The Iron Devil is Frank Thorne’s most ambitious and most extreme erotic masterpiece. Created in three parts in the early 1990s, the black and white version of The Iron Devil quickly sold out, but together with the sequel The Devil’s Angel, was reissued in 2023 in newly-colourised duotone version.

The complete edition of The Iron Devil includes a discussion between Frank Thorne and his agent Howard Davis; here is the part where they talk about the book.

Is The Iron Devil a love story?

The Iron Devil is pure smut! But it’s beautiful smut, at least that’s what I’ve been told – ‘The Iron Devil series was the most beautiful pornography ever drawn’, or at least that’s the way I’ve heard several people talk about it. I just uncorked and let it flow out.

With age do you do now think differently about it now?

What is it that they say – ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’?

I was fascinated with the tie-in with Ghita in the opening of The Iron Devil stories, where Ghita  comes in as the narrator. She has apparently achieved a certain level of godhood, and her beautiful breasts have been enhanced.

You do know that The Iron Devil comics were labelled as ‘Frank Thorne, Adults XXX.’ That meant they were intended as straight-out, no-holds-barred pornography. But to please me it had to be beautiful.

The story has a twist in the third issue. The Fey Brith/Tristi Joie character has gone through something like the training that O received in The Story of O. O is led into a situation where greater amounts of sexual depravity are required, leading her to go all the way. It starts out with her being told not to wear underwear so that she will always be available to a man’s touch when she is just walking around, and they end up with a lot more than that. At one point she’s violated by a boys’ choir. Ah, you didn’t remember that one?

I read that book so many years ago, and I guess that I forgot the boys’ choir!

I think that after this long sexual journey I perceived The Iron Devil as less erotic than it is a horror story, especially the way it takes the tum in the third book, when younger sister Roxy comes in, and we see that Fey Brith/Tristi Joie, who has gone through all of the training, is actually the lure to bring the younger sister in to be the bride of The Iron Devil.

Yes, yes!

The Iron Devil was originally published in three parts by Eros Comix; the complete colourised version is published by Aristo.