Tijuana Bible - Cultural References

Cultural References

Early in the graphic novel Watchmen, the current Silk Spectre, Laurie Juspeczyk visits her mother, past Silk Spectre Sally Jupiter, and briefly reads a Tijuana bible featuring her. Sally finds it flattering and keeps it as a reminder of her past sex appeal, but Laurie finds the comic obscene. The same Tijuana bible is later given away as a gift, owing to its present nature as a collector's novelty item.

Will Eisner features Tijuana bibles in the first pages of his book The Dreamer, though nothing explicit is shown. His protagonist, Billy, a young artist out looking for work, is offered a job illustrating them by a printer and a mafioso. Shocked and incensed, he asks if they are legal. The vignette serves not only to focus conflict between the character's dream and reality, but also between legitimate and illicit comic production. Dejected, Billy says he will think it over. The theme is reminiscent of a real-life episode described by Eisner about his being asked to draw for the publications.

In the Canadian novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) by Mordecai Richler, the title character sells Tijuana bibles, some featuring Dick Tracy, to his high school classmates, after buying them in bulk from a newsstand vendor who assigns him a small part of the city as his sales territory.

In the novel Water for Elephants, the term "eight-pager" is mentioned in several different locations, one of these when Kinko the dwarf is caught by Jacob Jankowski masturbating while reading a Popeye the Sailor Tijuana bible.

The novel and film The Green Mile features a scene in which guard Percy Whitmore is caught reading a Tijuana bible with fictional character "Lotta Leadpipe", and is asked what his mother would think of such material.

A 1954 episode of Dragnet, "The Big Producer", had Sgt. Joe Friday breaking up a high school smut ring which includes a teenage boy (played by Martin Milner) selling eight-pagers out of his school locker.