Bayba: The 110 BJ’s is one of Roberto Baldazzini's most exuberantly comic erotic creations. The central character, originally named Beba in the Italian editions, is a young trans woman whose transformation into an exaggeratedly feminine figure is presented with the deliberately fantastical logic of pulp pornography and cartoon satire. After using a high-tech hormone cream and undergoing gender-affirmation surgery, Beba embarks on an increasingly extravagant series of sexual adventures. In The 110 BJ’s she enters an ‘Ultimate Bitch’ competition in which she must satisfy 110 men in a single day, hoping to win the money that will give her financial independence. The premise is deliberately ridiculous, and Baldazzini pushes the absurdity further through his visual treatment of the men, whose faces frequently resemble cartoon pigs. The result is less an attempt at erotic realism than a gleefully excessive combination of fetish fantasy, sexual comedy and surreal cartooning.

The book is also revealing in terms of Baldazzini’s artistic development. Chiara Rosenberg and Casa HowHard had already established his fascination with fetishism, latex, exaggerated female forms and the iconography of pornography, but Beba takes his drawing in a noticeably more cartoon-like direction. The heavy blacks and strongly modelled forms of his earlier work are increasingly replaced by a cleaner, more open line, flatter areas of colour and deliberately simplified, almost emblematic faces and bodies.

The character first emerged from Baldazzini’s collaboration with the Italian erotic comics magazine Blue, which began in 1995 and produced a number of his erotic characters and series, including Beba. The first story was subsequently collected in Italy as Beba – Le 110 pompe, published by Kappa Edizioni in 2006.

The English-language edition used for this portfolio appeared from Eurotica, the adult imprint of NBM Publishing, in 2005, changing the heroine’s name from Beba to Bayba. The change of name was retained for the subsequent English volumes – Bayba: Domina in Red followed in 2006, and Bayba: Lady Brown in 2008.

The series also found an audience in France, where Dynamite published the three books as Beba – Les 110 pipes, Red Domina and Lady Brown. The French editions appeared later than the American translations for the second and third volumes, with Red Domina in 2010 and Lady Brown in 2014. A collected Beba edition was also issued in Italy, while the English-language Bayba books were subsequently packaged as The Bayba Set by NBM in 2011.

We have included here the first twenty or so pages from Bayba and the last few – if you want the whole book then you’ll have to go and buy it!