Eros Graphic Albums #1

From Gilbert Hernandez, the award-winning co-creator of Love and Rockets, Birdland arrives as the first entry in Fantagraphics' Eros Graphic Albums line — an adults-only expanded edition promised to include brand new material. The cover, drawn and inked by Hernandez himself, presents an ensemble of nude and semi-nude figures arranged playfully across a soft pink background, centered on a white-haired woman being lifted in an embrace by a dark-haired man holding a rose, with several other characters — blonde, brunette, and redhead — posed around them. It's a confident, stylistically clean showcase of Hernandez's distinctive linework, setting the tone for what the cover copy describes as an "explicit, somewhat metaphysical sex tale" involving libidinous psychiatrists, neurotic strippers, and horny little creatures from outer space.