Erotic versions of well-known stories is a favourite theme for comic artists, and following the tradition of Szekely and Manara’s retellings of Gulliver, in 1995 Jean-Pierre Gibrat turned to Carlo Collodi’s 1883 story of a puppet who comes to life. In this finely-drawn interpretation, the Pinocchia character carved from a magic tree is a beautiful and perfectly-proportioned young woman, who proceeds to disrupt the lives of all she meets, especially as she is prone to calling the men she interacts with ‘daddy’. And of course she tends to wear as little as possible most of the time.

Pinocchia was a collaboration between Gibrat and the French writer and director Francis Leroi (1942–2002), who wrote the text.

We have included here the first sixteen pages of the story, including a fine lesbian encounter; if you want to know what happens next, including the orgy on a monstrous submarine, you will need to buy the book.

Pinocchia was published by Albin Michel in their L’Echo des Savanes series.