for multiple pages. I get that Gilbert Hernandez was going for scintillating and shocking, but this doesn't really achieve either of those things.

I would recommend this only if you are really genuinely curious about this... interesting premise... otherwise, this one might be worth a skip.

[StrictlySequential · Rating 2 out of 5]

My ranks of the smut are ONLY ranks against other smut=
DO NOT take them seriously in terms of quality compared to anything else!

If you're seeing this in A TITLE THAT ISN'T STRICTLY SEX=
*I couldn't take this seriously enough to have it measured with anything but the smut*

[Francesca Giardiello · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fumetto con ambientazione religiosa scritto con l'unica motivazione di essere "erotico", peccato che di erotico non abbia nulla e sfoci nel volgare.

Non sono una persona religiosa e neanche puritana, ma se devo leggere qualcosa che non fa altro che illustrare corpi nudi nel pieno dell'atto sessuale, allora preferisco leggere qualcosa di dedicato.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hernandez was apparently inspired by Crumb's Book of Genesis. This is basically a Tijuana Bible telling of the Book of Genesis.

Basically a well-produced curious of a one-note joke that isn't as clever as the creator apparently thought.

[Ryan Lowrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

delightful retelling of old testament tales with sacrilegious cartoon smut.

[Alexander Oviedo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simple drawings, short story with the same porn sketches in 96 pages

[Malum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doesn't look like a lot of effort went into making this.

[mentalexotica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Looks like the sex comics I drew as a 7-year-old. Even those had some meaning. What a load of trash. Not even worth the pornographic effort.

[Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOL i don’t understand the point of this book. It’s just porn wrapped in the book of genesis. But I’ll give it four stars because I know this dude’s work hahaha

[DURTY · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sexy parts of the Bible. Bow chicka wow wow!

[Al Capwned · Rating 1 out of 5]

Part of the Fritz B-Movie series but that's all it is: a b-movie in the worst possible way of the definition.

[clouds · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun concept

[Michelle Morrell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Adam and Eve through Noah, told as porn. Dude, time to scrub my soul. It wasn't even good porn.

[Ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lol this was horrible

The stories of Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, and Noah and the flood.
Just constant sex, shitty SHITTY art, and pretty much no plot... a waste of 15 minutes.

[Jariel Jacobs]

Pass on this one. Even for a smut lover this was meh.

[Grégoire Maillard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm always appealed to see quirky remakes of the Genesis in different authors style such as the famous one made by Crumb or by Chester Brown.

Here, I enjoyed to find again the Hernandez brothers graphic style for this series B production. However, nothing was too original nor shocking. I don't feel like the author did specifically very inventive around it.