As you may have known, one of the panels I presented at Anime Boston was “Hentai Manga: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” While the panel went smoothly, it suffered from severe lack of preparation and an oversight that I would have too much content. The reality was that I blew through the content and finished unbelievably quickly (ironically, I had taken out content because I had misjudged the length).
Anyway, I was contacted a few weeks later by a fan pseudo-named DocWatson, who wanted to offer some information that I wish I had discovered before giving the panel. The fact that it’s a bit difficult to find this kind of info readily in a few searches prompted me to post DocWatson’s information online (with permission) in case anybody might find it usable in the future.
Bondage Fairies was originally published in America in 1994 (issue #1 is dated March) by Antarctic Press under their then-new Venus Comix imprint, not by Eros Comix and Studio Proteus in 1999 or 2000. (Studio Proteus’ edition of The Original Bondage Fairies was a license rescue.)
More info:
http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=12115885482
http://animemania01.tripod.com/mangaa_i.htm#B (visiting the main site here provides a treasure trove of information)
To the best of my knowledge, it is true that Bondage Fairies was the first serialized pornographic manga to be commercially published in English, but there were a number of earlier one-shots.
Catalan Communications published the graphic novel Goodbye and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, which to my recollection includes a story about a Japanese retiree who, feeling unappreciated by his family, spends all of his savings on a fling with a prostitute.
More info:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/good-bye-and-other-stories/oclc/18424098
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1374320.GoodBye_and_Other_Stories
Last Gasp published the erotic grotesque story “Santa and New Year’s” by Hiromi Haraguchi in Sexy Stories from the World Religions #1 (copyright 1990).
More info:
http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=73253497318
Gainax’s General Products published Mega Comics (1991?), which I recall had at least one pin-up illustration by Hiroyuki Utatane, and possibly a story by him.
More info:
http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=52843551381
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=7169
The British art gallery Lowe Culture published Manga, Comic Strip Books from Japan (ISBN 1873184026) for a October-December 1991 exhibition of manga; a full description/citation here.
More info:
http://www.helenmccarthy.org/Helen%27s%20Books.html
The books contains selections from the eroguro collection National Kid (“Kokuritsu shonen”) by Suehiro Maruo, and the complete story “Paper Theater” (“Yumegeshiki: A vision of dreams”) by Mitsuhiko Yoshida, which is about a young girl’s erotic dream and menarche. The volume is also valuable for its nearly complete list of early English-translated manga.
Antarctic Press translated an erotic Dirty Pair doujinshi as H-Bomb #1 (dated May 1993).
More info:
http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=38311924824
H-Bomb was excepted and translated from this doujinshi: http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/86491/ & http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/149963/
(UPDATE: The first story was taken from one or both of these: http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/125743/ & http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/147596/. It’s credited to Prescription 1+2, published by Yoshimasa Watanabe” (sic). I just happened to be reading this “Ask John” column, and realized that I had been partially wrong: http://www.animenation.net/blog/2009/05/15/ask-john-how-is-doujinshi-received-in-america-part-2/.)
I ran across and bought it at (IIRC) last year’s Anime Boston. It’s dated 4-12-30, which I assume is from Heisei 4 (1992), and that year’s Winter Comiket.
As a side note, Antarctic Press was followed by A.D. Vision’s short-lived imprint Graphic Visions, which published Magical Twilight #1 in May 1995, and by Fantagraphics Books’ Eros Comix and Studio Proteus, which published the first issues of Princess of Darkness and Hiroyuki Utatane’s Temptation in August 1995 (per AnimeMania and my own copies).
More info:
http://animemania01.tripod.com/mangaj_r.htm#M
http://milehighcomics.com/mcgi-bin/search.cgi?action=smpublisher&publisher=GRVS
I also wanted to point out that both Pink Sniper and the first volume of Take On Me (as Domin-8 Me!) are available in English from Eros Comix.
More info:
http://ssl.eroscomix.com/cart/ (bottom)